Close your eyes. Imagine a baby chick. A GIANT 3 POUND BABY CHICKLET GENETICALLY ALTERED TO TERRORIZE AN
ENTIRE CITY!!!
Okay maybe not that last part but the giant chick is no over-exaggeration.
Geneticists are challenging our understanding of animals—like a chick.
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and Selective Breeding are highly argued in today’s food industries. Basically GMO’s are weird combinations of certain animals that aren’t considered normal. One case of GMO’s is geneticists are taking the gene that makes jellyfish glow, into rabbits. The result is a rabbit that glows green under ultraviolet light. Now I know what your thinking, that’s weird right? Well is it really? It doesn’t hurt the rabbits at all its just weird so why is it argued? People argue it because they think it’s inhumane to alter anything’s genes, whether it hurts them or not.
Obviously glow in the dark rabbits is not entirely a qualifier for the Nobel Peace Prize but, GMO can be a good thing. In the near future geneticists will be able to create people with almost supernatural power. How would you like to be able to lift a car with your bare hands? Genes are wondrous things and geneticists will be able to insert genes into humans and other organisms that make them super strong or have night vision or even think with a 4000 IQ.
The choice is essentially yours if you agree or not. Is GMO that bad?
Selective Breeding on the other hand is a lot more disputed topic. Selective breeding is a natural way of creating what we want in an animal. One case of this is in Belgian Blue Cows. Geneticists are creating a Belgian Blue that has triple the muscle mass as a regular cow. This is completely natural though. Basically how they achieve this is only breeding the cows with the most muscle mass. In turn the gene for large muscles will be inherited down until the breed is completely free of low muscle mass genes. This creates a breed in of its own that has triple the muscles. This process isn’t tampered with at all, all geneticists are doing is breeding only the cows they want, no needles, microscopes or tampering. The major benefit of this is that you have three times the meat on one cow. Increasing profit due in part by the reduction of feed requirements. One cow, big or small, eats the same amount so its more efficient to have one giant cow than three little ones.
Should we be worried? I think that we might want to be worried about GMO’s rather than selective breeding. The reason I think this is that do you want to eat a jellyfish glowy gene? That could make you glow in the dark too! Also the genes may have side effects, possibly injuring the test subject.
Selective breeding I believe has no after effects and I would completely back this.
Gregor Mendel, the founder of genes and genetics has to be proud of what we are doing. I mean he was working with peas without any altering or anything. Now we can create glow in the dark rabbits! Why wouldn’t he be proud?
Personally I would strongly agree with selective breeding. Why not maximize profit on an animal that is destined to be slaughtered for food. It seems that it would be more efficient in the long run. GMO on the other hand I believe is weird and should be illegal. Why we need glowing rabbits is beyond me but until we come up with better uses for GMO’s it’s unnecessary.
