Louisiana Rep. Preps State Bill Banning Human-Animal Hybrids 422
mikeljnola writes with an excerpt from NOLA.com that says state senator Danny Martiny (R-Kenner) will introduce a bill to the Louisiana legislature on April 27 to "'make it illegal to "create or attempt to create a human-animal hybrid, ... transfer or attempt to transfer a human embryo into a non-human womb ... (or) transfer or attempt to transfer a non-human embryo into a human womb."' With budget cuts all around, our struggling state is concerned with the eminent danger of human-animal hybrids. The upside is that the odds of the Louisiana becoming the Bayous of Dr. Boudreaux are now even slimmer."
Damn (Score:5, Funny)
So much for ever getting a real catgirl :/
Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)
You think the Japanese will follow a USA bill?
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You think LoozyAnnians will follow a Louisiana bill?
Cat DNA + Hitler DNA = . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Kitlers! http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigbest.pl [catsthatlo...hitler.com]
Today your sofa, tomorrow the world!
Re:Damn (Score:5, Interesting)
This has got to be one of the stupidest thing I've ever read. The one thing that would quickly decrease the risks of pregnancy to absolutely zero is an artificial womb! Pregnancy itself has a host of potential complications that range from mildly irritating to quite deadly (eg. abdominal stria, pregnancy induced diabetes, pre-ecclampsia, ecclampsia, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary thromboemboli, amniotic fluid emboli, ectopic pregnancy, choriocarcinoma, etc.).
Hopefully this piece of legislation gets voted down.
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this flamebait? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I'm pro-life, and yeah, mom's life is more valuable than the child. Mom can get pregnant again and has chores to do for Daddy, not to mention providing for the other children. If you had to make the terrible choice between mom and a child, I'd say the lose the child.
Now, when mom gets old, that role gets reversed. Like, once you retire, the kids become more important than you.
Re:Why is this flamebait? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this flamebait?
Because the parent stated something controversial as fact instead of an opinion (which it is), with out backing it up. Then again, by his sig, I'm not really surprised at the position.
I think there would have been less of a problem
had [s]he said:
Yeah, but the mother's life is far more valuable than that of the child's to me.
The bigger logical problem with his statement is that it is subjective. If my wife and I are having a kid, but we are some of the last members alive of some racial group (say an American indian tribe), then our kid might be more important).
But, if a couple had to chose at childbirth who lived and who died,for most males, this is probably true. Until you spend time with your children you don't have nearly the emotional connection to them that the female does. The female has spent months with the child inside her body and has hormones to enforce that bond. The choice of whether to live or die with the opposite happening to her unborn child would be much harder for her. Especially if complications made it impossible for her to ever have kids again...
That is, without an artificial womb
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Yeah, but the mother's life is far more valuable than that of the fetus.
There I corrected you.
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I've dumped my Karma bonus and am expecting to earn a couple of new Freaks, because this is the single most heartless thing that I've ever posted on /.
That would reduce the risk for the mother; I doubt it would reduce it for the child. The child is under far more risk than the mother in most pregnancies.
Who cares? The mother is far more important than the child. The "child", at least in the most risky period of the pregnancy, is just a collection of tissue that will hopefully develop a nervous system and eventually become a person. If we can halve the risk to the mother while doubling the risk to the embryo - I'm all for it.
When my wife was pregnant with our first child, she asked me very seriously how I would respond if something went wrong and the doctor told me that he could only save either her or our child (she watches too much TV). I told her that I'd pick her and we could try for another baby or adopt. She was satisfied with that and responded with something to the effect of "Damn straight." Reduce the risk to the mother at (almost) all cost - Babies are easy to assemble, far more difficult to transform into productive adults.
