Scientists Monkey With Evolution, Produce "Snouted Chicken"

[ReaperzXIII]

They said it was unethical for a man to turn a chicken into a dinosaur, I chose a different path I chose rapture a place where the abominations of science could run free, where the Man-Bear-Pig had no reason to fear torment. Where scientists could do experiments without the thought of petty morality


In completely unrelated news, several scientists found dead, police say they were brutally torn apart by what seems to be some chicken alligator creature, more later.

 

[the spud]

Once again the brilliant scientiists are held back from achieving their full potential because of petty "ethics".

Oh no you di'int...

Oh yes I did!
The world would be a better place if scientists had more moral and ethical flexibility.

 

[McShizzle]

"Their ethical inflexibility has allowed us to make progress in areas they refuse to consider."

[http://www.moddb.com/mods/project-hdtp/images/greasel]

Ha! Exactly what I thought. "(French accent) Damned greasy Greasels." This is the first step people. Now where do I sign up for/who do I talk to about my augmentations?

 

[duchaked]

I'm thinking...underdeveloped chickens

hmm...while I'm not one to support playing God, but I do wonder what'd happen if they were to hatch it (you know, like sci-fi movies where the world gets taken over and it's horrible but kinda cool lol)

 

[scw55]

Mmm, as excited as I am at the idea of prehistoric species coming alive, there's quite a few issues. The animals could never live in the wild as they would distrupt the 'balanced' ecosystem (as balanced as it can be with humans constantly mucking with it).

The idea of a "balanced" ecosystem is a myth.

Even discounting things like humans and the meteor that probably kileld the dinosaurs 99.9% of all the species that have ever existed are extinct.

Ecosystems are not stable, they are in a near constant state of flux. What is a rainforest on millennia could be a desert the next, then another thousands years and it is grassland then rainforests again.

The idea of eco-systems in "Balance" went out with ideas like "Spaceship earth", the idea that our planet could be managed like the life support systems of a spaceship.

[small](this has been somewhat of a problem in commerce as many economic models have been based on emulating nature and ideas such as natural selection based on the presumption of nature being essentially ordered. I think we've seen since the 2008 crash that the "self regulating" new economy is an illusion)[/small]

And now it has entered quite widespread acceptance in the scientific community that we are living in the anthropocene era and have been so for centuries. Anthropocene means "age of man", up till now we were in the "Heliocene" or "age of sun" such ages are named after the single largest force shaping the earth, it was considered to be the sun and its heating, evaporation of water for rain and all that erosion, etc. Before that it was the ice age, the effect of ice shaping things.

But now it is mankind, human's have left such an enduring mark on every part of nature it is pointless to deny it. We have moved more rock, channelled more rivers and moulded more of the planet in a shorter time than any other force on this planet since the the first cellular life started oxygenating our atmosphere.

Humans should no longer be considered something that can be cordoned off and away from a "perfect and eternal" nature. Human's aren't "mucking things up", nature doesn't have a plan.

I'm not sure what point if any you're trying to say. You make good points that humanity have left a stain on ecosystems.
It is not fair that a species is eradicated because "QQ these wolves are eating my lifestock. QQ. QQ. QQ. I will kill them because that's alot easier protecting my lifestock. I won't care about the consequences of eradicating a predator. It's not like there may be an increased population of rabbits that will then eat my crops".
Wardens of Nature Reserves around the world have the job to moniter populations of animals. If a species is unhealthily too high it's their duty to reduce the numbers. Humans do affect the ecosystem balance but there are some that try and maintain it.

Cities have greenbands for a reason.

There is nothing healthy about a T-Rex living in the trophics. Ignore the risk to human life, the T-Rex will compete against other predators for meat. Given the mass of a T-Rex, the amount of energy it would need, and how little energy is transfered into the top predator in a food chart, the T-Rex or other predators will die. The ecosystem will sort itself out eventually but there is risk of everlasting damage. Example, if a whole species of predator goes extinct, then an animal who is only hunted by that predator's population with expand unsustainabley. Ecosystems are delicate.

It is true that there will never be a balanced ecosystem. This is due to Chaos Theory and Shit Happens Theory.

Dinosaurs should never exist again. They ought to stay dead for Ecologic reason and Ethical reasons. Bringing them back alive will only prove that humans are a selfish species. The only advances gained from this research will be at the expense of innocent animals being created for the sole purpose of Science. This is not the science I want to be asociated with.

I just don't see the point of creating an animal that will have to live its entire life in captivity because some humans wanted to prove they can create a living dinosaur. Wasted life.

 

[Son of a Mitch]

They must be creating the dinosaurs to eat all of the crazy people that say that evolution is fake and dinosaurs never existed. Well that, and of course, this.

