Genetic Engineering

[Talos]

My mind went blank 3 pages ago...(gets icepack)...Ow..

See, we know the complete modification of a human's genetic code to make them their fursona is possible, the question is: Will  this be done in the near future? I doubt it. Just like Anoni said, we're too busy making a buttload of nuclear weapons to focus on anything else. Development is slow and economy doesn't help. In around the 1800s, people have been dreaming about flying cars, which eveyone will have and use. It's 2012 now, and those people just kept on dreamin', because flying cars have never been naturalized yet. There's some prototypes, though. But that's the thing. They're PROTOTYPES. Technoogy development has been slow, so heavy genetic modification probably won't be until the late 2100s, maybe longer.

[ZombiezuRFER]

Highly unlikely that genetic engineering technology will be delayed so much.


I feel a bit ignored, because I must state this quite clearly, Genetic Engineering will not magically turn you into your fursona. Genes don't work that way.

It becomes really annoying to see this keep getting spread. Genes only work by making chemicals, and those chemical your genes make are most important to how you look when you were born. Let me give you an example. A blond person walks into the local stylist and wants her hair dyed. Now she looks like a brunette like she always wanted. Another blond goes to her doctors to become genetically modified. She says she wants blue eyes and dark hair. She gets the genes, but she wasn't born with the hair color she wants. So all that happens is she has some new genes. She looks and is exactly the same.

That should give the idea of how genetic engineering works. Another example: A cow is born with 6 legs, so they genetically engineer it when its an adult to have normal cow genes. Do the extra legs magically vanish? Of course not.

The easiest way to become your fursona is a fursuit. The second easiest is plastic surgery. The third easiest, and I expect will be the most popular of them, is plastic surgery and grafting.
Grafting animal parts to you allows you to keep all the benefits of a human digestive system and brain while giving the appearance of your fursona.  Some cybernetics to link up your new nose and ears to your brain so you can feel and experience the use of the senses of your fursona. The grafts could even be cybernetic themselves as opposed to biological.

Now, the hardest way to become your fursona is also the most complete and total way of becoming it: Brain transplants. You need to print out a new body that has been genetically engineered or just human cells, and then they make the bones, the muscles, every part of it must be printed.  Then, you have to get your skull split open and your brain and possibly the spinal cord removed to be inserted into this new body. Then you spend the months in physical therapy to adapt to your new body and prepare to re-integrate into society. You also have to buy all sorts of new ergonomically designed furniture, (Hey, I made a pun!) appliances, and not to mention mouse and keyboard so you can continue posting on this forum.

That fourth method also leads to immortality as it allows the brain to regenerate to what extent it can due to the new body not having all the tissue degenration of the new one, which should add about 40-60ish years to lifespan per brain transplant.

But the simple thing is, genetic engineering does not make you an anthro, maybe your kids, but you will not just magically see your bones start shifting. One movie that showed what such a transformation would be like is The Fly. It would not be a clean and painless transformation if it did work like that at all. That is all a great big misconception.

Genes are not blueprints to a body, they are the building blocks to one. Sometimes those blocks get put together wrong and that's called a mutation. But the thing is, changing the blocks doesn't change the structure it builds up.

So I hope this clears up misconceptions. A mild rant, yes, but I think it's necessary to remove misconceptions because those just lead to ignorance, a major impediment to progress when it infects authorities.

[MrRazot]

Could we perhaps take into account the impending development of the quantum computer.
This would probably cause advancement in research and technology.

[anoni]

Still, I honestly don't think genetic engineering will really take place in our lifetime or it will, but when it does it will be too expensive to buy at our age. I unfortunately don't think we'd be able to do serious genetic engineering for another 100 or so years. Then again, technology has surprised us before... (People thinking that in the year 2000 computers would be 4x faster and 3x smaller. They turned out to be 1,000,000x faster and 100x smaller)

What do you think? Do you think real, advanced, genetic engineering will come in our time and that we'd be able to afford it?

[MrRazot]

I say there is a chance it becomes available, yet it would be far to expensive to imagine it.
Also would be incredibly risky and based mostly on theory.

[ZombiezuRFER]

Human Genome processing becomes cheaper and cheaper everyday, geneti engineering sees widespread industrial use. Its just a matter of year(s) (Most definitely under a decade) before we see it as a widespread thing.


In fact, It already is becoming something to do at home. The gear costs a lot currently, but it too grows cheaper and cheaper. More and more people are gaining power over cells that they can design. We're on the transhuman pathway.

[anoni]

I mean genetic engineering of actual humankind, in terms of the brain in particular. Like completely compatible BCI's and stuff like that

[ZombiezuRFER]

Indie ene companies have already started on that. Its why we have gene therapy technology for diseases like Cystic fibrosis. Now we just need designer babies to eliminate that harmful mutation.

[anoni]

So far the farthest we've ever done is allow a women to control robot arm, through her mind. I must mention however, the control, was quite significantly limited and it was very laggy. There also isn't too much funding in the area of study, so I stand by my previous point.

