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Jurassic Park: New Blood

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Kull_Warrior said:
We may not be able to help people already living with gene defects, but we can create custom living beings. Im sure we could help in regards of designer babys. Even if its just to ensure the health of them. Replacing defective genes with healthy ones sounds doable.
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The idea of "designer babies" was brought up before. See below.

life hypermatter said:
In Jurassic world we see with indominus rex and later on with indo raptor we see that Wu is quite adept at genetic splicing to a very high extent while not particularly his area expertise what's stopping him from modifying the human genome

While jurassic park world tech does not really go into any tech that's augmentation of adults modification of germline cells are quite possible

He can use his expertise in creating designer babies for those that can afford it in a unique way creating a retrovirus to modify the germline cells of males thus gradually changing the genetic traits in the sperm along with one for changing the traits in the eggs that women have a couple can spend a lot to get a set of two syringe injections after certain amount time when new set of gametes are all present in their reproductive organs any children they have can have the altered genetic package
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And my response:

TempestK said:
Absolutely not. That's the kind of ethical slippery slope that would make all kinds of people sit up and salivate. A lot of them with shaved heads or other notions about genetic "purity". Even Wu would recognize that once that's out of the bottle then it could potentially cause a massive societal shift. Designer babies into designer soldiers into... yeah it's a whole massive can of worms that not even Wu or Sorkin at her craziest would want to touch.
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TempestK said:
Targeting specific diseases and the like; Alzheimer's, cancer, etc. Those would all be perfectly acceptable and Elliot would be more than happy to give the green light to. But the idea of "designer babies" has more red flags attached to it than a military parade through Tiananmen Square.
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I thought we were gonna feed the carnosaurs crocodiles or something instead of goats so that they won't learn that mammals are tasty. Someone said that at one point I think.
 
TempestK said:
The idea of "designer babies" was brought up before. See below.
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Yeah, the only gene-modification to improve humans that doesn't immediately risk sliding down the slope would be something universal that gets applied to everyone, no exceptions. And I think that we're gonna be quite a way away from that, yet.

Comrade Future said:
Not really - many ecologists note that even if technology and the ability to clone extinct species existed, this would do little to improve the environmental situation and that efforts need to be focused on preserving and supporting existing biological communities. So there may be a split here between corporate revivalists and their opponents.
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This. Being able to undo some of the damage human industry has done is *nice*, certainly, but unless it becomes mandatory and - heavily reinforced - on a global level for companies to fully document every single species in an area they plan to exploit, there's still gonna be losses, because there's always something that will be missed, or regulations that will be circumvented or ignored.

As the saying goes, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", and that's something that can easily apply to environmentalism as it does to medicine.
For example, I think I already pointed out earlier that probably one of the best things we could do would be to develop a process to cheaply mass-produce lab-grown meat. Livestock is responsible for ~5-6% of our total greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to other forms of ecological damage such as deforestation, habitat destruction, etc.
While we wouldn't be able to eliminate it entirely, since the labs themselves obviously need power, raw materials, etc, working with various food companies - distasteful as it might be (no pun intended) - to replace the meat they use for burgers, chicken nuggets, sausages, crab sticks, fish fingers, and other forms of heavily-processed meats with lab-grown substitutes could help to significantly reduce the need for, and thus environmental impact of, traditional animal husbandry and fishing.

For agriculture in general, GMO crops designed for resistance/immunity to various fungi, pests, diseases, etc, could reduce or even outright eliminate the need for various pesti- and fungicides, and the impact they have on the environment.

Past that, it frankly depends on a) how much @TempestK is willing to expand the quest beyond the Dinosaur-park aspects, and b) how fantastical he's willing to allow things to get.

Night_stalker said:
Exactly.

Easy way to make cash, not actually going to be bad in the long run for the species, and as a bonus, it's a selling point for the park. Where else can you get Dodo tenders?
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This is probably something could be expanded. Ie, offer a chance to legally hunt and/or eat (cloned) members of extinct or threatened species in cooperation with the local governments and their conservation efforts, with the large parts of the proceeds then going towards said conservation/restoration efforts.