[/monster]
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When my wife was pregnant with our first child, she asked me very seriously how I would respond if something went wrong and the doctor told me that he could only save either her or our child (she watches too much TV)
That's not a TV fiction (although the doctors usually make the choice to save the mother and coerce the emotionally destabilized husband into thinking he made the decision). In cases of preeclampsia, it often is a "Mom or Baby" decision, and Baby's usually too premature to live.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is an interesting religious argument. So you claim a person isn't a person until someone has an emotional attachment too it? I don't have any emotional attachment to you , what does that make you?
Subjective personage aside, the human life-cycle begins at the same point as all other mammals , check your biology book on that one. That thing you develop a later emotional attachment too can be altered or destroyed before you ever see it. what that thing is or is not , cannot be objectively changed by you
Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)
an embryo becomes a human when it stops just asking questions but starts meaningfully answering them. ... ;)
for a Jewish mother though, an embryo becomes a human when it gets gets degree in law or medicine
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Either your reading comprehension is sub-par, or you just want an argument.
I vote for the latter, as I find it difficult to believe you suck so thoroughly at understanding what you read.
All of the questions you ask, he answered before you asked:
Americans hate children (Score:5, Insightful)
While rational, your point does not coincide with the values of our society. So they won't be very receptive to those ideas
What do you mean? America is a society that really doesn't like children at all. It's only that Europeans and Japanese positively hate children that makes America seem child friendly.
Have you ever taken toddlers out with you and gotten a bunch of dirty looks from all the people? It's like, you shot someone. People should like to hear children laughing and stuff and instead everyone expects them to sit in silence in public places. What kind of a screwed up society is that!
Similarly, we have no problem blowing tons of money on old people, spending hundreds of billions on medicare and medicaid so grandma can get a new pacemaker on the public dime, but lets see what happens if you suggest that grandma just dies so that kids can get better schools.
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No worries, we can make up for the death rate by increasing the volume.
No, I'm not serious. That would be horrible.
Hopefully, artificial "baby farms" isn't something we'll goof around with until AFTER we figure out how to make an artificial womb that is as safe as a natural one. Most women I know, though, would gladly take the risks for the feeling of bonding. It would probably feel less like "your" baby if you never carried it (no uterus of my own, so I can't say for sure).
I believe that the only people
Safer for everybody. (Score:5, Funny)
That would reduce the risk for the mother; I doubt it would reduce it for the child.
I couldn't disagree more. Machines have an excellent track record for accuracy, compared to humans. During the experimental stage, it might be dangerous for mother and child, but when the technology matures, it will be safer for both, and lots of people will be doing it. There will, of course, always be people who prefer the old fashioned way.
The one thing that would quickly decrease the risks of pregnancy to absolutely zero is an artificial womb!
Hooray! Somebody finally found something in this universe that has absolutely zero risk! And it involves babies and surgery!
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Easily solved! The law specifically forbids the use of a nonhuman "womb". Just call your artificial device a "Woomba" and you'll be in the clear!
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Whoah, finally somebody who is actually against motherhood and/or apple pie. Never thought I'd see the day.
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If you don't think the complications I've mentioned warrant any intervention then there's really no point in discussing this. When epidural anesthesia was introduced, there were outcries by religious people that this was unnatural, that the pain of birth must be experienced as a human condition. Seriously, why do we listen to these types of crackpot ramblings? Because they speak the loudest?
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Dude, have you even been in a hospital in the past twenty-five years? Even if the list of horrors that you cite were true (most of them aren't), the hospital involved would have so few maternity patients that no one would go there.
In addition, you act as if these things you mention are forced upon the unsuspecting parents by the evilllllll doctors who want to make sure that babies and mothers never bond and the child remains a sickly degenerate for all of its life. In reality, most of the "horrible" thing
Re:Damn (Score:5, Insightful)
Law of Unintended Consequences, we've all evolved to be in a womb. There's a whole list of things that go on during pregnancy that I don't think we're even close to completely understanding.
Babies pickup up the basic phonemes of the mothers language in the womb. Babies respond to their mother's voice after birth because they've been 'hearing' it for the last 9 months.
Babies constantly hear the mother's heart beat. It's why you can calm a baby by placing it close to your chest, it hears the heart beat again.
Babies' immune system get bootstrapped with antibodies from the mother's body.
The mother's body (kidney, hearts, lungs, livers) act as the baby's for the first 9 months. We haven't perfected artificial copies of those yet, so what is the artificial womb supposed to do? We're already seeing problems where a constant flow motor in place of a heart causes problems in the rest of the body that had grown accustom to a (1/60) Hz throbbing.
Artificial / Cow milk is no substitute for breast milk during young development. The fatty chains and stuff can't be replicated by any formula, what makes them think that the fluids the mother and baby exchange?
The human body is an infinitely complex system of feedback loops and control systems. I can't ever see us getting this right artificially. If the baby is low on X, the mothers body will give it more X.
How many versions of this will we go through of very very messed up babies/people before we get it right?
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Surely it couldn't be the baby is also warm, cushioned (boobs, yay), and comfortable being held.
The law prohibits using animal wombs for human babies. You seem to have something mechanical in mind. I imagine that a sheep or pig womb (biologically very similar to humans) would probably handle a human embryo just fine. Sheep wombs have been making sheep babies for about the same amount of time as human wombs have
Re:Damn (Score:5, Informative)
We already have them. They're called "transgenic mice" and we use them for research. We also have bacteria with human genes too. They make insulin for diabetic people, etc.
Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)
Damn.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Damn.... (Score:5, Funny)
"Do you have crabs?"
"Just one."
Such hybrids have been made... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why do people make such a big deal about these things? So what if that embryo had cow mitochondria?
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Fools! (Score:2)
Robotic Overlords were just a diversion.
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Say it now and say it loud
I'm a cow and I am proud!
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There is no cow level, man!
Actually, there is one. [wikipedia.org] And Hellcows walk around on hind... hooves.. wielding nasty polearms. So the genetic engineering must have worked. Poor Wirt.
Zoophilia? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you had sex with a human-animal hybrid, could you be prosecuted for bestiality? Of course *I* wouldn't have sex with a hybrid. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think.
Question: What is a human? (Score:3, Interesting)
Directly combining cells from two species is one thing, and this bill is going after that, but the term "hybrid" makes me nervous. A mouse with a single human gene is technically a hybrid. Are they going to outlaw transgenic lab animals, therefore? That would be a huge blow to science.
Gotta love the Catholic Church, the bastions of innovation and human progress that they are. Not.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Gotta love the Catholic Church, the bastions of innovation and human progress that they are. Not.
Hi, Orleron, we need to talk. It's me, the 1990s. judging by that last sentence fragment negating the previous sentence to it, you were sentient during my reign on earth. Unfortunately, there's a court order demanding I keep all of my belongings out of other decades. Yeah, I've got Vanilla Ice in my garage and all copies of Armageddon in my living room.
Frankly, you need to stop with all my phrases. I'd issue a DMCA take down notice if I wasn't ordered to keep those also relegated to the 90s. As i
Re:Question: What is a human? (Score:4, Informative)
Gotta love the Catholic Church, the bastions of innovation and human progress that they are. Not.
WTF does the Catholic Church have to do with this? Yes, the bill was suggested by a Catholic bishop, but given that the Catholic Church accepts Evolution and the Protestant faiths do not, I know which faith I'd rather have influencing law makers.
This law is at least based on ethics, as opposed to Protestant laws which are made to try and force their beliefs onto everyone. (Like, say, Prohibition, a law designed explicitly to attack Catholic Irish. Or any of the more recent laws demanding the teaching of "intelligent design.")
My point is that while the Catholic Church does do some anti-science things, they can't hold a candle to the anti-science that comes from Protestants. Calling them out and not calling out the even more anti-science Protestants simply isn't fair. After all, if the Protestants had their way, stem cell research would be banned completely.
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So do I... none.
