Category Archives: Genetic engineering

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IF WE CONTINUE IN THE SAME DIRECTION AS WE ARE NOW, THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE UNPREDICATABLE/ DISASTOROUS AND CONFLICT RIDDEN.

20 Friday Aug 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., A Constitution for the Earth., Artificial Intelligence., Civilization., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Genetic engineering, Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Speed of technology., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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( Seven-minute read) 

We all know that we must shift the direction of the way we live life on Earth.

Sadly, this does not seem to be the case and hence, social conflict and civil unrest seem inevitable.

We all know that what is needed is a coordinated global response and bipartisan domestic response not just to the current pandemic but also to tackle climate change.

As Schwab writes: “The new technology age if shaped responsively and responsibly, could catalyze a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a truly global civilization.


Yes, we are in a fourth industrial-technological revolution with regulators guilty of sleeping by allowing AI to develop financial weapons of mass destruction turning the world into a digitalized market for the sake of short-term profit.

Today, 43% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, mostly in developed countries.

Each time you run a Google search, scan your passport, make an online purchase, or tweet, you are leaving a data trail behind that can be analyzed and monetized. Computers are already making decisions based on this information.

In less than 10 years computer processors are expected to reach the processing power of the human brain.  Socialism for the Rich and Capitalism for the Poor.

Think of apps that track how much you eat, sleep, and exercise, and being able to ask a doctor a question by simply tapping it into your smartphone.

In the future, will it ever be possible to be offline anymore?

So are the technologies that surround us tools that we can identify, grasp and consciously use to improve our lives? Or are they more than that: powerful objects and enablers that influence our perception of the world, change our behavior, and affect what it means to be human?

It is therefore worthwhile taking some time to consider exactly what kind of shifts we are experiencing and how we might, collectively and individually, ensure that it creates benefits for the many, rather than the few.

                                 ———————————

At the heart of discussions around emerging technologies, there is a critical and central question: what do we want these technologies to deliver for us?

The fourth Industrial revolution is widely taken to be the shift from our reliance on animals, human effort, and biomass as primary sources of energy to the use of fossil fuels and the mechanical power this enabled.

It however can also be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines.

It represents entirely new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even our human bodies -. examples include genome editing, new forms of machine intelligence, breakthrough materials, and approaches to governance that rely on cryptographic methods such as the blockchain. It’s just not very evenly distributed.

More people in the world have access to a mobile phone than basic sanitation.

The complexity of these technologies and their emergent nature makes many aspects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution feel unfamiliar and, to many, threatening.

Indeed, it is certain that the governments know this, but instead of helping the poor they are making it harder for them to survive and it is certain that sooner or later when the bubble burst, there will be few survivors.

Added to this is the humungous amounts of money governments are borrowed to keep the government running in the absence of real economic growth.

Since the financial crash and before interest rates were kept at near-zero levels for most of the decade in the run-up to the crisis with the West governments encouraging speculation and risk-taking.

                             _________________________

Currently, there are three big areas of concern: Inequality, Security, and Identity.

Inequality.

62 individuals controlled more assets than the poorer 3.6 billion people combined, half the world’s population.

Unequal societies tend to be more violent, have higher numbers of people in prison, experience greater levels of mental illness, and have lower life expectancies and lower levels of trust.

An important potential driver of increased inequality is our reliance on digital markets – increase unemployment.

Security.

The combination of the digital world with emerging technologies is creating new “battlespaces”, expanding access to lethal technologies and making it harder to govern and negotiate among states to ensure peace.

The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution also offer expanded capabilities for waging war which is increasingly accessible to both state and non-state actors, such as drones, autonomous weapons, nanomaterials, biological and biochemical weapons, wearable devices, and distributed energy sources

It’s not a question of if non-state actors will use some form of neuroscientific techniques or technologies, but when, and which ones they’ll use. 

Identity, voice, and community.

Already, digital media is increasingly becoming the primary driver of our individual and collective framing of society and community, connecting people to individuals and groups in new ways, fostering friendships, and creating new interest groups. Furthermore, such connections transcend many traditional boundaries of interaction.

Unfortunately, expanded connectivity does not necessarily lead to expanded or more diverse worldviews.

Emerging technologies, particularly in the biological realm, are also raising new questions about what it means to be human.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the first where the tools of technology can become literally embedded within us and even purposefully change who we are at the level of our genetic makeup.

The very reason why people are residents in taking the covid jab.

Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and biology at Harvard University, stated that cooperation is “the only thing that will redeem mankind”.