"Hey, you! Are YOU a filthy rich psycho/sociopath fuckwit with VASTLY more MONEY than SENSE? Then how would YOU like to spend a VAST SUM OF MONEY to hunt and/or eat this totally not cloned* ENDANGERED/EXTINCT ANIMAL so you can BRAG about your (total lack of) PROWESS to your fellow filthy rich psycho/sociopaths?! Call 555-TOTALLYNOTANINGENRIPOFF now!"

*Please see this this 5000+ pages document of incomprehensible legalese for why these lab-grown animals do not count as "cloned" for legal purposes.


Though I'll not that, while this might technically not harm the species in question, and even help them by reducing instances of poaching and the like, it would still feel *incredibly* skeevy and slimy. To me, at least.
 
Kelenas said:
For example, I think I already pointed out earlier that probably one of the best things we could do would be to develop a process to cheaply mass-produce lab-grown meat. Livestock is responsible for ~5-6% of our total greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to other forms of ecological damage such as deforestation, habitat destruction, etc.
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I don't see how we could do that without turning the company and labs in a completely different direction. We're not growing piles of cloned (mostly) dinosaur tissue and assembling it into a dino shaped animal, we're making custom embryos made of (like 95%-98%) dino DNA that grow into (something very much like) a dinosaur. Biologically that's a very different kettle of fish.
 
Kelenas said:
For example, I think I already pointed out earlier that probably one of the best things we could do would be to develop a process to cheaply mass-produce lab-grown meat. Livestock is responsible for ~5-6% of our total greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to other forms of ecological damage such as deforestation, habitat destruction, etc.
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Well, I seriously doubt that livestock is EVER going to be replaced by lab-grown meat... Livestock is literally designed to turn grass into steak, the cloning process is never going to be more cost-efficient than getting a bunch of cows and letting them graze... Besides that, yeah, livestock is responsible ~5-6% of greenhouse gas emissions, but there is still literally 95% of the rest of the sources that is affecting the environment.
Kelenas said:
This is probably something could be expanded. Ie, offer a chance to legally hunt and/or eat (cloned) members of extinct or threatened species in cooperation with the local governments and their conservation efforts, with the large parts of the proceeds then going towards said conservation/restoration efforts.

"Hey, you! Are YOU a filthy rich psycho/sociopath fuckwit with VASTLY more MONEY than SENSE? Then how would YOU like to spend a VAST SUM OF MONEY to hunt and/or eat this totally not cloned* ENDANGERED/EXTINCT ANIMAL so you can BRAG about your (total lack of) PROWESS to your fellow filthy rich psycho/sociopaths?! Call 555-TOTALLYNOTANINGENRIPOFF now!"

*Please see this this 5000+ pages document of incomprehensible legalese for why these lab-grown animals do not count as "cloned" for legal purposes.


Though I'll not that, while this might technically not harm the species in question, and even help them by reducing instances of poaching and the like, it would still feel *incredibly* skeevy and slimy. To me, at least.
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I don´t like trophy hunting either BUT trophy Hunters are not the problem for the conservation of these animals, and in most cases they are the main source of revenue of conservation agencies in many countries...

Large Scale Poachers are the real problem and are basically a criminal cartel with a business worth billions, and they are not going to be affected by that...
 
What we could do is create commissioned creatures. A little narwhal and horse and we got a unicorn! Bat, monitor lizard, and a bombardier beetle makes a dragon! Some bioluminescence and a pine tree and we got Christmas trees that don't require decoration.

Here are 3 animals we could unextinct.

The Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), also called the giant deer or Irish deer, is an extinct species of deer in the genus Megaloceros and is one of the largest deer that ever lived.

The silver-backed chevrotain is also known as the "mouse-deer" and is so small it could be held in one hand. Records of the species' existence go back to the stone age, when it was depicted in cave art being chased by hunters. This is the deer that crossbred to make jackalopes.

Palaeoloxodon falconeri is an extinct species of dwarf elephant from the Middle Pleistocene (around 500–200,000 years ago) of Sicily and Malta. It is amongst the smallest of all dwarf elephants at only 1 metre (3.3 ft) in height.
 
