"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Dr. Mengele Makes A Comeback As Mad Scientists Play With Genetics
"And once animal DNA gets into our breeding pool, how will we ever put the genie back into the bottle? As the DNA of the human race becomes corrupted, it is easy to imagine a future where there are very few “pure humans” remaining. Sadly, most of the scientists working in this field express very little concern for these types of considerations. In fact, one very prominent U.S. geneticist says that we should not even worry about hybridization because he believes that humans were originally pig/chimpanzee hybrids anyway…"
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Mostly alarmist nonsense. As for Dr. Eugene McCarthy, I have to wonder whether he even exists, and if so, when last he has taken his medication. :-)
The pig/chimp hybrid hypothesis actually made me laugh out loud. It suggests that a "geneticist" is unfamiliar with how species work.
The essence of humanity is not the sum of its DNA. I, for one, would not mind tinkering with my own genes. For instance, if I were to assemble a retrovirus that targets the phi-GULO pseudogene and repairs it, using a gene copied from practically any other mammal, my liver would begin producing vitamin C and peroxide. Is that "corruption"?
It seems to me that the corruption was losing that capability in the first place, and having insufficient interbreeding humans to repair it from within our own gene pool.
This particular djinn is already out of the jar. If you need to be alarmist, bang the gongs against misfolded protein prions arising from newer sciences such as preoteomics. It takes significant computing resources to calculate how a given gene sequence translates to a particular protein, and even more to design a protein and calculate backwards to a gene that creates it. This is coming within our grasp. If you are afraid of animal DNA corrupting the genome, cower in horror at the prospect that we can now design entirely novel genes.
Why, imagine what could be done! You could design a venomous baby! Make a virus that kills only the Miller family! Cure a profitable cancer!
There's really no more to fear here than any other potentially useful technology. You will likely not even notice it, unless your child chooses to become a bioengineer.