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Author Topic: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery  (Read 5061 times)

Max White

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2012, 10:56:06 pm »

But I am left to wonder, if intelligence is genetic, could this be the cure for stupidity?

Criptfeind

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #16 on: March 07, 2012, 10:57:32 pm »

I'm not worried so much about intelligence as a upper class of bird people taking literal as well as metaphorical shits on the rest of us.
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Max White

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2012, 10:59:21 pm »

*Throw stone at bird person*
*Watch as their paper light bones break and light muscle tone bruises*
Welp, that was a lot easier than in the video games...

IronyOwl

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #18 on: March 07, 2012, 11:00:57 pm »

On the other hand, government-sponsored things tend to be rather slow and sometimes incompetent, and this is most certainly not something that's quick, simple, or danger-free.

There's also financial concerns for actually distributing it, which is always going to create classes of sorts. Though since we're pretty much literally talking about data manipulation, in theory those should be pretty much nil or more a result of mapping you out for an exact match or watching you to make sure nothing goes to hell, as opposed to actually doing the deed.

Plus, it's all very early, untested, and complicated, so we really can't say how it will work in large-scale, practical practice. Remember how stem cells were supposed to fix everything? Not quite. Remember how everyone was all excited about what the internet would enable? Yeah, no. Only time (by which I mean vast quantities of research and money) will tell which one this stuff mimics better.
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Skyrunner

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #19 on: March 07, 2012, 11:04:10 pm »

Hope they find out how to live forever at a reasonable cost. Without aging...

Soon, too, before I ... die. (shudder)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Levi

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #20 on: March 07, 2012, 11:06:18 pm »

Hope they find out how to live forever at a reasonable cost. Without aging...

Soon, too, before I ... die. (shudder)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Me too man.  Me too.

Not existing is my number one fear.
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Criptfeind

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #21 on: March 07, 2012, 11:06:44 pm »

Remember how everyone was all excited about what the internet would enable? Yeah, no.

You're telling this to a guy that for all you know is on the other side of the world in a format that anyone can see for years to come who also chating with other people on the other side of the world live well working on things that would take like twenty pounds of materials and minutes to simply shift from one part to the next.

But yeah, I understand what you mean. But still.

I am fine with the private sector making these things, so long as there is actual regulation and... Fairness.

I don't think it will happen that way in a million years, but that is my hope.
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IronyOwl

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #22 on: March 07, 2012, 11:20:13 pm »

Remember how everyone was all excited about what the internet would enable? Yeah, no.

You're telling this to a guy that for all you know is on the other side of the world in a format that anyone can see for years to come who also chating with other people on the other side of the world live well working on things that would take like twenty pounds of materials and minutes to simply shift from one part to the next.
I meant the opposite. As far as I'm aware, nobody really knew or cared about the internet until it existed.


I am fine with the private sector making these things, so long as there is actual regulation and... Fairness.

I don't think it will happen that way in a million years, but that is my hope.
Trouble is, fairness is relative. What exactly is a "fair" price or condition or what have you for recurring immortality injections? Curing being blind since birth? Adjusting skin tone to naturally be a nice tawny bronze?

Talking about "fairness" this deep into what is patently wizard shit is difficult at best.
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Criptfeind

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #23 on: March 07, 2012, 11:23:52 pm »

One of the reasons I don't think it will happen.
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i2amroy

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #24 on: March 07, 2012, 11:50:04 pm »

I believe that there is a group of scientists who have successfully used retroviruses in order to cure red/green color blindness in monkeys by setting the packet that is injected to be the gene combination for growing the red/green sensors in your eyes. They then injected the virus into the monkeys' eyes and within about a month the monkeys were able to see red and green when they couldn't before. Personally I think that this will really open up the worlds of gene therapy and grant us the ability to significantly alter genomes without being limited to doing so before birth.
Here's the relevant article: link
I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture, held at my campus, that was given by Dr. Neitz, the principal investigator in the research group.
You lucky, lucky person. :P

Anyways, I think that we are almost certain to start to tap into these new things (though wings are still probably gonna be impossible for quite a while, but you could at least get the ability to see in the dark!) within the next 50 years or so. I mean there are already several more radical gene therapies similar to this that started the process for clinical trials a few years back, (For those of you unfamiliar with the length of time, it usually takes around a decade for most "already working" treatments to move completely through the approval/trial process, though it can take much longer then that.) so we should be starting to see some of these coming out at the end of the decade.