If we have the courage to take collective responsibility for the changes underway and the ability to work together to raise awareness and shape new narratives, we can embark on restructuring our economic, social, and political systems to take full advantage of emerging technologies.

This can only be achieved through the ideology of.  Live and let live. 


In 1969 a man stood on the moon. 

The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Birth.

This means that for 222 out of 239 years – or 93% of the time – America has been at war. The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.

It’s no wonder that the world is Fucked up. 

One only has to look at the current withdrawal from Afghanistan to see the benefits of War.  

This has important implications for how policymakers ought to treat future wars that are inevitable as the world struggles to feed its present direction of economic growth at whatever cost. 

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. JUST WHAT IS AN mRNA VACCINE IN LAYMAN TERMS?

14 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Civilization., Covid-19 Vaccines., Genetic engineering, Humanity., Life., mRNA vaccine and a traditional vaccine., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Survival., Technologically Enabled Genetics., Technology v Humanity, The Obvious., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., Unanswered Questions., Vaccines., What Needs to change in the World

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(Five-minute read) 


Now before I start trying to answer this question I wish to make it crystal clear that I am no doctor, scientist, or professor of Epidemiology.


Over my life, I have visited countries that have to require one to be vaccinated for everything from Yellow fever to you name it.

The one thing that is stopping some people from getting vaccinated is not understanding how mRNA technology works and its long term effects ( Yet to be seen)

So I am going to try to explain in layman terms the difference between an mRNA vaccine and a traditional vaccine.

There are three sorts of vaccines.   

Live, attenuated vaccines are the closest to a natural infection. They contain a weakened version of a living virus or bacteria

Subunit vaccines contain only parts of a virus or bacteria instead of a whole pathogen.

Inactivated vaccines contain an inactivated or dead version of a virus or pathogen.

Most vaccines up to now work by presenting your body with a weakened or dead version of a virus or some of the proteins found on the surface of the virus.

By showing the virus or parts of the virus to your immune system, the vaccine teaches your body to recognize the pathogen and turns on the production of antibodies, which are proteins that attach to the virus and allow killer immune cells to gobble it up.

In other words, traditional vaccines teach the immune system to make memory cells.

So if you are exposed to a virus at a future date, the immune system has the ability to rev up the production of antibodies rapidly and fight off the pathogen again.

                                              —————

The coronavirus pandemic infected millions of people in a matter of months and vaccines usually take years, and sometimes even decades, to develop, test, and approved for public use. 

For example: 

Smallpox – several centuries.

Plague – to date no vaccine.

Typhoid – around thirty years.

Yellow Fever – around thirty years.

Influenza –   around thirty years – ineffective today because of seasonal changes.

Measles/ Mumps –  around eleven years.

Anthrax  – around 58 years

Polo-  around sixty years. 

Chicken Pox – around thirty year

Shingles – around forty years. 

Hepatitis B –  around twenty-four years.

mRNA vaccines have existed for more than 10 years and have been used with the Ebola and Zika viruses. What is new is in terms of how widely it’s being used on the market.

When the COVID-19 epidemic arrived, never before in modern history, has the entire world and all of the governments in the world banded together to get a vaccine to market so quickly.

Researchers worldwide sprang into action to identify and insert the correct genetic code into the mRNA platform.

                              ——————————

This of course raised questions. 

How a vaccine can get put together in such a short time? 

Were corners cut?  

Is the trial period too short? 

Will there be side effects in years to come? 

These are questions that can not fully answer.  Time will tell. 

In layman’s terms, the technologies already existed, and with vast amounts of money made available to produce a vaccine, it happened in months not years. 

The result was mRNA vaccines which use what is called RNAi research that is widely used by researchers to silence genes in order to learn something about their function.

The result is siRNAs that can be designed to match any gene, can be manufactured cheaply, and can be readily administered to cells.

In other words, a cellular mechanism that uses the gene’s own DNA sequence of the gene to turn it off.

However, RNAi is much more than a research tool that encompasses an array of ancient and sophisticated cellular mechanisms that regulate a variety of biological functions. 

The advantage of RNAi is the ability to design precisely targeted medicines for almost any gene, regardless of the function of the gene.

So each different vaccine aims to use a slightly different approach to prepare your immune system to recognize and fight SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

                                              —————–

Think of your DNA  as the “instruction manuals” in genes that tell a living thing—what to do.  

The mRNA helps cells to read those instructions. It is synthetic there is no COVID virus in this vaccine.