 

[Azuaron]

Let's be abundantly clear about this:

He did not regress a chicken to an earlier evolutionary state. I know it's convenient to say that, but he didn't. He stopped the expression of signalling molecules in the center of the chicken's face, which caused the chicken to express features similar to a hypothesized earlier evolutionary state.

Just wanted to make sure we were all clear about that.

Oh c'mon, any sort of genetic breakthroughs at all are inextricably linked to evolution. It's impossible to separate the two.

What's that? Gregor Mendel did it? Well... he's dead. So who cares what he thinks. -_-

I feel like you're trying to make a point that runs counter to my point... but I can't see anything actually counter to my point. The sub-heading of this post makes a claim that is not true, I clarified what actually occurred.

This study means a lot--both for genetic science and evolution--but he did not "regress a chicken to an earlier evolutionary state." Precision is very important with scientific language.

Also, I fixed your spacing at the end of the sentence. This is the internet; you're not using a typewriter!

Fuck that shit, he's making dinosaurs.

When the velociraptors attack, I hope you have a raptor plan.

Oh wait, they already thought of that, and we're all dead.

"Life... finds a way."

 

[thirion1850]

Yes please. I don't care what effect this has on humanity, Dinosaurs are awesome.

 

[Treblaine]

Mmm, as excited as I am at the idea of prehistoric species coming alive, there's quite a few issues. The animals could never live in the wild as they would distrupt the 'balanced' ecosystem (as balanced as it can be with humans constantly mucking with it).

The idea of a "balanced" ecosystem is a myth.

Even discounting things like humans and the meteor that probably kileld the dinosaurs 99.9% of all the species that have ever existed are extinct.

Ecosystems are not stable, they are in a near constant state of flux. What is a rainforest on millennia could be a desert the next, then another thousands years and it is grassland then rainforests again.

The idea of eco-systems in "Balance" went out with ideas like "Spaceship earth", the idea that our planet could be managed like the life support systems of a spaceship.

[small](this has been somewhat of a problem in commerce as many economic models have been based on emulating nature and ideas such as natural selection based on the presumption of nature being essentially ordered. I think we've seen since the 2008 crash that the "self regulating" new economy is an illusion)[/small]

And now it has entered quite widespread acceptance in the scientific community that we are living in the anthropocene era and have been so for centuries. Anthropocene means "age of man", up till now we were in the "Heliocene" or "age of sun" such ages are named after the single largest force shaping the earth, it was considered to be the sun and its heating, evaporation of water for rain and all that erosion, etc. Before that it was the ice age, the effect of ice shaping things.

But now it is mankind, human's have left such an enduring mark on every part of nature it is pointless to deny it. We have moved more rock, channelled more rivers and moulded more of the planet in a shorter time than any other force on this planet since the the first cellular life started oxygenating our atmosphere.

Humans should no longer be considered something that can be cordoned off and away from a "perfect and eternal" nature. Human's aren't "mucking things up", nature doesn't have a plan.

I'm not sure what point if any you're trying to say. You make good points that humanity have left a stain on ecosystems.
It is not fair that a species is eradicated because "QQ these wolves are eating my lifestock. QQ. QQ. QQ. I will kill them because that's alot easier protecting my lifestock. I won't care about the consequences of eradicating a predator. It's not like there may be an increased population of rabbits that will then eat my crops".
Wardens of Nature Reserves around the world have the job to moniter populations of animals. If a species is unhealthily too high it's their duty to reduce the numbers. Humans do affect the ecosystem balance but there are some that try and maintain it.

Cities have greenbands for a reason.

There is nothing healthy about a T-Rex living in the trophics. Ignore the risk to human life, the T-Rex will compete against other predators for meat. Given the mass of a T-Rex, the amount of energy it would need, and how little energy is transfered into the top predator in a food chart, the T-Rex or other predators will die. The ecosystem will sort itself out eventually but there is risk of everlasting damage. Example, if a whole species of predator goes extinct, then an animal who is only hunted by that predator's population with expand unsustainabley. Ecosystems are delicate.

It is true that there will never be a balanced ecosystem. This is due to Chaos Theory and Shit Happens Theory.

Dinosaurs should never exist again. They ought to stay dead for Ecologic reason and Ethical reasons. Bringing them back alive will only prove that humans are a selfish species. The only advances gained from this research will be at the expense of innocent animals being created for the sole purpose of Science. This is not the science I want to be asociated with.

I just don't see the point of creating an animal that will have to live its entire life in captivity because some humans wanted to prove they can create a living dinosaur. Wasted life.

Just as long as you don't have the crazy idea that nature will always sort itself out towards some "ideal".

And humans ARE part of nature, we need to see how we can integrate with nature rather than somehow walling ourselves off.

That means if we can't live with the wolves then we have to do their job, we need to be the top predators and we are more than capable with rifles a minority can keep the rabbit population down with comparative ease. But the regulations on hunting "native" animals is unusually strict. I see this as a hold over of nature somehow being in balance (if humans leave it alone) and that humans interference is the antithesis of nature.

