George M. Church Quotes
Aside from bringing back extinct species, reanimation could help living ones by restoring lost genetic diversity. The Tasmanian devil (aka Sarcophilus harrisii) is so inbred at this point that most species members can exchange tumor cells without rejection.
Church, George M. "De-Extinction Is a Good Idea." Scientific American, vol. 309, no. 2, Aug. 2013, p. 12.
Some opponents of genetic engineering and Xenotransplantation (creating new animals by combining parts of different animals or adding parts of one animal species to another) cite this Biblical passage in their efforts to stop these new technologies. Yet both are well established and most people, including the opponents often do not even realize instances of it. For example, a large proportion of heart valve repairs in humans is accomplished by Xenotransplantation—replacing the defective heart valve with a pig heart valve. An entire line of biological research is being conducted by splicing the genes of a jellyfish that glows green under UV light into monkeys and worms to study the methods of genetic transmission.
The danger of racial and ethnic interbreeding was a fabricated myth. We now know that the danger can come from pure breeding and not obtaining enough genetic diversity. One reason that man has been so successful is that the species is the product of very extensive genetic diversity. For example EVERY human being on the planet had some genetic relationship to a Black African woman.
Actually, while such selective breeding is possible in all animals, the selection for a single trait almost always produces other unintended and unanticipated traits and these could be devastating to the “new generation”, unpleasant, benign, or anything else. At the time selective breeding was the only possible tool to produce “desirable” traits in an animal or to eliminate what someone things of as “undesirable” traits. Today, our understanding of the human genome and genetic engineering offers a much more reliable possibility of affecting animal traits without as many risks of random and unintended consequences that are present with breeding.
Later, Italy was totally subservient to Germany later and Mussolini accepted German racist policies. Actually, there is only one human race and all members of it have the same original common ancestor, and African female.
Thomas Jefferson wrote a very similar idea over 50 years before Darwin did. See Quotation 643685.
There was a substantial movement to prevent mentally defective and people of low intelligence from being able to reproduce. Over 20 states, with the approval of the then Supreme Court performed forced state sterilizations. Of course the then definition of “degenerates” changed from state to state. A century later, American values changed so much that there is no state that would even consider involuntary sterilization and if they did, the Courts would hold it un-Constitutional.
This pseudo-scientific organization, in spite of the junk science it was promulgating, actually had a substantial American following and over 20 states actually passed laws to allow forced sterilization who were “UNFIT”. In reality while there is a genetic component to each of the examples it only increases the probabilities and is not determinative. And even f it were and there were selective breeding of humans, these “TRAITS” would not be eliminated in 3 generations,
George McDonald Church is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, and chemist. He is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. As of March 2017, Church serves as a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors.