You can not get COVID-19 from the vaccine as mRNA vaccines never enter the nucleus of the cell, where our DNA is stored. Rather than presenting your body with the dead virus or parts of the virus, mRNA vaccines show your body the blueprint needed to make a viral protein.

The difference with mRNA vaccines is that it gives a recipe to our immune system. 

Your body uses this blueprint to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins without including any part of the virus itself.

However, unlike less virulent or killed vaccines, the person is not infected with a virus, not even one that’s been weakened or killed.

mRNA is a small fragile fragment of genetic information that’s rapidly broken down within the bloodstream and within cells.

                                      ———————-

Finally, the world will need several different vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic as the virus mutates.

Of course in the short term, there are billions to be made by not sharing. But in the long term, it is taxpayers’ money that has helped the development of the vaccine.  

At the moment we have a handful of drugmakers dominating the global coronavirus vaccine race. 

To fight a global pandemic these companies must be made to share or waiver any patents, along with sharing the manufacturing process worldwide.

The Data from all Vaccines must be shared.  

While world governments must remove any trade barriers blocking the production of the vaccine. 

So far 75% of the world’s Covid -19 vaccines have been distributed in just 10 countries. 

It is a glaring fact that we are not going to end this pandemic anywhere until we do it everywhere. 

It is also a glaring fact while the virus spreads Covid mutants will evolve to trick our immune systems.

It is also a glaring fact that unless Inequality is tackled on a world basis we humans will struggle with any future pandemics that are coming with climate change.  

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WILL GENETICALLY ENGINEERED/ASSEMBLED PEOPLE BE ALLOWED INTO HEAVEN.

07 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, Genetic engineering, Genetics., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Natural selection., POST COVID-19., Reality., Religion for a digital age., Religious Beliefs., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

As if the world does not have enough problems regardless of the application, genetic engineering is a very controversial topic in our society.

According to most religious doctrines, life begins at conception, not anymore.

When digital technology took over the world, things we perceived as science fiction became reality. Today the same thing is happening with Genetic Engineering.

Life is made up of just four alphabets that give the instructions, and when we change the guide book we change the being carrying it. 

As we are seeing it does not matter what religious beliefs you have or otherwise, the current coronavirus is not fussy who it infects.

We are on the verge of being able to transform, manipulate, and create organisms for any number of productive purposes.

Human genetic engineering may soon be possible. It might well be in its infancy from changing the course of our lives. From medicine to agriculture, to construction and even computing, we are within reach of age when manipulating the genetic codes of various organisms, or engineering entirely new organisms, promises to alter the way we relate to the natural world.

Genetically engineered food is a divisive topic that is deeply embedded in the ongoing debate around climate change, sustainability, and food security.

There are many pros and cons regarding this topic and there are many powerful arguments for and against genetic engineering and gene therapy.

We already improve crops and animals. Why not humans?

Evolution is a change in the inherited characteristics of a population of organisms from one generation to the next.

This happens anyway and genetic enhancement is just speeding up this natural process.

We will have to make difficult decisions in the future on whether we want to play god in order to be able to fight deadly diseases and colonize another planet, grow enough food, replace exhausted resources. 

Of course, the big question is. 

Is it wrong to play god by effectively creating and changing life? 

Altering genes to improve strength, beauty or intelligence undermines the moral and legal idea that all humans are equal, creating further inequality in society – those who are genetically engineered and those who are not.

These individuals would have no say in this, but when they arrive at the pearly gates will they be allowed to enter. 

Genetical engineering is an extremely controversial issue without even considering the views of religions. The ethical question becomes even more daunting when we consider genetic engineering as it applies to animal life, particularly human life.

One could say that God has no say about any of this?

The Bible does not directly address the issue of genetic engineering, because genetic engineering was unknown at the time that the Bible was written, so there is a concern that a bold pursuit of advances in genetic engineering is motivated by defiance of God.

God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and overall the creatures that move along the ground.’

The gift of life is a product whether it comes from God or not and can be reproduced and modified to make a better product. So where are we with the artificial manipulation, modification, and recombination of DNA or other nucleic acid molecules in order to modify an organism or population of organisms.

It is my belief that genetic engineering has promised to better mankind, and it is our ethical obligation to research it but not exploit it.

Determine the genetic material of embryos in humans limiting the chances of children’s autonomy to determine their own destinies.

This means that the entire life of children is changed irrespective of their wish. This practice is immoral in nature because it is an unnatural way of molding the life of a human being to become what they themselves do not wish to be, resulting in social inequalities.

All raises a number of significant ethical issues. 

From genetically modified crops, using less water to speeding up the growth of plants to adapt to the global warming problem, to the overall life expectancy of animals and humans, to designer babies, to the development of new diseases, or to miscarriages, to resistance against antibiotics, to political decisions, to the uses of genetically modified bacteria for making biofuels, to the use of genetically modified seeds to increase yields and also make plants more resistant to pests, to the whole ecological system, to human behavior.

By treating the human embryo as mere ‘laboratory material’, the concept itself of human dignity is also subjected to alteration and discrimination. Dignity belongs equally to every single human being, irrespective of his parents’ desires, social condition, educational formation, or level of physical development. To create embryos with the intention of destroying them, even with the intention of helping the sick, is completely incompatible with human dignity.

Embryology is governed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.

Human embryos produced for research purposes cannot be implanted into any woman’s womb and must be discarded after 14 days.

In evaluating these concerns, we need to bear in mind that genetic engineering is still young. Some of the possibilities, such as creating new species of superhumans or subhumans, seem highly unlikely, at least for the foreseeable future.

However, there is a need to have morally correct legislation that guides the way science develops genetic engineering otherwise it will be a Pandora’s box of dangerous genetic modifications posing a threat to humanity with the rich in a society enjoying the fruits of genetic enhancements.  

chances and risks of genetic engineering

Ecological Engineering, the application of science to the optimum conversion of the resources of nature to the uses of humankind.

NATURE is being distilled—among many forms—into a network, where nodes represent species and links represent interactions between them.

Ecosystem engineering combined with genetic engineering not only impacts communities on ecological timescales but will profoundly shape the evolution of life on Earth. The complexity of an ecological community can be distilled into a network, where diverse interactions connect species in a web of dependencies.

The dynamical consequences of community structure is not yet a well-defined theory for the assembly of communities that incorporates multitype interactions.

The role of these ecosystem engineers has not been considered in ecological network models.

To unravel nature’s secrets we must simplify its abundant complexities and idiosyncrasies.

On the other hand, GENETIC engineering is entering a new phase as the available techniques become much more precise. Precise genetic editing opens up the opportunity for personalized medicine, with treatments tailored to our own unique DNA.

What is becoming possible and what will the implications be?

Just imagine a genetic engineering breakthrough that brings the dream of fixing everything from a deadly disease to environmental catastrophe into reach, simply by cutting and pasting bits of DNA. 

Primarily, as with any technology, once it becomes cheap and easy, it’s going to be used more and more – so we can expect an explosion of activity and innovation around genetic engineering in the coming years.

A lot of controversy surrounds “transgenic” genetically modified organisms, resulting in bureaucratic obstacles that mean GM crops are scarcely cultivated across much of the European Union, Africa, and Asia.

For example, if a gene from a pig was inserted into a banana, will people of the Muslim faith stop eating bananas and so on.

Did you know that over seventy percent of all processed foods on supermarket shelves contain at least one genetically engineered ingredient? If you are not eating 100% organic food, you are eating genetically modified foods. It is almost impossible to avoid eating GMO foods. Presently, over ninety percent of the soybeans, canola, sugar beets, and cottonseed oil are bioengineered. Seventy-two percent of the corn is genetically altered. And more and more food products are being altered every day.

Considering every five minutes, there is a new life and every eight minutes a death and none of us last forever. 

We all live for a short time in the fourth dimension of time so is any of this relevant. 

Leaving apart the ethical issues, let us be optimistic for a while.

Genetic engineering hasn’t, and won’t, stop it raises ethical and moral questions to which there are, as of yet, no clear answers.

How we as a species solve these problems will tell us not only something about the global landscape of moral decision-making but will define precisely where the human race will end up over the next few generations.

It’s not an exaggeration to say genetic engineering could totally alter the way we live – and these changes won’t necessarily be positive.

While we humans are gaining the powers of the gods, we aren’t at all ready to use them. We aren’t prepared to handle these Promethean technologies responsibly.

While the advance of genetic technologies is inevitable, how it plays out is anything but.

A first inkling of where we are heading can be seen in the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry.

When genetic Engineering reaches the mass, the change is going to be permanent.

The overlapping genomics and AI revolutions may seem like distant science fiction but are closer than you think. Because we are all one species. We will ultimately need to develop guidelines that can apply to all of us.

As a first step toward making this possible, we must urgently launch a global, species-wide education effort and inclusive dialogue on the future of human genetic engineering that can eventually inform global norms that will need to underpin international regulations. This process will not be easy, but the alternative of an unregulated genetic arms race would be far worse.

Scientists today have loftier ambitions than building a new app or social media companies.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.