[ZombiezuRFER]

Deus Ex: The Eyeborg Documentary


Very useful documentary




ANyways, we are already working on an artificial hippocampus as I said earlier, so we're getting really close to the singularity.

[Graystripe77]

Of course, with genetic engineering, there are always going to be those religious nuts that try to stop it, and probably succeed. I'm honestly doubtful that being able to become your fursona will ever happen, but if it does, awesome. One can hope.


(@ anoni: I'm an aspie too. *high fives*)

[anoni]

Well, actually, I have learned quite a lot coming to this thread
In terms of genetic engineering and such. I still have extreme skepticism on the time which we will get Genetic Engineering. Like, it will happen, but it's the same as a quantum computer. We have all these "ideas" and all these concepts that could theoretically work, but there is little practice. A lot of it is "in development" but very few of it is "developed". With the quantum computer, we've managed to get a world record of 12 qubits, which is quite a lot, but it's no where near enough for quantum computers to be of practical design. I think genetic engineering works on the same premise, we are getting there, we have done some interesting things and we have planned for even more interesting things, but I don't think those interesting things are going to happen yet, or even in the next decade.

  You might ask me why I believe this will happen. Well, you have to think about a few more things than the actual science itself, though that's the easiest to come up with, so it's the easiest start with.

  Technology: We have already started doing a lot of things, starting isn't the hard part of a project though. I can start right now to get try and build a rocket to mars but it in no way means that I'll be designing a rocket to mars anytime soon. Obviously, that's a bit of an extreme example, but the premise still stays alive. The idea is you can't get too excited about what people are starting, what people are possibly developing. There are often problems that are not foreseen, problems that can delay and post-pone development or even stop it. It happens a lot of the time, in many different projects, in many different fields, neuroscience being no exception I am sure. Though they may get it done, I am suggesting that we can't jump to conclusions, we can't make predictions on things we don't completely understand, we don't know the method they are using to develop these new technologies, so I don't think we can just assume it will happen recently. Anything is possible of course, but I am saying that the probabilities of these technologies coming into place, within the decade, are quite slim, just from evidence of other technologies and usual projects that happen that aren't backed up by large, multi-billion dollar companies with deadlines.

  Finance: So what makes the multi-billion dollar companies with deadlines any different from the universities and science firms that develop these technologies? The simple fact is finance. Science isn't a considerably financed industry these days, people are (unfortunate) losing interest in science, in the western communities anyway. The eastern regions are where most of the science is coming from these days, areas like India, China and Japan, however, these organizations are still not considerably funded compared to other organizations within these countries. Another thing to say is that with big companies, they have deadlines, they are releasing their product entirely, or mostly, for the money, thus they will take a lot of care with their deadlines, because if they miss a deadline, they lose money. Scientists on the other hand, are not so concerned with money, they are also working in entirely unpredictable fields, so making deadlines would be unfeasible, with no deadlines, they can go as slow as they want and there is no serious rush to get technology down. Science is not as a competitive industry as most business industries, not to say it is not competitive however. So with these, with a lack of large financial commitment and the lack or need of deadlines, the science industry is generally slower and more unpredictable than most other industries.

  Social and Ethical Issues: Why I hate to go over this subject, we have to keep in mind that societies needs is driven by people and why we may not believe that there is anything wrong with cyber technology, that is not to say that there are a heck of a lot of people that DO think there is something wrong. As a majority of the world believes in some sort of religion, a majority of religions believing in some sort of soul, there can be a lot of social and ethical issues with this kind of technology. These people may disagree with what these artificial intelligences do, they may fight against it. I don't think this issue will stop the process, but it will hinder the process and maybe, depending on what kind of technologies, may hinder the process significantly. A government is not going to fund something that a majority of society does not want, we just have to hope that a majority of society wants what's good for it.

  As I say, I do know something like this will happen, I am just convinced it won't happen for at least another 30 years. Definitely when we are middle aged. It's not something that will be happening "soon" relatively to other technologies.

[ChaosWulf]

This is a very interesting thread although i really only looked at it because of the fallout reference "fawkes" but it turned out to be very interesting and it would be very fun to become my fursona but i doubt it will ever happen.

[ZombiezuRFER]

It will happen but not because of genetic engineering. Please read my above post.

@Anoni
Technology: we have the technology to do many things, even mind uploading. Thing is, though, that the thing preventing widespread use is the knowledge has yet to be learned. This will happen in time.
Finance: immortality is a very attractive concept, and I highly doubt that too few wealthy businessmen will buy new bodies to become immortal. Finance is currently a non-issue.
Ethics/Morality: the arguments against any form of transhumanism has been irrational and unacceptable, and needs to be campaigned against. But, this is also the hardest fight to win, because people will accept namecalling and rationalization as rational. Thing is, the majority of people will desire transhuman technologies and this muddled ethics debate will end.

I'm just saying it's coming no matter what, at least other than any existential risks.

[ChaosWulf]

Hmmmm ok. well it will be interesting when it happens.