A ChimeraYesterday I pointed to an io9 post, These Unresolved Ethical Questions Are About to Get Real, on my Twitter feed. It's interesting (that's why I tweeted it!), but there were some aspects which I thought were specious, and reflect common intuitions and fears in the public. Two in particular I want to highlight. First, "Is it okay to introduce non-human DNA in our genome?" The premise is false.
A substantial proportion of the human genome is derived from viruses.
Lateral gene transfer in complex organisms is not unknown, and may sometimes be quite functional (arguably endosymbiogenesis and mitochondria is the classic case, but that's so far back in the past that people aren't shocked by it). Second, the piece also asks if we "Should we biologically enhance non-human animals?" Last I checked selection was a biological process. Domestication events have radically changed many organisms. The io9 piece spends some ...
