Paul Root Wolpe: It's time to question bio-engineering

94,747 views ・ 2011-03-24

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:15
Today I want to talk about design,
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but not design as we usually think about it.
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I want to talk about what is happening now
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in our scientific, biotechnological culture,
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where, for really the first time in history,
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we have the power to design bodies,
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to design animal bodies,
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to design human bodies.
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In the history of our planet,
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there have been three great waves of evolution.
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The first wave of evolution
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is what we think of as Darwinian evolution.
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So, as you all know,
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species lived in particular ecological niches
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and particular environments,
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and the pressures of those environments
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selected which changes,
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through random mutation in species,
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were going to be preserved.
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Then human beings stepped out
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of the Darwinian flow of evolutionary history
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and created the second great wave of evolution,
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which was we changed the environment
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in which we evolved.
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We altered our ecological niche
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by creating civilization.
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And that has been the second great --
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couple 100,000 years, 150,000 years --
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flow of our evolution.
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By changing our environment,
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we put new pressures
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on our bodies to evolve.
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Whether it was through settling down in agricultural communities,
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all the way through modern medicine,
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we have changed our own evolution.
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Now we're entering a third great wave
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of evolutionary history,
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which has been called many things:
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"intentional evolution,"
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"evolution by design" --
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very different than intelligent design --
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whereby we are actually now
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intentionally designing and altering
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the physiological forms that inhabit our planet.
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So I want to take you through a kind of whirlwind tour of that
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and then at the end talk a little bit
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about what some of the implications are for us
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and for our species, as well as our cultures,
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because of this change.
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Now we actually have been doing it for a long time.
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We started selectively breeding animals
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many, many thousands of years ago.
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And if you think of dogs for example,
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dogs are now intentionally-designed creatures.
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There isn't a dog on this earth that's a natural creature.
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Dogs are the result
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of selectively breeding traits that we like.
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But we had to do it the hard way in the old days
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by choosing offspring that looked a particular way
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and then breeding them.
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We don't have to do it that way anymore.
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This is a beefalo.
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A beefalo is a buffalo-cattle hybrid.
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And they are now making them,
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and someday, perhaps pretty soon,
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you will have beefalo patties
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in your local supermarket.
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This is a geep,
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a goat-sheep hybrid.
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The scientists that made this cute little creature
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ended up slaughtering it and eating it afterwards.
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I think they said it tasted like chicken.
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This is a cama.
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A cama is a camel-llama hybrid,
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created to try to get the hardiness of a camel
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with some of the personality traits
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of a llama.
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And they are now using these in certain cultures.
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Then there's the liger.
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This is the largest cat in the world --
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the lion-tiger hybrid.
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It's bigger than a tiger.
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And in the case of the liger,
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there actually have been one or two that have been seen in the wild.
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But these were created by scientists
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using both selective breeding and genetic technology.
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And then finally, everybody's favorite,
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the zorse.
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None of this is Photoshopped. These are real creatures.
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And so one of the things we've been doing
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is using genetic enhancement,
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or genetic manipulation,
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of normal selective breeding
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pushed a little bit through genetics.
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And if that were all this was about,
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then it would be an interesting thing.
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But something much, much more powerful
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is happening now.
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These are normal mammalian cells
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genetically engineered with a bioluminescent gene
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taken out of deep-sea jellyfish.
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We all know that some deep-sea creatures glow.
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Well, they've now taken that gene, that bioluminescent gene,
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and put it into mammal cells.
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These are normal cells.
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And what you see here
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is these cells glowing in the dark
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under certain wavelengths of light.
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Once they could do that with cells, they could do it with organisms.
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So they did it with mouse pups,
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kittens.
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And by the way, the reason the kittens here are orange and these are green
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is because that's a bioluminescent gene from coral,
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while this is from jellyfish.
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They did it with pigs.
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They did it with puppies.
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And, in fact,
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they did it with monkeys.
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And if you can do it with monkeys --
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though the great leap in trying to genetically manipulate
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is actually between monkeys and apes --
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if they can do it in monkeys,
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they can probably figure out how to do it in apes,
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which means they can do it in human beings.
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In other words, it is theoretically possible
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that before too long we will be biotechnologically capable
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of creating human beings
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that glow in the dark.
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Be easier to find us at night.
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And in fact, right now in many states,
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you can go out and you can buy bioluminescent pets.
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These are zebra fish. They're normally black and silver.
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These are zebra fish that have been genetically engineered
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to be yellow, green, red,
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and they are actually available now in certain states.
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Other states have banned them.
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Nobody knows what to do with these kinds of creatures.
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There is no area of the government -- not the EPA or the FDA --
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that controls genetically-engineered pets.
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And so some states have decided to allow them,
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some states have decided to ban them.
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Some of you may have read
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about the FDA's consideration right now
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of genetically-engineered salmon.
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The salmon on top
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is a genetically engineered Chinook salmon,
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using a gene from these salmon
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and from one other fish that we eat,
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to make it grow much faster
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using a lot less feed.
