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Topic: The clones are coming (Read 12178 times)
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AngusThermopyle
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A paranoid android.
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Looks like we're not too far off from real Androsynths. From the article:
Creation of the embryos -- grown from cells taken from the company's chief executive and one of its investors -- also offered sobering evidence that few, if any, technical barriers may remain to the creation of cloned babies.
I guess this was bound to happen eventually. Personally, I’m all for regrowing lost or damaged organs via cloning. Full-grown people, however, are another matter entirely.
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Toka
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yesterday in the german news in tv, they sayed that england is starting to mix human dna with animal dna.
they putt the human dna in the eggcells of pigs. its only allowed for science and the beings made this
way have to be killed 15 days after the creation. the purpose is to produce a creature that can deliver
organs that human bodies do not *eeerrg* i dont now how to say in english, it must mean something like
that the human bodies whould exept it as its own. pics are geneticly the nearst to humans after monkeys.
so, even if they dont grow up, human-animal hybrid beeings are officielly existing.
i dont know what to think of this. at one site, i whould love to see if those creatures whould be intelligent
in a human like way, on the other site, i think it could be a ruthless way to create human like beeings
without human rights. that whould be horror.
has anything of this been broud in your countrys news?
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Resh Aleph
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Rottem Tomatoes
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You know what experiment would really fascinate me?
Clone Albert Einstein many times.
Give the babies for adoption in all sorts of families all over the world. Rich, poor, scientific, ignorant, religious, democratic, communist... everything. And most importantly, don't tell the parents that it's Einstein (or interfere with their lives in any way).
See what happens. I've got a hunch we'd be surprised.
Did anyone hear about how scientists have announced that it is possible [even with very basic equipment] to create ANY kind of organism that uses ANY characteristic of anything found on Earth.
That's pretty ridiculous. Genes work in such crazy seemingly-random ways, that you are almost certain to kill anything you try to engineer (which is why movies like I Am Legend make me go  ).
Scientists still have a long way to go in genetic engineering, just like in brain engineering. I'm afraid we were all born too early. 
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« Last Edit: January 19, 2008, 04:27:22 am by alephresh »
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Lukipela
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The Ancient One
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I want a pet dragon, breathing fire and all. ANY kind of organism that uses ANY characteristic of anything found on Earth
Damn.
Just combine the genes of some bacteria that produce methane, some bacteria that survive high temperatures, an electric eel , a komodo dragon and an eagle. Easy really.
That's pretty ridiculous. Genes work in such crazy seemingly-random ways, that you are almost certain to kill anything you try to engineer (which is why movies like I Am Legend make me go Roll Eyes).
Wait, what? We engineer viruses and bacteria every day, nothing odd with that. Larger animals and bigger changes are beyond our reach, but creating a super-virus isn't.
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« Last Edit: January 19, 2008, 09:20:32 am by Lukipela »
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What's up doc?
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Lukipela
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Loads of stuff about the movie
That's not what I was replying to though. You said
That's pretty ridiculous. Genes work in such crazy seemingly-random ways, that you are almost certain to kill anything you try to engineer
And that isn't true. As Rtyp06 said, we've plenty of modified bacteria and viruses, mostly modified to produce stuff they haven't done before. We can cut and paste in the DNA of E.Coli to give them different characteristics. Sure, often we'll take the easy way and just add plasmids, and we're not taking one bacteria and changing it another, but it is still genetic engineering. We can even do this with plants, which is where GM crops come in. We can paste genes to make glowy stuff into pigs and make glowing pigs. Genetic engineering does not mean "Create human size creatures from scratch".
I'm not saying that we can make super viruses that make people into psychopathic albinos or create completely new animals (as you seem to have inferred), just saying that your claim any tampering with genes is "almost certain to kill" is incorrect.
EDIT:
Regarding the movie (since that seems to be what you really want to tak to) I agree that the random mutation seems very impossible. A set of mutations could have caused some of the symptoms there, but not the rest is just fluff for the movie. But then again, how exciting would the movie be if the only thing Smith happens upon in the city was corpses and some shambling dregs? Sci-fi sometimes (well often) calls for suspension of disbelief. Magical viruses, phase shields, robots from the future. and so forth is what makes sci-fi sci-fi.
