Interesting Problem

<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aROCMcTjM8_g&refer=home" >Removing Gene for Mad-Cow Disease May Breed Healthier Cattle </a><br />n<br />n<blockquote>Cattle can be genetically altered to lack the protein that causes mad-cow disease without adverse health effects, a study suggests.<br />n<br />nScientists at Hematech Inc., a unit of Japan's Kirin Brewery Co., and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that cows bred without the so-called prion protein were healthy at age 20 months and their tissue showed signs of resistance to mad-cow disease. The brain-wasting illness is fatal to cows and has been linked to almost 200 human deaths in the past decade. </blockquote><br />n<br />nNow this makes an interesting problem. I am not a fan of genetic tinkering of our animals and plants. I know all the arguments about how wonderful genetic engineering is supposed to be for food production but it worries me that it might lead to problems down the line or there might be problems with it that won't be evident for a few years. Here we have an example of it being used to solve a disease problems that has scared people for years.<br />n<br />nSo, since it's solving problem like <acronym title="Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy">BSE</acronym>, is genetic engineering okay in this instance? If it is, where do we draw the line? Just for a few bad diseases and not for anything else, no genetic engineering at all, or a free for all and allow any genetic engineering a company wants to do? It makes for an interesting problem, doesn't it? <br />n<br />nEven with this report on <acronym title="Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy">BSE</acronym>, I am still leaning on the stance of no genetic engineering with god's creatures. We, as humans are fallible and to start tinkering with the basic building blocks of life thinking we know it all is a little bit of a stretch to me. We aren't God/mother nature and we shouldn't pretend to be. In the long run I think it will bite us in the butt.<br />n<br />n<strong>The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while. Albert Einstein</strong>