Sadly I am also fairly certain that the first truly human bioengineering that becomes publicly available is not going to come out in the U.S. This is due to the large percentage of religious people in the U.S. that are religiously against "tampering with gods plan" and the elected officials they have put into office. (It's one of the interesting things considering that almost all of the founding fathers were deists, not christians. It's interesting to see the difference between "Merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation then the incoherences of our own nightly dreams" [Thomas Jefferson on the Book of Revelation] and "If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin." [Katherine Harris, Secretary of State for Florida] But I digress here.) My main point is simply that regardless of the technology developed and the lives that it can save, the religious vote in the U.S. will continue to limit the possibilities of those technologies deemed "anti-god" by some. Just as a last example you can look at stem cells (which were pointed out earlier in the thread). Technically stem cell research does have the possibilities to cure just about anything. It's just that because the original technology (infant stem cells) was deemed "bad" by religious groups with political power, it wasn't until an alternative (adult stem cells) was discovered that the technology truly began to be useable, and even then it has some fairly strong limits on it. As such I believe that when immortality does first come out, you are gonna need to go to some country other then the U.S. or other highly religious countries (Middle eastern countries for example) to obtain the treatments.

Note: I'm not trying to make fun of our insult any other religions here with my post, nor am I attempting to apply the largest belief in the U.S. (christianity) upon other religions. I am simply pointing out some of the interesting contrasts and the ideas furthered by the main group in power and what effects I believe that will have.
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alway

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #25 on: March 08, 2012, 12:03:53 am »

Hope they find out how to live forever at a reasonable cost. Without aging...

Soon, too, before I ... die. (shudder)
You're going to die. There are multiply types of 'immortality,' the most extreme of which is absurdly improbable to the point where I would label it impossible. On the less extreme end of things, there is not aging. This doesn't mean you will live forever, it simply means your statistical chances of dying are the same no matter your age, not that the chance of dying is 0. Thus, even given the non-aging, weaker form of immortality, you will, in fact, die. Beyond that, if the chance of dying were essentially nullified by technology (damned near impossible, even with the best imaginable setup; backups and failsafes fail, ect), you would still die. At the very longest, the point at which the universe made life forms impossible (either big crunch or heat death). Even assuming trans-universe travel to continue survival, sheer statistics dictate that if something could fail, it would at some point over the infinite time span. In any case, you are going to die.

Aside from matters of upper limits, technology probably won't advance fast enough for our generation. Those born within the next few decades, some of them may perhaps survive long enough for technology to keep them immortal in the weakest sense outlined above. But as for us, if we are still alive by the time technology advances to that point, our bodies, and more importantly, our brains will be too far gone for technology to magic us back to our 20's.

Besides, we've been dead for 13.7 billion years already; we don't seem to be any the worse for it.  ;D
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #26 on: March 08, 2012, 12:06:16 am »

Human genetic engineering isn't going to be kept out of the US by the religious nuts. Not that some of them probably won't try, but the benefits will outweigh any possible objections. Stem cells only got caught up in it because of the abortion debate, and that's already fading away now that we don't need embryonic stem cells anymore.
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Skyrunner

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #27 on: March 08, 2012, 06:03:08 am »

Aw, shucks :P
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10ebbor10

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #28 on: March 08, 2012, 01:45:55 pm »

Not a retrovirus but still interesting.

There's some hospital in germany where they are currently testing a certain harmless virus which has the nice habit of only attacking Cancer cells.( Or maybe they modified it to do that). It's much more effective then Chemo. ( 1 good cell for every 100.000 cancer cells as opposed to 1 good cell for every 1000 cancer cells).

Also those retrovirusses are cool. They can use them to make cats glow in dark.( I wan't to do that too)
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zchris13

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Re: Retroviruses and other biological wizzkiddery
« Reply #29 on: March 08, 2012, 02:27:46 pm »

That seems useful. Sneaky bastards. Can't slink around when you're lit up like that can you!
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