The truth is Humans have dominated almost every environment on this planet for about 10'000 years. You can't find anywhere that we haven't moulded it to our needs.

The point of this is is research. This tells them a lot about how evolution, embryo development and so on.

This is NOT creating a dinosaur, this is creating a FEATURE of a dinosaur. That is the "toothed snout". How this will be useful to know later down the road, you don't know until you need it. as all great inventions are built on the work of many other inventions and discoveries that came before it.

You can't make a dinosaur this way, only indicate that they evolved from them.

 

[Azuaron]

...grinding their beaks off...

I think they melt the beaks off. Maybe it differs from facility to facility...

Also, knowing a thing or two about genetics and evolution, it seems unlikely they could do what they said for the simple reason that they would most likely need to pinpoint more than just a section of DNA strand and activate or deactivate it. Evolution and genes are very stubborn and have tendency to want to match up with the modern incarnation. I would suppose it's possible if they identified all the genes involved though...

Read it again: they didn't actually turn any genes off, they countered a "signalling molecule" in the center of the chick's face. Think of it this way: all human babies grow female genitals (at first). At a certain point during development, babies with a Y chromosome will release testosterone that forces the development of male genitals. If, for some reason, the testosterone isn't produced (or if it's countered by an asshole scientist), you get what's called an "XY Female," people who are genetically male but have all the characteristics of being female (they often don't find out they're XY until they try to have children and find out they're infertile).

Once again the brilliant scientiists are held back from achieving their full potential because of petty "ethics".

Oh no you di'int...

Oh yes I did!
The world would be a better place if scientists had more moral and ethical flexibility.

Like in Bioshock! Rapture turned out great! (At least, better than the Fallout vaults [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/no-right-answer/3907-Bioshocks-Rapture-vs-Fallouts-Vaults]...)

 

[Hungry Donner]

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Just in case we should probably assign a few Australian game wardens to their labs.

 

[Joshimodo]

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Just in case we should probably assign a few Australian game wardens to their labs.

Make sure that the kitchens have enough room for everyone, too.

 

[Reyalsfeihc]

Screw those who want the dinosaurs. Reverse engineer me a chocobo! DO IT NOW!

 

[Olrod]

You need to log in to read this article

O RLY?

I need to sign up to another website just to read an article?

Thanks, but I'll pass.

 

[McMullen]

Scientists create abomination

The Escapist Magazine seems to report on science and robotics stories about as fairly and knowledgeably as FOX News and the British tabloids report on video games and their connection to violence. Right down to seemingly deciding that a not-quite-neutral headline from this morning should be replaced with one that makes it clear just how evil and horrible science is.

Well done. Now if only you would go all the way and get all Cooper Lawrence on gaming articles like you do with science or robotics or AI research, you might be a real journalist someday.

 

[KoalaKid]

I love it how most people here are against ethical scientific practices. As a scientist myself I would love for all of you to volunteer as test subjects, as I have many experiments I would like to run that require subjects as enlightened as you that understand how useless ethical practices are. by the way have you seen the movie The Human Centipede?

 

[MikailCaboose]

Wait, sonic hedgehog?
They can't be talking about the blue rodent who runs a lot, so anyone know what they are talking about?

I don't see why they can't hatch them. What is ethically wrong with hatching something for science? How is it any worse than hatching something just to be killed and ate? Last time I checked, science is legal and murder is not. Then again, I don't think reptilian chicken strips will be as good as regular chicken strips.

"sonic hedgehog" is a gene that regulates developmental structure. And yes, that's its legitimate name.

Don't mean to be picky but sonic hedgehog is actually more of a regulatory protein than a gene.

Oops. I knew it was that or gene...

 

[aashell13]

sonic hedgehog?!? Is that really the name of an actual molecule?

EDIT: ninja'd.

ALSO: apparently yes.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Its neat that he found key gene sequences that caused evolutionary deviation (most likely) and did some experiments that support his hypothesis very well. It's not so neat that his goal is to make dinosaurs. Dude, all the other scientists, specifically geneticists, are going to point and laugh. I hope he continues to do gene research (who knows what kind of key protein and gene sequences he might uncover) but I want him to find a better goal then "rawr, dinosaurs, yeah, rawr!" (Or at least pretend to have a better goal, like all good scientists).

 

[Sarah Frazier]

While I could see that killing the animal would be the only thing for it, since it wouldn't have any place in the ecosystem as it is, how could scientists see what the new head structure will look like and how the snout would function without letting the thing hatch and grow a bit? There's really only so much that can be learned from a developing fetus.

Let them hatch a batch and learn about how they look and behave differently with that one change.

FOR SCIENCE!
FOR DINOSAURS!