This is probably the only way "humans" are going to colonize any planets other than Earth. And probably lots of new places on Earth too.
Just include the genes for extreme-cold or extreme-arid climates. Or the genes for low oxygen environments, or even for metabolizing useful things from eating rocks. Or from spending 24 hours a day in salt water.
>The ease of this "just" is the most concerning thing in the context of humankind's survival.
Right? I wouldn't expect genes for heat/cold tolerance in other organisms to necessarily be useful in humans. They work by mechanisms that are useful for that organism, but humans have our own set of problems.
It's like saying you can strap a jet engine on to a tractor and expect farm work to massively speed up. No: the machinery doesn't translate for a clean swap like that.
And those 1% elites are very rich and very powerful.. so they can do whatever they want.. (and that includes funding and controllimng unethical scientific experiments)..
Slight correction: the power others gave them a long time ago, and now nothing can help those others take it back without uprooting the whole civilization in the process. Current power is a malignant formation too advanced to heal without destroying the whole organism.
It's not a slight correction, those claims are the exact problem - the propaganda of the powerful: Give up, there is nothing you can do.
People in democracies can easily vote to change where power lies (that is, power lies ultimately with the citizens), if that's what they want, and it's not hard to see how: The current situation is highly unusual for democracies; there is a long history of what to do and how to do it.
A major reason they don't do it is that they keep reading and believing they are powerless.
The concept of "police" came up through "private militia" hired as.
Most of the world enjoys 5-day workweek (40 hours work per week).
But the world got this work schedule only due to workers (mostly working in mines and railways) and labor unionists who fought and died for favourable work conditions and fair working schedule.
The rich elites even sent Pinkertons to assassinate the "rebel" leaders.
It was Henry Ford who finally saw the writing on the wall, and he announced the 40-hours workweek in his company, and thus ushered in the modern era of work-life balance.
*hired as private army/security for rich powerful elites.
"Police force" was created not for liberty, justice, and public good - it was created to brutally quell poor folks rising against rich tyrants, it was created as a weapon to ensure the rich stayed rich.
The same scientists who cry about ethics, have happily experimented on mice and guinea pigs in their labs, even if it causes the deaths or distress of those little sentient beings.
Mutations/mutatives like Halo's Master Chief and Marvel's Super Soldier serum won't remain sci-fi for much longer, methinks.
former practicing scientist at an institute whose name you would recognize.
The field may not be fully constrained by ethics, which is just a way of saying that the work is done by people and people have varying ethical bounds, but from what I saw many of my colleagues were highly ethics driven.
I remember one Russian colleague who smuggled blood products out of Russia so they could be tested for HIV. Because the Russian government refused to help these patients. The man risked his life to help HIV sufferers.
Ethics is best when matched with courage, if a person is willing to put their life on the line for their beliefs.
Also noting that in the western world, experiments generally need approval of an ethics board before proceeding. That board's sense of ethics might make different judgments than you on, for example, mice experiments, but there is a big difference between "not constrained" and "some of the constraints are different than what I would choose".
where in this case, the ethics boards decided that provided a certain risk/reward barrier is crossed, and that the animals are otherwise treated well, sacrificing mice to improve human health is just fine.
That is an ethics based decision that was debated for a long time. And maybe should continue to be debated, there is real value in your stance that all beings are sentient and this demands a level of care.
@a_better_world: (apt username for this conversation!)
I do understand what you mean, and I do comprehend that animal testing cannot be avoided for scientific advancements to help and progress humanity.
But I have a simple motto I want to adhere to (it is very hard though, to practice it in principle and action daily):
Ethics is best when it is for the good of humanity, without being bad for Earth.
In recent years, I am starting to feel humanity is sharply veering away from its basic ethics (and the first ethic must be to not shit where one eats - but hey, we are actively aggressively destroying the only beautiful bountiful planet we know of, that can support humanity), and doing whatever the top richest most-powerful elites want.
And this unbridled greed and apathy is going to sow the seeds for the downfall of humanity, I'm afraid. At the cost of our precious Earth and its other denizens who share this planet with us humans.
There has been a catastrophic 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations* in just 50 years (1970-2020), according to World Wildlife Fund‘s (WWF) Living Planet Report 2024.
Our generation is the last one that can still save the wild forests of the Earth, which help us cope with the climate crisis and preserve the biodiversity of the planet. A new study by Greenpeace Russia and the University of Maryland has shown that if urgent and effective measures are not taken to preserve wild forests, most of them will disappear in the next 20 years.
Volkswagen (the same megacorp that did the infamous Dieselgate/Emissionsgate scams) forced monkeys to inhale exhaust from its automobiles, to try to show that fumes from current models (the cars, not the monkeys) were less noxious than previous models.
Just include the genes for extreme-cold or extreme-arid climates. Or the genes for low oxygen environments, or even for metabolizing useful things from eating rocks. Or from spending 24 hours a day in salt water.