New GeneWatch Issue: Bioengineering Animals

Posted by Emily Stehr June 8, 2011
Biopolitical Times
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The Council for Responsible Genetics has just released an issue of its bi-monthly magazine GeneWatch that features the disconcerting topic of bioengineering animals. The issue leads with Paul Root Wolpe's analysis of how people's tendency to "personalize morality" affects society's ethical limits on animal bioengineering. Other topical pieces comment on the practice of genetically engineering livestock to increase their meat production and the use of transgenic goats' milk to create biopharmaceuticals.

Related subjects such as the pending US federal court case on gene patents and the state of Canadian patent law are also included in the issue. Unrelatedly, the CRG staff interviewed quirky Greg Lukianoff, a man who used his own genetic code (sequenced courtesy of genetic testing company "23andMe") to create musical scores and then founded the Genetic Music Project to share his results with the rest of the world and encourage others to join in the fun.

The issue's final interview is with Mara Hvistendahl about her new book Unnatural Selection (recently reviewed by CGS's Marcy Darnovsky on Ms. Magazine Blog). Hvistendahl documents and analyzes the practice of sex selective abortion, which in recent decades has become so prevalent that it has skewed the sex ratio of the entire globe. This issue of GeneWatch helps us see Hvistendahl's work in a new light — selecting our children's traits is eerily similar to engineering useful traits in animals; we're designing lives to fulfill our desires.

Previously on Biopolitical Times: