
Scientists genetically engineer pigs immune to costly disease - okket
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jun/20/scientists-genetically-engineer-pigs-immune-to-costly-disease
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AdamM12
Surely people will respond to this reasonably and favorably

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phyzome
I'm generally against GMOs in the food supply, but I'm actually not too
worried about this one, because it sounds like it's just a straight-up
deletion.

(ETA: I mean, as long as it doesn't have a net negative impact on pig welfare
-- it's not just about food and environmental safety.)

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badrabbit
I assume you know some programming since you're on this site. Have you never
'deleted' a line of code someone elss wrote to fix a bug except something else
depended on that line so now you have an even larger bug?

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jbob2000
Or the flip side; have you ever deleted a line of code that did nothing but
cause problems, and the result of the deletion was that the product improved?

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badrabbit
Either one is possible. When the risk is cancer and other serious illness
would you not think a multi-decade experiment is needee before feeding it to
humans? Much like a regression and user acceptance test would be at a grand
scale if the risk is extended app outage or significant revenue loss.

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jbob2000
The greater risk is mass starvation due to inhibited food production. Cancer
can take a few years to kill you; starvation takes a few weeks.

We have been genetically modifying things to feed ourselves for thousands of
years. We bred features into dogs so they would be better at finding food
(e.g. beagles), is that not a form of genetic modification? We grafted strains
of grass on to our wheat to make it drought resistant, isn't that genetic
modification too?

I'd challenge you to find me some kind of food that humans haven't genetically
modified. The experiment has been on going for a long time and human life
expectancy is at the highest it's ever been, seems to be working out well!

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phyzome
If you try to solve the hunger problem by producing more food... then what?
Now you have an even larger population to feed.

To fix it, we need to reduce the birthrate. In the meantime, we can try not
throwing away so much food. (There's already enough to feed everybody, it's
mostly a distribution problem.)

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AdamM12
I think this is more of an economic issue. Poor countries, or better stated
their population, can't afford to pay for the food. Exact example would be
during the Irish famine Ireland was still exporting food the GB as they were
able to pay for it. Got the example from "Development as Freedom" [1]

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Development-as-Freedom-Amartya-
Sen/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Development-as-Freedom-Amartya-
Sen/dp/0385720270)

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beauzero
...in other news time travelers return from 2024 to correct DNA deletion after
UK is overrun by feral pigs. /s

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sasaf5
hahaha I first read "federal pigs"