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And right now the FDA is trying to make a final decision
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on whether, pretty soon, you could be eating this fish --
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it'll be sold in the stores.
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And before you get too worried about it,
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here in the United States,
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the majority of food you buy in the supermarket
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already has genetically-modified components to it.
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So even as we worry about it,
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we have allowed it to go on in this country -- much different in Europe --
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without any regulation,
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and even without any identification on the package.
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These are all the first cloned animals
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of their type.
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So in the lower right here,
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you have Dolly, the first cloned sheep --
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now happily stuffed in a museum in Edinburgh;
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Ralph the rat, the first cloned rat;
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CC the cat, for cloned cat;
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Snuppy, the first cloned dog --
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Snuppy for Seoul National University puppy --
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created in South Korea
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by the very same man that some of you may remember
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had to end up resigning in disgrace
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because he claimed he had cloned a human embryo, which he had not.
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He actually was the first person
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to clone a dog, which is a very difficult thing to do,
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because dog genomes are very plastic.
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This is Prometea, the first cloned horse.
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It's a Haflinger horse cloned in Italy,
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a real "gold ring" of cloning,
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because there are many horses that win important races
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who are geldings.
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In other words, the equipment to put them out to stud
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has been removed.
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But if you can clone that horse,
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you can have both the advantage of having a gelding run in the race
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and his identical genetic duplicate
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can then be put out to stud.
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These were the first cloned calves,
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the first cloned grey wolves,
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and then, finally,
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the first cloned piglets:
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Alexis, Chista, Carrel, Janie and Dotcom.
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(Laughter)
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In addition, we've started to use cloning technology
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to try to save endangered species.
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This is the use of animals now
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to create drugs and other things in their bodies
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that we want to create.
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So with antithrombin in that goat --
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that goat has been genetically modified
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so that the molecules of its milk
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actually include the molecule of antithrombin
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that GTC Genetics wants to create.
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And then in addition, transgenic pigs, knockout pigs,
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from the National Institute of Animal Science in South Korea,
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are pigs that they are going to use, in fact,
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to try to create all kinds of drugs
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and other industrial types of chemicals
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that they want the blood and the milk
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of these animals
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to produce for them,
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instead of producing them in an industrial way.
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These are two creatures
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that were created
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in order to save endangered species.
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The guar
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is an endangered Southeast Asian ungulate.
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A somatic cell, a body cell,
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was taken from its body,
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gestated in the ovum of a cow,
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and then that cow gave birth to a guar.
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Same thing happened with the mouflon,
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where it's an endangered species of sheep.
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It was gestated in a regular sheep body,
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which actually raises an interesting biological problem.
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We have two kinds of DNA in our bodies.
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We have our nucleic DNA
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that everybody thinks of as our DNA,
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but we also have DNA in our mitochondria,
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which are the energy packets of the cell.
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That DNA is passed down through our mothers.
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So really, what you end up having here
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is not a guar and not a mouflon,
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but a guar
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with cow mitochondria,
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and therefore cow mitochondrial DNA,
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and a mouflon with another species of sheep's
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mitochondrial DNA.
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These are really hybrids, not pure animals.
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And it raises the question of how we're going to define animal species
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in the age of biotechnology --
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a question that we're not really sure yet
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how to solve.
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This lovely creature
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is an Asian cockroach.
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And what they've done here
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is they've put electrodes in its ganglia and its brain
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and then a transmitter on top,
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and it's on a big computer tracking ball.
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And now, using a joystick,
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they can send this creature
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around the lab
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and control whether it goes left or right,
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forwards or backwards.
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They've created a kind of insect bot,
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or bugbot.
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It gets worse than that -- or perhaps better than that.
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This actually is one of DARPA's very important --
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DARPA is the Defense Research Agency --
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one of their projects.
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These goliath beetles
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are wired in their wings.
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They have a computer chip strapped to their backs,
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and they can fly these creatures around the lab.
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They can make them go left, right. They can make them take off.
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They can't actually make them land.
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They put them about one inch above the ground,
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and then they shut everything off and they go pfft.
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But it's the closest they can get to a landing.
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And in fact, this technology has gotten so developed
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that this creature --
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this is a moth --
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this is the moth in its pupa stage,
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and that's when they put the wires in
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and they put in the computer technology,
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so that when the moth actually emerges as a moth,
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it is already prewired.
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The wires are already in its body,
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and they can just hook it up to their technology,
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and now they've got these bugbots
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that they can send out for surveillance.
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They can put little cameras on them
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and perhaps someday deliver
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other kinds of ordinance
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to warzones.
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It's not just insects.
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This is the ratbot, or the robo-rat
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by Sanjiv Talwar at SUNY Downstate.
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Again, it's got technology --
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it's got electrodes going into its left and right hemispheres;
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it's got a camera on top of its head.
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The scientists can make this creature
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go left, right.
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They have it running through mazes, controlling where it's going.
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They've now created an organic robot.
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The graduate students
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in Sanjiv Talwar's lab
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said, "Is this ethical?
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We've taken away the autonomy of this animal."
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I'll get back to that in a minute.