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Dude. The law is quite obviously made to protect the animal loving residents of the state from financial responsibility over potential human-sheep crosses that may follow a fun night of whiskey and solitude. The representative is trying to account for a genetically advanced future where accidental fusion of redneck sperm and sheep egg might occur and be stable.
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And so is a person who gets a catgut suture [thefreedictionary.com]. Will this law make surgery illegal?
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I wouldn't think a catgut suture makes someone a hybrid. It would be like saying, "Wearing a leather coat makes you part cow." That catgut is no more part of your body than that coat, other than the fact that it's used to hold your skin together (but, it subsequently dissolves, so it's not even permanent).
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A miserable little pile of secrets.
Re:Question: What is a human? (Score:4, Informative)
Louisiana is a majority baptist area. If you're going to bash Christian sects, at least have the decency to pick the right one!
HAL.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Human Ecosystem, Posted 12/23/2008, Matthew Child; George Macfarlane
Genetic analysis shows that our gastrointestinal tracts are home to more than 100 000 billion (1014) individual micro-organisms of perhaps 36 000 different species. And more than 90% of the cells in our bodies are non-human.[1] These bacteria form a diverse and complex ecosystem with a total gene pool (microbiome) more than 100 times larger than the human genome -- in effect we are hybrid "superorganisms." The types and numbers of bacteria differ from the stomach to the distal colon, reflecting the changes in pH, concentration of oxygen, and availability of nutrients. Small numbers persist in the stomach (notably Helicobacter pylori, which causes ulcers) and the small intestine, but most of these organisms are found in the anaerobic environment of the large intestine ( Table ).
To see the full article you need some kind of login which I don't have, but SlashDot had a similar story a couple of days ago: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/15/0252219 [slashdot.org]
So I think there's a lot of tough questions to ask before allowing legislation like this to pass. We can't even define "human" very well, and we alread
Re:Question: What is a human? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hope there's an obscure reference that's setting me up for a 'whoosh' here, because if you're serious, you should look into a few names:
...to name just a few. The first pair and their connection to the second name were probably the longest knowledge setback in scientific history. The Catholic church has always opposed any knowledge that would allow common people to think freely and question its dogma.
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I am not a female, but I seem to notice that women do seem to be pretty able to handle their workforce chores quite well during the gestation period. It's the time they need after the little squirt comes out that makes them need to take a few extra days off.
As my wife is currently near 7 months and still working. I'll point out some of the observations of my wife:
1. She feels forgetful. Enough to notice that there is a difference.
2. She has to keep her feet elevated (not much of an issue)
3. She had to
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just pregnant women. The bottom line is that; Employers hate children. This is a real problem in Western society.
Since when... (Score:5, Interesting)
are humans not animals?
What a shock (Score:2, Interesting)
oblig........ (Score:2)
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And drink my milk, for it is my milk.
Obey the Cow God!
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Demmit, misquoting Green Jellà lyrics For Teh Lose.
Surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Actually LSU is probably has one of the most advanced agricultural research centers around. There's the old tour with the living cow with the hole in its side for tourists to put their hand in a living stomach (fun for the family!) and other scary things. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the fuckers was working on a pig with a human head or something.
Don't be a tool and think that everybody in the southern states is an uneducated freak.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
...with the living cow with the hole in its side for tourists to put their hand in a living stomach (fun for the family!)...
The purpose is not for tourist's entertainment.
Most Universities with a Veterinary Medicine program will have a cow with a 'cannula' into it's rumen [wikipedia.org] as a means to extract some of the fluid content for the clinical treatment of other bovine patients that have suffered some digestive disease, or (frequently) after treatment with antibiotics(which kill rumen flora, unabling the cow to digest their food).
How it usually works:
You have 'Bessie' the donor cow. She has a 'hole' in her side as you say. (cannula int
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Yeah havent they already mastered inbreeding?
Take it offshore (Score:2)
Some scientist will take this off shore and you'll be hearing things like "Animal rights activists drove him out of the States. Got so bad you couldn't cage a rat without reading him his rights."
