#gene tech

[alpaca-clouds]

Gene Tech is not your enemy

Let me throw one unpopular opinion at you: Gene Tech is actually not a bad. Genetically modified crops and what not are not bad and no, they will probably not give you cancer or anything of the like. In fact, if we want to save the planet and what not, we should totally embrace gene tech and gene editing.

With that I do not mean: "Edit human genes." Which is something that on one hand would be interesting and could have great promise, but on the other hand... would probably make the world so much world and lead to all sorts of eugenics.

No, I am talking first and foremost about editing the genes of some plants and maybe some insects.

See, I live in Germany, where a lot of GMO food is actually outlawed, which I find not good. Now, let me make one thing clear: Nobody should be able to copyright the genum of a crop. So fuck the hell off, Monsanto!

But gene editing can help us overcome many problems.

For once, we just have to face the facts: Climate is changing right now. It is changing and it creates bad harvests in many areas of the earth, because the crops are not adjusted for the new climate. In some areas it suddenly is too wet, in others it is too dry.

Humans have always edited the genes of plants and animals, of course. Just that we did it the very slow way by selective breeding them. Without selective breeding a wolf does not turn into a poodle.

Our ability to directly edit the genum of crops now allows us to quickly adust to the changing climate. Which might save a lot of people, if we allow it.

But apart from that, we can also do other things by gene editing.

We might be able to create plants, that are much better at storing CO2, than they would normally be. We are in fact able to create bacteria and algea, that eat micro plastics. We might in general be able to create bacteria able to dissolve garbage. We might be able to sustain plant species that otherwise might perish due to climate change.

And there might actually be some other things. See, we could maybe extinguish maleria thanks to gene tech. And we might be able to fight invasive species through it.

A lot of people in the conservation movement will be like "No, we should not mess with nature". But the thing is, that we already are messing with it.

Gene tech can help us to actually fix some of the problems we caused.

Again: Fucking Monsanto should not be allowed to copyright crops they created like this. But just because they are using it this way, does not mean, that the technology itself is horrible.

Opposing it just... does not get us anywhere.

[alpaca-clouds]

Biopunk is super interesting

You know what? I will now do a "rambling about punk genre stuff other than Solarpunk" Saturday think. Because I feel like it and because the punk genre are super interesting as a concept. So I want to explore this a bit further.

I kinda grew up with the entire punk-genre thing. Literally. As a kid I got into Cyberpunk when I was like... 12. So, I always had an interest in the genre. That I ended up playing Shadowrun hence was not a bis surprise. (Maybe I will talk about that a bit more one day...) And it was through Shadowrun, that I got interested in one of the subsubgenre of Cyberpunk: Biopunk.

Fun fact: Outside of fanfiction this is the one bit of Cyberpunk that I have actually written quite a bit about. And I just think it is interesting.

Now, to catch everyone up to speed: Biopunk usually (though not necessarily) is set in a Cyberpunk world, but instead or additionally to cyberware, there is gen-modifications happening. And this of course brings new and interesting avenues to explore with it.

See. One idea in this regard that gets played with a lot in Shadowrun, but also other Cyberpunk media, is the entire idea of "cyber psychopathy". Basically, a "ship of theseus" thing. If you replace too much of the human, the human looses their humanity and might do bad things. In comes bioware and goes like: "Sure this, we do not replace the human body, we just alter it." Basically, GMO for the human body.

Now, a while ago I talked about how gene tech is nobody's enemy as it is. BUT... gen tech currently suffers from the issue of people copyrighting gene sequences. Going so far as "you cannot use you non-genemodified harvest as seeds next year, because it has been pollinated with pollen from other gene modified stuff".

What would that mean for a human?

The possibilities for gene tech in medicine would be endless. Cure cancer. Cure all sorts of genetic diseases. Cure stuff that would kill you in real life. And do not even give up parts of your body.

But what if you cannot pay? With Cyberware you can still say: "Fuck it, have your stupid cyber arm back." And give up your arm. But with gene tech... Well, looks like you belong to the company now!

And of course, even more than normal Cyberpunk, this genre is also ripe to explore for the human relation to disabilities. Because, yeah, imagine gene tech could fix all disabilities. What would it do to the way humanity treats disabled people? Are your forced to be cured? And if so... Does your cured body then belong to the company?

So many interesting questions to explore.

The Biopunk stuff I wrote basically featured the set up of "the company" (that also was the state) offering parents of children, that would probably not be born alive or if born alive would die within the first two years of their life, to cure them. For free. And while they were on it, they gave the embryos all sorts of gene treatments, turning them into basically a different species alltogether. But when the revolution came... Welp, the company sat down: "Looks like we own you. Time to be our soldiers."

So... Yeah. Interesting concepts to explore here.

[alpaca-clouds]

Should we bring back the dinosaurs?

I spoke about gene editing yesterday and about species going extinct the day before. So let us lighten the mood a bit and bring both topics together: Let's talk about dinosaurs and wooly mammoths!

We are actually getting surprisingly good with that gene tech thingie, even though you hear not so much about it most of the time. But yeah, no, we are actually getting pretty good at it and at understanding what certain genes are doing.

And at least with the wooly mammoth we have found some DNA frozen in the ice. While we do not have a complete genum for them, we have a bit of it. And we are actually technically speaking able to re-engineer quite a bit from elephant DNA.

Same goes with the dinosaurs. No, we probably aren't finding mosquitos with blood that still holds DNA. But we have some bird species that are descendents of certain dinosaurs. Consider the mighty chicken, that has kinda sorta descendet from the velociraptor. (Also, yeah, news flash, dinosaurs are closer related to birds, than they are to reptiles.)

Like, some guy playing around with CRISPR has managed to give a chicken teeth. So, yeah, we might actually be able to re-engineer some dinosaurs. No T-Rex, no brontosaurus and no triceratops. But some dinosaurs? Certainly a posibility. Not right now, but in twenty, thirty years? Probably not off the table.

But that brings us to Jeff Goldblum Ian Malcolm:

Should we do that? Should we bring back mammoths or dinosaurs?

Let me make one thing clear: No, they probably will not start reproducing uncontrolably and then turn against humans in a more drastic way than any other animal might do. Sure, they could become an invasive species........ but they probably won't, because the earth they have once inhabited was so different from today, that they could very certainly not survive. Especially not the mammoth.

So, yeah. No Jurassic Park and no T-Rex running through New York or whatever happend in Jurassic Park 3.

Nah. There are other reasons not to do it.

And those reasons are simple: What for? Why do we want to bring back dinosaurs or mammoths? Sure, it would be cool to see a living, breathing dinosaur (even if it was just a velociraptor) or a mammoth. But... what good would come from it? Why do not invest all those ressources that it would take to do that into something... more useful? Something that is actually bringing science forward. Because, guess what: No, Alan, even if we brought back the brontosaurus, the revived brontosaurus would not tell us, whether or not the species moved in herds 150 million years ago!

And, of course, there would be just the animal welfare aspect. Because whatever animal we would bring back from the dead would probably have a very, very shitty life. It would be kept in a zoo, not be allowed to do its animal things. Would be part of a lot of science. It would just suck for those animals.

With actual living animal species, we can have long discussions about the pros and cons of zoos. But we will never rewild the mammoth. We should not rewild the mammoth. Because it does not have any habitat left. Same for any dinosaur.

So, I am with Jeff Goldblum on this one. Maybe we just... should not do it.

(Even though bringing back species that we as humans drove to extinction in recent history would be an entirely different story.)

[quarkmaster]

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