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There's also been work done with monkeys.
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This is Miguel Nicolelis of Duke.
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He took owl monkeys,
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wired them up
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so that a computer watched their brains while they moved,
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especially looking at the movement of their right arm.
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The computer learned what the monkey brain did
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to move its arm in various ways.
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They then hooked it up to a prosthetic arm,
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which you see here in the picture,
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put the arm in another room.
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Pretty soon, the computer learned, by reading the monkey's brainwaves,
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to make that arm in the other room
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do whatever the monkey's arm did.
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Then he put a video monitor
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in the monkey's cage
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that showed the monkey this prosthetic arm,
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and the monkey got fascinated.
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The monkey recognized that whatever she did with her arm,
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this prosthetic arm would do.
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And eventually she was moving it and moving it,
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and eventually stopped moving her right arm
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and, staring at the screen,
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could move the prosthetic arm in the other room
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only with her brainwaves --
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which means that monkey
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became the first primate in the history of the world
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to have three independent functional arms.
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And it's not just technology
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that we're putting into animals.
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This is Thomas DeMarse at the University of Florida.
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He took 20,000 and then 60,000
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disaggregated rat neurons --
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so these are just individual neurons from rats --
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put them on a chip.
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They self-aggregated into a network,
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became an integrated chip.
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And he used that
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as the IT piece
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of a mechanism which ran a flight simulator.
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So now we have organic computer chips
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made out of living, self-aggregating neurons.
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Finally, Mussa-Ivaldi of Northwestern
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took a completely intact,
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independent lamprey eel brain.
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This is a brain from a lamprey eel.
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It is living --
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fully-intact brain in a nutrient medium
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with these electrodes going off to the sides,
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attached photosensitive sensors to the brain,
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put it into a cart --
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here's the cart, the brain is sitting there in the middle --
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and using this brain as the sole processor for this cart,
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when you turn on a light and shine it at the cart,
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the cart moves toward the light;
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when you turn it off, it moves away.
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It's photophilic.
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So now we have a complete
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living lamprey eel brain.
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Is it thinking lamprey eel thoughts,
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sitting there in its nutrient medium?
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I don't know,
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but in fact it is a fully living brain
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that we have managed to keep alive
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to do our bidding.
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So, we are now at the stage
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where we are creating creatures
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for our own purposes.
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This is a mouse created by Charles Vacanti
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of the University of Massachusetts.
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He altered this mouse
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so that it was genetically engineered
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to have skin that was less immunoreactive to human skin,
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put a polymer scaffolding of an ear under it
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and created an ear that could then be taken off the mouse
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and transplanted onto a human being.
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Genetic engineering
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coupled with polymer physiotechnology
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coupled with xenotransplantation.
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This is where we are in this process.
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Finally, not that long ago,
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Craig Venter created the first artificial cell,
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where he took a cell, took a DNA synthesizer,
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which is a machine,
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created an artificial genome,
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put it in a different cell --
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the genome was not of the cell he put it in --
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and that cell then reproduced
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as the other cell.
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In other words,
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that was the first creature in the history of the world
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that had a computer as its parent --
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it did not have an organic parent.
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And so, asks The Economist:
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"The first artificial organism and its consequences."
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So you may have thought
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that the creation of life
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was going to happen in something that looked like that.
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(Laughter)
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But in fact, that's not what Frankenstein's lab looks like.
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This is what Frankenstein's lab looks like.
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This is a DNA synthesizer,
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and here at the bottom
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are just bottles of A, T, C and G --
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the four chemicals
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that make up our DNA chain.
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And so, we need to ask ourselves some questions.
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For the first time in the history of this planet,
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we are able to directly design organisms.
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We can manipulate the plasmas of life
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with unprecedented power,
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and it confers on us a responsibility.
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Is everything okay?
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Is it okay to manipulate and create
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whatever creatures we want?
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Do we have free reign
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to design animals?
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Do we get to go someday to Pets 'R' Us
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and say, "Look, I want a dog.
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I'd like it to have the head of a Dachshund,
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the body of a retriever,
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maybe some pink fur,
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and let's make it glow in the dark"?
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Does industry get to create creatures
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who, in their milk, in their blood, and in their saliva
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and other bodily fluids,
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create the drugs and industrial molecules we want
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and then warehouse them
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as organic manufacturing machines?
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Do we get to create organic robots,
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where we remove the autonomy from these animals
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and turn them just into our playthings?
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And then the final step of this,
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once we perfect these technologies in animals
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and we start using them in human beings,
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what are the ethical guidelines
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that we will use then?
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It's already happening. It's not science fiction.
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We are not only already using these things in animals,
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some of them we're already beginning to use
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on our own bodies.
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We are now taking control of our own evolution.
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We are directly designing
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the future of the species of this planet.
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It confers upon us an enormous responsibility
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that is not just the responsibility
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of the scientists and the ethicists
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who are thinking about it and writing about it now.
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It is the responsibility of everybody
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because it will determine what kind of planet and what kind of bodies
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we will have in the future.
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Thanks.
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(Applause)
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About this website

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