Want to Stay Healthy? You'll Need to Become a Human-Animal Hybrid.

Biologists have been mixing the DNA of different animals since the 1970s, but the idea of injecting the genes of animals into humans remains taboo. Called transgenics, it's a practice that could cure illness in the future — and eventually reshape our species. Here's what you need to know about it.

Transgenics has been around for a while now. It's the use of any number of recombinant DNA techniques to introduce new characteristics — via genes — into organisms that weren't present before. These changes can either alter the germ cell line, passing new traits down to offspring; or they can affect the somatic cell line, which just changes the individual who receives treatment. Transgenesis can involve the entire organism, or a few individual cells.

Transgenic animals are sometimes called chimeras or hybrids. These genetically-mixed animals are often used to model specific human diseases, produce novel materials and tissues, and engineered to withstand diseases, among many other things.

A Criminal Act?

Currently, while it's (mostly) acceptable for researchers to manipulate the DNA of animals with transgenes, it's definitely not okay to introduce animal genes into the human germ line.

In some countries, like Canada, it's actually a criminal offence; its Assisted Human Reproduction Act (2007) prohibits:

The use of non-human reproductive material in humans
The use in humans of human reproductive material previously transplanted into a non-human life form
The creation of chimeras made from human embryos
The creation for reproductive purposes of human/non-human hybrids
It's more ambiguous in the United States where this issue is governed by local and federal agencies. In contrast to the situation in Canada, the US National Academies of Science has suggested the outright prohibition of only two types of chimeras: those in which embryonic stem cells of any origin are introduced into human blastocysts, and those created by the introduction of human pluripotent stem cells in non-human primate blastocysts.

Prohibitions aside, the reluctance to engage in animal-to-human transgenics tends to overlook one crucial aspect, namely the incredible benefits that are to be had by integrating nonhuman DNA into the human gene pool. Before we get into this, however, it's important that we do a quick review of transgenics to see how it works.

http://io9.com/want-to-stay-healthy-youll-need-to-become-a-human-anim-1646604935

In which case I want

the imortality of some flatworms
the eyes of a hawk with the night vision of the cat thrown in
the skin of a badger
the muscle density of a gorilla
the reaction speed of a rabbit
the smell ability of a dog
the lust of a rabbit
the abilty to "skunk " (though I can manage farts that approach that)
a spiders ability to produce silk at will
gills (as well as lungs)
the cameleons "stealth ability"
the ability to regrow "damaged bits"
and the ability to switch metabolism from aerobic to anaerobic at will for sustained periods

come on you (re)designers......

Our genome is too *special* for transgenics

victorisnotamused wrote:In which case I want

the imortality of some flatworms
the eyes of a hawk with the night vision of the cat thrown in
the skin of a badger
the muscle density of a gorilla
the reaction speed of a rabbit
the smell ability of a dog
the lust of a rabbit
the abilty to "skunk " (though I can manage farts that approach that)
a spiders ability to produce silk at will
gills (as well as lungs)
the cameleons "stealth ability"
the ability to regrow "damaged bits"
and the ability to switch metabolism from aerobic to anaerobic at will for sustained periods

come on you (re)designers......

Guess you must be hung like a horse then Victor not to request.  

victorisnotamused wrote:In which case I want

the imortality of some flatworms
the eyes of a hawk with the night vision of the cat thrown in
the skin of a badger
the muscle density of a gorilla
the reaction speed of a rabbit
the smell ability of a dog
the lust of a rabbit
the abilty to "skunk " (though I can manage farts that approach that)
a spiders ability to produce silk at will
gills (as well as lungs)
the cameleons "stealth ability"
the ability to regrow "damaged bits"
and the ability to switch metabolism from aerobic to anaerobic at will for sustained periods

come on you (re)designers......

Okay.... I get most of the list.... But.....the skin of a badger Vic??? Erm, why??

He's going for cuddly furriness

eddie wrote:

victorisnotamused wrote:In which case I want

the imortality of some flatworms
the eyes of a hawk with the night vision of the cat thrown in
the skin of a badger
the muscle density of a gorilla
the reaction speed of a rabbit
the smell ability of a dog
the lust of a rabbit
the abilty to "skunk " (though I can manage farts that approach that)
a spiders ability to produce silk at will
gills (as well as lungs)
the cameleons "stealth ability"
the ability to regrow "damaged bits"
and the ability to switch metabolism from aerobic to anaerobic at will for sustained periods

come on you (re)designers......

Okay.... I get most of the list.... But.....the skin of a badger Vic??? Erm, why??

tough as old boot leather ....

Brasidas wrote:

victorisnotamused wrote:In which case I want

the imortality of some flatworms
the eyes of a hawk with the night vision of the cat thrown in
the skin of a badger
the muscle density of a gorilla
the reaction speed of a rabbit
the smell ability of a dog
the lust of a rabbit
the abilty to "skunk " (though I can manage farts that approach that)
a spiders ability to produce silk at will
gills (as well as lungs)
the cameleons "stealth ability"
the ability to regrow "damaged bits"
and the ability to switch metabolism from aerobic to anaerobic at will for sustained periods

come on you (re)designers......

Guess you must be hung like a horse then Victor not to request.  

come to that, the ability to photosynthesise at need would come in handy too.

Some of those might be possible, but I'd think that you are limited by size differences for example. Hawks have quicker and sharper vision because their eyes and optic nerves are much smaller, allowing faster signaling and eye movement. A dog smells so well because his nasal cavity is enormous to hold all the cells needed.

Caution wrote:Some of those might be possible, but I'd think that you are limited by size differences for example. Hawks have quicker and sharper vision because their eyes and optic nerves are much smaller, allowing faster signaling and eye movement. A dog smells so well because his nasal cavity is enormous to hold all the cells needed.

I was wondering about that; I've always heard that there seem to be biological tradeoffs in evolution -- for instance, a millipede isn't going to evolve intelligence simply because it would need too big a brain to control all those legs and think at the same time. Which would necessitate a bigger head, which wouldn't work with its body plan unless it were to evolve into something that had the strength to hold a heavy front-end up, which isn't likely considering it's shaped like a worm.

Likewise, the big vegetarian dinosaurs' brains were probably only sufficient to run all that massive machinery along with telling the creatures to eat, flee danger and procreate. That may also be why they evolved to use an insect's reproductive strategy of simply spawning too many offspring for all of them to be eaten by predators.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Caution wrote:Some of those might be possible, but I'd think that you are limited by size differences for example. Hawks have quicker and sharper vision because their eyes and optic nerves are much smaller, allowing faster signaling and eye movement. A dog smells so well because his nasal cavity is enormous to hold all the cells needed.

......Likewise, the big vegetarian dinosaurs' brains were probably only sufficient to run all that massive machinery along with telling the creatures to eat, flee danger and procreate..

Sorry Ben the last paragraph was incomprehensible to me as I was too busy munching on leaves......Arrrrgh! Run!!! Something's coming!!!.........
God I fancy a shag.

Eddie, referring to the last line of your post, if you can find some one to help me on, and off I'm game!

nicko wrote:Eddie,   referring to the last line of your post, if you can find some one to help me on, and off I'm game!

HAHAHAHAHA you are naughty Nicko