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« Last Edit: January 20, 2008, 05:50:30 pm by Lukipela »
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What's up doc?
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Resh Aleph
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That quote is a bit out of context... Here's a better one:
Did anyone hear about how scientists have announced that it is possible [even with very basic equipment] to create ANY kind of organism that uses ANY characteristic of anything found on Earth.
That's pretty ridiculous. Genes work in such crazy seemingly-random ways, that you are almost certain to kill anything you try to engineer
So yeah, they have been messing with bacteria for decades... but he wasn't talking about such simple organisms, or about simple changes.
A set of mutations could have caused some of the symptoms there
Like what, hair falling off after a few minutes of infection? Come on... nothing in that virus is even remotely reasonable. 
Magical viruses, phase shields, robots from the future. and so forth is what makes sci-fi sci-fi.
I don't think sci-fi should be "magical". That's fantasy's job. Battlestar Galactica, for instance, does not deserve being called sci-fi, if you're asking me. Star Trek is sci-fi, because it at least tries to maintain some internal logic.
I don't have a problem with hypothetical futuristic technologies in sci-fi. That's fun. But I don't like it when they take stuff we know a lot about, and make it work in ridiculous ways. It's un-educating.
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Marines on Maulers and limpets on Earthlings / Bright Podship plasma and warm Kohr-Ah death rings /
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Lukipela
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The Ancient One
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So yeah, they have been messing with bacteria for decades... but he wasn't talking about such simple organisms, or about simple changes.
Oops, you're right. My mistake, I missed what you were replying to.
Like what, hair falling off after a few minutes of infection? Come on... nothing in that virus is even remotely reasonable.
Intellectual and physical regression could certainly be possible, although they'd probably not look like portrayed. Increased strength and aggression would be quite possible, but not for extended periods of time like in the movie.Not to the degree portrayed in the movie of course but still. The light thing was really absurd though. I mean, there are people out there that don't ctually have any pigment, and they don't start smoking in sunshine.
I don't think sci-fi should be "magical". That's fantasy's job. Battlestar Galactica, for instance, does not deserve being called sci-fi, if you're asking me. Star Trek is sci-fi, because it at least tries to maintain some internal logic.
This is off topic and completely besides the point, but could you point me to a site with the inconsistencies in BG listed? I freely admit that I haven't watched it a lot, but it did seem much more realistic tech wise than Trek to me.
I don't have a problem with hypothetical futuristic technologies in sci-fi. That's fun. But I don't like it when they take stuff we know a lot about, and make it work in ridiculous ways. It's un-educating.
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What's up doc?
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Resh Aleph
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Intellectual and physical regression could certainly be possible, although they'd probably not look like portrayed. Increased strength and aggression would be quite possible, but not for extended periods of time like in the movie.
For such strength they'd need huge muscles. They'd all pretty much have to look like gorillas, and thus couldn't possibly be as fast and agile as they are. Constantly hitting a bulletproof glass wall, without taking a scratch, is absurd (even if they had super-bones, which would make them even more clumsy). The point is, if such superhuman abilities were really possible/worth it, evolution would've come up with them. The human body is an outstanding machine already.
Another huge problem is how fast it all happens after they get infected, as I mentioned with the hair. But the main problem is how unlikely it is for a virus to mutate into something that does such an outstanding job. Hell, it's even less likely than losing your dog-friend, being found by other immune humans and finding the cure for the virus, all in the same two days (after 1,000 days of nothing). Oh, sorry, that's God. I guess God made the virus mutate that way too, then...
This is off topic and completely besides the point, but could you point me to a site with the inconsistencies in BG listed? I freely admit that I haven't watched it a lot, but it did seem much more realistic tech wise than Trek to me.
Oh, the tech is fine. I actually like that aspect of the series. It's all this mystical religious future-telling crap that drives me crazy.
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Marines on Maulers and limpets on Earthlings / Bright Podship plasma and warm Kohr-Ah death rings /
Shofixti Scouts doing gravity whips / These are a few of my favorite ships! © meep-eep
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