Evolution In Action

[elfs]

Scientists in Korea have managed to create stem cell lines seeded with the genetics of people other than the stem cell donors. This is a massive step forward in the engineering of customized replacement hearts, kidneys, livers, and brain cells leading to the cure of all manner of diseases.

This should have happened in the United States. But no, for twenty years the Christian Right has hobbled the biotech industry, held it at bay out of "moral" objections. So the centers of biological science will be in Shanghai and Bangladesh, and that's where the next big wave of research miracles will happen. This moment is absolutely the Sputnik moment, all over again, but I bet this time the Intelligent Design cult isn't going to apologize for their vicious error.

I'm reminded of Jared Diamond's "Collapse," in which he documents that the English colony in Greenland starved to death in the midst of gigacalories of food they wouldn't eat, because fish was something the pagans eat. They were English and Christian, dammit, and they ate sheep and cows.

Well, we're American and Christian, or at the very least in their thrall, and we won't starve to death-- no, we'll just age into decrepitude while those pagan nations with fewer compunctions about blobs of cells in a petri dish proceed to engineer healthy, powerful, intellectually charged populations that outperform and outcompete us.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Comments

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

I'm reading Collapse right now myself. Very impressive stuff, makes me want to go to Greenland, not something I'd previously been interested in. I do want to note, though, that it was the Norse who starved in Greenland, not the English. Which is even more peculiar than their being English, since Scandinavians everywhere else in the world happily live on fish.

I'd love to see those Inuit carvings of Norse people.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

Man, I've got to read that book.

As far as science, I just joined the science curriculum committee for the school district here partly to prevent ID from taking hold here and partly to lay the groundwork for running for the school board when the position comes up.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

We're just working our hardest to become a third world country. We're just not there yet. Give us time, though... :)

[dhydra.livejournal.com]

And then there's what Bush said today about pending legislation. Bleh.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Actually, Christians ate lots of fish, several times a week, on fish days and then all during Lent. The Greenland colony (no, I haven't read the book, I've done my own research) had a lot of things working against them, including what the weather people call a mini ice-age.

People in the Middle Ages ate pretty much anything. Seals, whales, porpoises (I have recipes, if you like), fish, bitterns, peacocks, swans, foetal rabbits.