Sunday, July 29, 2012
the race for geneticly induced identity
Here is another interesting quote from the same source:
If we wanted white people that badly you could change peoples genetics during their birth.
Ignoring the fact that genetics would be changed a long time before birth (this is likely a typo), this presents us with a wonderful question:
How likely it is that genetics would be used to resurrect extinct sub-species of humanity?
The answer is : Not, bloody, likely. The truth is, we already have a branch of humanity to resurrect, it's called the Neanderthal. Neanderthals possessed large brains, could use tools, and best of all, unlike the dinosaurs we actually have a decently sized set of their DNA samples (meaning that we could establish a population that (even if it chose not to breed with us, which the can, an we hope that they will) still wouldn't become inbred within a few generations). They are also probably extinct because of us (or to be precise the cro-magnons - our ancestors), seeing as how they didn't go extinct in any place before we got there (though it could have been a disease we carried and not actual genocide). So it's, kind of, our responsibility to bring them back. Are we? No. Are we planning to? No. Are we talking about it at all? N... well, we could be, but I haven't heard anything as of yet (I only read the popular journals like Scientific American , and not the actual scientific ones).
"Come on"- I hear you cry - "this would require a massive change in the genetic code, we're just talking about very minor changes with making people of one race- another race". You are wrong (imaginary reader, who I made up to ridicule him, because I'm a dick,) the genetic difference between homo sapiens sapiens and homo sapiens neanderthalensis averages to about 0.4% (according to wikipedia), which is (if you believe the same source) about what the average human genetic variability is anyway. That is: it's not any harder to make a, say, Asian baby White (properly white- not just an albino Asian), then it is to make them Neanderthal. But we still won't do it. My guess is we just don't care about people if they don't pay taxes to support the research institute. I might be cynical though.
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