Police warn South Carolina residents to secure doors and windows after 40 monkeys escaped a research facility.
- Thread starter THE_DEVIL
- Start date
You would be flabbergasted by the things we can do to animals these days. It would give you sleepless nights.
I’ve not only lived on a farm, I’ve personally seen the rats (w/ needles) in the basement of the old Spence labs, the various animals kept at the top of the Boyd Science building, and even the old dog kennels/dog barrel storage on the Oakdale campus. I’m no stranger to humans utilizing animals for various purposes. But, yeah, it probably is even worse than I think in some scenarios.
Ah you're an Iowa old timer like me. Long ago, in the mid 2000s, the animal liberation front broke into Spence lab and released minks and rodents used in psychiatry research. They took the animals to Coralville and released them in the Brown Deer golf course area. I saw a mink there shortly there after. About 8 years ago, a goat escaped and was captured in Coralville. I could tell you dog and sheep stories but back in the 80s in med labs there were numerous sheep with artificial hearts. You could hear them clicking along.
The key difference these days is we can make on demand animals. Humanized mice, glow in the dark pets and now due to germ line gene editing, pretty much change any stretch of DNA you want, either to remove traits or add traits. Obviously, this is a pandoras box but between robot soldiers and reprogrammed primates, that planet of the apes scenario is entirely possible in a few years.
Dunno if you are still in town but they've gussied up Spence labs and added a building to it. Bowen science building is still a dump haha.
I remember the rats being freed. The rats I remember weren’t going to get very far.
The new Spence looks great.
But, yeah, the future is going to get weird. Science will always be out ahead of any checks and balances. Had you seen this company? Attempting to de-extinct the woolly mammoth.
colossal.com
The new Spence looks great.
But, yeah, the future is going to get weird. Science will always be out ahead of any checks and balances. Had you seen this company? Attempting to de-extinct the woolly mammoth.
Mammoth - Colossal
Yes and those types of companies are seeing good vc money. There's a group trying to clone the Tasmanian tiger. The problem with that is an animal, extinct or otherwise, is full of chromosomes. These chromosomes are large and unfortunately they are incomplete. So some dna sequence, which might be crucial, is missing. The other problem is, even though we can sequence dna rapidly, creating dna synthetically takes time. Creating 3 billion base pairs, like we have, would be a tall ask. The work around might be to try a close relative animal and use that for the missing sequence and hope they are complimentary or close in match. I'm skeptical that's true. But it's a good story and business people love it. Right now, it's a tall ask. But things change. Back in 1990 when I did dna sequencing we could do about 800 base pairs in 3 days. Now, we could sequence your entire genome within a day. That time is dropping to 1 hr very soon. 3 billion base pairs in a hr. Pretty wild.I remember the rats being freed. The rats I remember weren’t going to get very far.
The new Spence looks great.
But, yeah, the future is going to get weird. Science will always be out ahead of any checks and balances. Had you seen this company? Attempting to de-extinct the woolly mammoth.
Mammoth - Colossal
