[extropy-chat] More on the Glofish: When Fish Fluoresce, Can Teenagers Be Far Behind?

[kevinfreels at hotmail.com]

Does anyone know if this glow-in-the-dark gene gets passed on to it's offspring? I would assume so. Imagine the interest that children will suddenly have in genetics when they can breed yellow glo-fish with maybe a red glo-fish and get some red, yellow, and orange glo-fish. 
And what of those glowing teenagers? Will they mate and give birth to glo-babies? 
This could have serious implications for the military. What if all 18 yr old men decided to glow in the dark? Night engagements could get really risky > :-P
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Giu1i0 Pri5c0 
  To: hit ; extropy-chat 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 1:24 AM
  Subject: [extropy-chat] More on the Glofish: When Fish Fluoresce,Can Teenagers Be Far Behind?


  From the New York Times: Sometime in the future, when the distinction between cosmetologist and molecular biologist has faded and gene shops dot the seedier urban streets like tattoo parlors, the philosophers, moralists and historians of science will try to pin down the moment when the new age began. Science historians will probably say it started with the discovery of DNA, or the mapping of the human genome. Others will claim it started when Dolly was cloned and it became clear that the tools of biotechnology had moved out of the high church of pure research and into the unpredictable hands of people who bred sheep for profit. 
  I think the moment is now. And the creature that embodies the escape of biotechnology into the world at large - a movement that will never be reversed - is an aquarium fish that glows in the dark. This is the tipping point, when the world irrevocably turns toward the science-fiction fantasies of writers like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, who envision biomedical technology permeating every corner of the marketplace, from global corporations on down to small-time illegal operations like stolen-car chop shops. Imagine if you will, that you could pay to have genes for glowing in the dark inserted into your own body. How many glowing teenagers would there be? And who would stop them, once they reached age 18? After all, one's own body is one's own business.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  extropy-chat mailing list
  extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
  http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20031203/67a3dd0f/attachment.html>