After all, what is the law?
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Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
This bill has nothing to do with any sort of research or proposed research in the state. There are no biomedical companies here threatening to build mutant humans. Louisiana doesn't generally have the sort of biomedical research centers that would do work of that sort. We're happy if the Germans build a steel mill here.
This is just another one of those ideas based on a garbled sci-fi fear of Science, made by people who'd rather not have to learn anything before forming an opinion, and who have far too much access to lawmakers.
I have no doubt the law will pass, the religious community here will crow about it for a few days, and then absolutely nothing tangible will have changed. Except that a few hundred thousand more of my state tax dollars will have been spent on bullshit.
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This is the second time someone has brought up the whole Baptist thing (that I've seen).
You do remember your history, right? You know what the Louisiana Purchase is, and where we bought that land from, right? You know the people settled there were French, and most French people (even in the New World) are Catholic, right?
Here are two sources for demographic data: Wikipedia's Louisiana article [wikipedia.org] and this blog entry summarizing a survey [blogspot.com]. If you believe Wikipedia, then 30% of Louisiana is Catholic overall, an
"The archbishop asked me to file it..." (Score:2, Insightful)
Ahem.. Aren't we supposed to ban government-religion hybrids?
Curses! (Score:2)
/me starts boxing up the Louisiana lab
My cynical take on this... (Score:2)
...is that they're not worried about human-animal hybrids, they're worried about using non-human stem cells in humans or human stem cells in animals.
Stiffer penalty if you do it for profit? (Score:2)
From TFA:
Anyone who is convicted of doing so could face up to 10 years in prison, could be fined up to $10,000 or both. Anyone who profits financially by such experimentation, the bill says, would face a civil fine of $1 million or twice the amount of the gross gain realized -- whichever is more.
Why the extra civil penalty based on profit? Is it "more wrong" to do it for money instead of academic interest?
I want insect eyes (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I like your idea. It would be a great way to find women or men, whatever floats one's boat, that do things that you're into without the awkwardness of beating around the bush to find out if they are.
Until you start seeing those telltale signs on the guy that prepares your food.
A very sensible law (Score:4, Insightful)
As the day is fast approaching when we can create less-than-human intelligent creatures, it makes sense to be certain it is made illegal before anyone tries it. Might I remind you what history that very state has with beings once considered to be subhuman?
It is not silly for the legislature to be doing it during a recession, they're not out creating jobs, you know.
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At two meters tall I already feel like a heavyworlder everywhere I go. My prediction is that it will happen eventually with the dire consequences which you predict and then society will be the better for it thereafter (we're still not in the thereafter phase of slavery-by-race, though.)
If we ban human-animal hybrids... (Score:4, Funny)
Walter Bishop dissaproves of this proposal (Score:2)
Listen to the man, he does more in 1 hour than most politicians do in 10 lifetimes!
"On another ethical issue..." (Score:3, Informative)
...House Bill 517 that would protect from being fired or demoted people who refuse to participate in any health care practice that violates their conscience...
Now way! You serve everybody without prejudice. If you can't/won't, then find another line of work. I don't want witch doctors in the operating room. I can go to the mountains for that.
What do you expect...? (Score:2, Troll)
I guess what's really sad is that creating legislation like this will likely get him *more* votes in LA. We just need to make sure there is an exemption for creating monkeys with four asses.
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As an attendee of one of the tea party events, I can assure you that the "movement" nor the individual event I attended was organized by the Republican party.
The one at my capitol was organized by a libertarian with no affiliation. He voted for Baldwin the last cycle.
Octomom (Score:2)
Genetic hybridization (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless this prohibits ALL the numerous creative means of achieving genetic "intermingling", this bill is pretty much useless except to satisfy one particular faction's pseudo-moral obsession.
What the bill doesn't outlaw (Score:2)
But... But... But... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh! That's right... I went there!
