1.GM perfects factory farming
2.Interview with "Body Shopping" author
3.Cloned organ donor
4.Korean Cloning Update
5.Transhumanists as Nihilists, Continued
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1.GM perfects factory farming
http://twitter.com/GMWatch

Why do away with factory farming when you can create GM pain-free animals? Bio-"ethics" St. Louis style! http://bit.ly/2QZbuh
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2.Interview with "Body Shopping" author
Marcy Darnovsky
Biopolitical Times, June 26 2009
http://www.biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=4742

British author and activist Donna Dickenson's book about the business in body parts is recently out in paperback, with a new subtitle that makes it Body Shopping: Converting Body Parts to Profit.
http://www.donnadickenson.net/

A fascinating interview with her was posted yesterday at RH Reality Check, one of the top blogs on reproductive rights and health. From her remarks:

My goal in writing the book was to take these developments out of the scientific or academic literature and describe them for a non-specialist audience∑.I think the greatest difficulty isn't so much that a popular audience can't easily understand the science and medicine, but that we live in a very polarized society. Anyone who isn't one hundred percent behind every new development in biotechnology is often portrayed as either ignorant or doctrinaire - frequently, at least in the UK, as a religious zealot.

 Many people have been persuaded - falsely - that's if we want the genuine benefits that modern biomedicine can bring us, we have to accept all the scientific developments uncritically....

I did not set out to shock, horrify, disturb or alarm, but to explore the ways in which modern biotechnology is commodifying areas of our life from BC (before conception) to AD (after death), and what we can do about it.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/06/16/rh-reality-check-interviews-donna-dickenson-author-body-shopping#comment-23946
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Philip Pullman quote: "An alarming and illuminating book. The story of how we have allowed private corporations to patent genes, to stockpile human tissue, and in short to make profits out of what many people feel ought to be common goods is a shocking one."
http://www.donnadickenson.net/newbooks.htm
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3.Organ donor
Joong Ang Daily, August 28 2009
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2909361

Image at http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2909361
        
Caption: A scientist at the National Institute of Animal Science in Suwon, Gyeonggi, yesterday holds the nation's first transgenic cloned pig, Xeno. The male pig was transferred from an incubator to a specific-pathogen-free pigpen the same day. The animal was born on April 3 and it is the second cloned pig, following one in the United States, for organ transplants.
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4.Korean Cloning Update
Pete Shanks
Biopolitical Times, September 3 2009
http://www.biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=4908

On August 26, one of the first two cloned wolves died mysteriously at less than four years old. "According to zoo staff, ... it was found in its cage with its mouth covered with blood."

Final results of an autopsy will not be known for a month, but there was no external wound. According to Prof. Lee Byeong-chun, "the organs were found to have been damaged, possibly due to the hot weather." Another possibility is an infection or the long-term effects of fights with the other clone, which caused the two to be separated by zoo staff. Lee insists that "the death does not mean the cloning process was incomplete." His colleague Prof. Shin Nam-sik asserted that "we should not exaggerate the incident, as many animals die suddenly."

Nevertheless, questions are being raised, about life expectancy (in the wild wolves can live up to 15 years), and also about the temperamental difference between the two clones. The first cloned sheep died relatively young, and Shin admits that "further research has to be carried out whether cloned animals can cherish the same health condition and aging speed as natural born animals."

In other news:

    * The first puppies both of whose parents were clones will be given to selected pet owners later this year (by Lee's team). They were conceived using IVF but not cloning.
    * A different Korean team has cloned an endangered cattle species. They implanted 59 embryos, which resulted in 6 pregnancies (or perhaps births; the translated report is not clear) but only 1 live 5-month-old calf.
    * Hwang Woo-Suk, currently facing the possibility of a four-year sentence for fraud (the ruling is due on October 19), "plans to present two cloned dogs to one of the country's provinces to help it nurture a bio-technology industry." No word yet as to whether North Chungcheong province will accept.
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4.Transhumanists as Nihilists, Continued
Jesse Reynolds
Biopolitical Times, September 2 2009
http://www.biopoliticaltimes.org/article.php?id=4904

Transhumanism is a fringe school of thought, one that often amounts to simplistic and utopian blind faith in the ability of technology to cure all that ails us, with negligible social consequences. It often includes a promise that human genetic engineering will make us not just "better than well" but "more than human."

But a couple years ago, the then-named World Transhumanist Association took a wide poll of its members, and found a surprising viewpoint among them. Calling it nihilistic, at the time I wrote:

 [O]nly 46% agree that "believe humans and posthumans will be able to coexist in one society and polity," implying that a majority foresee that the path they advocate will lead to significant social conflict among the enhanced and "naturals."

Now, a non-scientific online poll at the website of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, which is a transhumanist think-tank network, asked which science fiction movie "portrays the future most believably." The site's readers, who are likely techno-enthusiasts, chose by a wide margin GATTACA, a 1997 movie which offers dystopian vision of genetic castes--an image that we often cite (1, 2, 3) as a warning of the potential consequences of unbridled human reprogenetic technologies. Moreover, the the sum of results for the several generally negative portrayals of the future (Blade Runner, Children of Men) overwhelms that that of the generally positive ones (Star Trek).

To the extent these polls are accurately revealing, it is perplexing why transhumanists would advocate for technologies and policies that even they apparently admit will likely lead to such a dark future.