Nottheunmaker said:
I don't see how we could do that without turning the company and labs in a completely different direction. We're not growing piles of cloned (mostly) dinosaur tissue and assembling it into a dino shaped animal, we're making custom embryos made of (like 95%-98%) dino DNA that grow into (something very much like) a dinosaur. Biologically that's a very different kettle of fish.
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It's not something we could figure out in five minutes, I agree, but between our experience manipulating genomes, our ability to create embryos, and our ability to then grow those embryos, we've probably got a fairly good starting position compared to pretty much everyone else. Hence the question's more whether that's a direction the GM and other players would want to go for.

Fanhunter696 said:
Well, I seriously doubt that livestock is EVER going to be replaced by lab-grown meat... Livestock is literally designed to turn grass into steak, the cloning process is never going to be more cost-efficient than getting a bunch of cows and letting them graze... Besides that, yeah, livestock is responsible ~5-6% of greenhouse gas emissions, but there is still literally 95% of the rest of the sources that is affecting the environment.
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Except modern day animal husbandry, at least for large-scale operations, has next to nothing to do with simply letting cows graze. Quite the opposite, in fact; moving around would waste calories the livestock could convert into fat and meat, instead. So the animals are typically kept in place as much as possible, pumped full of drugs, hormones, etc to minimize chances of sickness and maximize yield, instead of grass they get high-calorie feed, and so on, and so forth. I'd encourage to watch/read some more about factory farming if you're curious, though I'll note that it's a pretty distasteful subject.
But that sort of operation is something lab-grown meat could compete with quite realistically, and likely even out-compete once the process is properly streamlined and economy of scale starts to kick in.

As for there still being ~95% of GHG sources left; yes. And? It would still buy us/the world as a whole more time to address those other issues. Or are you the kind of person that's only interested in implementing Perfect Solutions (tm)?

Fanhunter696 said:
Large Scale Poachers are the real problem and are basically a criminal cartel with a business worth billions, and they are not going to be affected by that...
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Depends on what the poachers trade in, but in general, providing an alternative, legal, and likely cheaper source of goods would start to eat into the poacher's business. After all, why buy from criminals, where you'd have to pay high prices and risk getting nothing or going to jail, if law enforcement catches on, when you could buy the same animal parts from legal government sources at no risk and a fraction of the cost?
 
Personally I would like for the dinosaur quest to focus on dinosaurs rather than genetic engineering in general.
 
At this point in time one of the main factors behind a species being greenlit is containability. Which was why the Mosasaur exhibit got nixed. Same thing for any Pterosaurs. If they were to be cloned, it'd be in basically an underground bunker style aviary, with massive crystal seams used to lens sunlight into the facility.
 
TempestK said:
If they were to be cloned, it'd be in basically an underground bunker style aviary, with massive crystal seams used to lens sunlight into the facility.
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Not a fan of the idea at all ,sound like animal cruelty,maybe for a tjing small and dumb enough to not realise it's underground,or a specie that is naturaly undergroubd ?
 
And an aquatic park would need to be set up in a desert or something. Far from any ocean access.
 
Night_stalker said:
I did suggest an aquarium awhile back.... Set it up on the island, show off some of the smaller animals, and provide a nice indoor, dark, with AC, exhibit for the geusts.
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Yeah, but that's on an island. Only a few miles to the open ocean. What if a tank breaks and the water manages to reach it? What if someone takes an animal and escape to the water? What if the creature can survive on land long enough to crawl to the ocean if it gets out?
 
Since we are setting things up on islands, any purely freshwater species could be hosted in natural or artificial lakes. Any that somehow escape into the ocean will just die from the salt content.

We'll need to do a very thorough investigation, but the safety of the biosphere is important. We'll also need to test how long any aquatic dinosaurs can live outside of water. I don't want a snakehead situation where they can crawl between bodies of water.
 
FictionPack said:
Yeah, but that's on an island. Only a few miles to the open ocean. What if a tank breaks and the water manages to reach it? What if someone takes an animal and escape to the water? What if the creature can survive on land long enough to crawl to the ocean if it gets out?
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If a fish can somehow crawl through a few miles of jungle to the ocean, it deseves to get loose.

I'm talking like an actual aquarium, people don't do stuff like break in and lead the fish therein to water.
 
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