Potential (mis)uses? (Score:2)
But what about the other direction? You can make animals (cows?) to produce human organs for transplant. That would be a bit better than taking them from humans or letting the patient die.
Of course, you can also start your own no-human-killed factory of soylent green.
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We already do something like this. Its called Xenotransplantation [wikipedia.org], and is actually an accepted medical practice. The most common form I've heard of is harvesting replacement heart valves from pigs.
Ship Sailed (Score:5, Funny)
Ever been to Mardi Gras? The human-animal hybrid ship sailed long, long ago.
So much for... (Score:4, Funny)
my Republican elephant and Democratic donkey hybrids...
The Bayous of Dr. Boudreaux (Score:3, Funny)
It's an old tactic. (Score:2)
Back during the depression here in Canada our government passed a law stating if your head were smaller than a common baseball you were exempt from all laws. It's one of those tactics governments use during difficult economic times. There's some thought that it helps drives innovation. In the case of Louisiana, it's likely they want to boost the robotics industry. No human animal hybrids means science will have to focus on cyborgs. In the case of the Canadian baseball head law, they were trying to reduce th
Goatse (Score:2)
uhh.. define human ? (Score:2, Interesting)
without using the term "human"
God shmod (Score:2)
Bart: How would I go about creating a half-man, half-monkey-type creature?
Ms.K: I'm sorry, that would be playing God.
Bart: God shmod! I want my monkey-man!
Next up? (Score:2)
A bill to ban SATAN.
Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:2)
C'mon, people, on the old slashdot this would have been in the first ten comments!
Bart: How would I go about creating a half-man, half-monkey-type creature?
Ms.Krabapple: I'm sorry, that would be playing God.
Bart: God shmod! I want my monkey-man!
Aren't humans already animals? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1) Not genetically altered by mankind
2) Parents are human
3) Conceived traditionally or by any of the means that have been approved in section bloopitybloop.
You don't have to categorize by that genes they have, just classify them by where they came from. Its much easier.
Where do I start? (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, so the summary already is a source of hilarity to me... "eminent danger"? Eminent means prominent, distinguished, or noteworthy. The correct phrase here is likely "imminent danger." Based on that, and the comments in TFA (most of which were riddled with similar typos and malapropisms, many of which were bemoaning the state of education in Louisiana, and some of which fell under both of the previous two categories), it seems to me that Louisiana should be working extra hard to try and funnel more money into education, not cut it. Yeah, comments in TFA brought up the topic of cutting funding for education in Louisiana.
It should also be noted that this bill is being promoted heavily by the Catholic Church. TFA takes pains to also talk about a medical conscience bill that would protect doctors, pharmacists, etc., from repercussions if they opt not to participate in any procedure that violates their conscience or faith. In other words, this would allow pharmacists to refuse to prescribe the morning-after pill if they oppose abortion. It's worth noting that TFA is a bit slanted in its coverage -- it does not, for example, discuss whether the claims of equivalence between the morning-after pill and abortion are in fact valid. (Other news sources have openly questioned the validity of this comparison, usually citing opposing viewpoints.)
I'm hoping there will be an intelligent discussion here about the dangers of setting up different classes of organisms for experimentation -- those who are fair game for genetic experiments and in-depth analysis of fundamental cellular mechanisms, and those who are not. Reasonable scientists might point out, for instance, all the benefits of using a hybrid approach to solve a vexing technical issue, even if that's just a stopgap measure. They might also warn of the dangers of missing out on crucial insights because we're not working with material sufficiently close to our own genes and cells. But instead, I fear this whole thing is going to degenerate into a bunch of jokes about furries...
That said, some of the comments in TFA about mermaids and "centars" were hilarious. :-)
Re:What about baby bacteria? (Score:5, Informative)
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What would be the effects on health from this, if its true.
maybe we should think of the consequences of doing the above work. Once the food chain has been altered it is not so easy to reverse, being that the effects a