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Underground > Laboratory >

Weapon Plus

08:07 / 25.11.02

http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,846528,00.html

Sounds like a slightly lower key method to archieve Weapon XIIish results.
Morphotek, who would choose a name that sounds as evil as that? Unless you are really really evil that is.

10:58 / 25.11.02

Why is the world we're living in getting more and more like the sci-fi I used to read when I was 15? Sometimes I think I might have died a couple of years ago and this is all just the end of my brainstem regurgitating dreams. Where the fuck is this all going to end?

11:12 / 25.11.02

The researchers were reading the same comic books as you.

12:08 / 25.11.02

But Nicholas Nicolaides, chief executive of Morphotek, said the work was safe. When a mutant breed with commercial opportunity was found, it would be simple to breed out the cancer-causing gene, he said, adding: 'We are not using animals for this process at this time, just mammalian cells. Heh. Eheh. Ehehahahahahahahah!!!! AHAHAHAHAH!!!'

Well, I added the last bit. Nicholas Nicolaides? This has got to be a joke...

17:02 / 25.11.02

It seems to me like the fears are overstated - this is just another form of genetic modification, and quite likely if one of these organisms with cancer-causing genes is released in the environment, it'll... die of cancer.

Of course, if it cross-breed with tomatoes or something and suddenly there's a bunch of carcinogenic ketchup out on the diner counters of the world, I'll eat my words. Unseasoned, thank you kindly.

18:42 / 25.11.02

Um...a human cancer-causing gene in a creature in our food supply is not, at least in any proven way, a direct threat to a human consumer. Both gene and resultant enzyme would be diced up by our digestion into their respective nucleotides and amino acids.

15:03 / 26.11.02

But what if it leaps off the plate and grabs people by the throat and injects them (using its mutant venom-harpoon-organ) with the mutated DNA directly into their bloodstream?

Eh? Eh? What then?

15:13 / 26.11.02

Of course the real problem is that the technique is there basically to help scientists roll the dice a lot more times per generation of a population, by guaranteeing lots and lots of mutants.

The vast majority of mutants are untenable; they can't survive. (which has the animal rights people up in arms)

If DNA drifts out of a lab, in the form of grains of pollen or individual bacteria, and gets into, say, a cheese factory (bacteria) or a farmer's field, and the crops start mutating, you're going to get a lot of die-offs. Yields would possibly hit rock bottom. Possibly.

That's the thing with mutants; there's no guarantees, only dim probabilities. Hypermutability *could* find/create an amazing pumpkin-sized tomatoes, but it could also find/create tomatoes that contain no lycopene, or that melt teeth enamel, or that poison intestinal fauna, or that grow venom-injecting-harpoon-organs and, possibly, a rudimentary plant intelligence.
None of those are particularly likely.

16:03 / 28.11.02

Regardless of any potential adverse side effects of the mutations I think the research is a bad idea from the point of view that it doesn't solve any of the problems that it ostensibly set out to. It's the old 'more productive cow' argument. Basically we don't need more productive organisms. Our cows produce enough milk. We should really concentrate on not depriving half the worlds population of water rather than giving them drought resistant plants. It annoys me that these people actually seem to believe they're saving the world

16:45 / 04.12.02

Don't fuck with a gene whose name starts off with the initials P.M.S.

The Photographer in Blowup

11:14 / 12.12.02

cancer-causing genes? That sounds like the weirdness i expect from Grant Morrison, or Greg Bear for that matter (Blood Music is a classic)

Now really, what sort of evolution are those scientists hoping to achieve? If evolution is the impact of one's surroundings upon one's way of surviving, any evolution achieved in a laboratory will be completely adulterated and not natural (although evolution of millenia in few years isn't either)

Still, we have so many genes we don't know heck about, it would be nice to find a bit more on them.

14:02 / 12.12.02

Well, the idea is to use substances created in cancer cells to damage the organisms' healthy DNA, thus creating heaps of mutants - creatures with damaged DNA.
It seems to me that there's gonna be a high incidence of actual cancer involved in that (since the DNA-self-protection systems are fucked with), as well as heaps more of creatures that simply can't survive - plants unable to convert glucose into energy, or mice born with two livers and no kidneys.
Shaking a lot of dice.

Ki

23:23 / 18.12.03

This may be fun to experiment, but I highly doubt much will come out of it. What are the chances something will evolve in the way you want it to? I don't think it will do any harm, so they are welcome to play. It may do good, too. You never know. Like winning the lottery after one ticket, unlikely but possible.

14:29 / 19.12.03