*boggle*

[ambitious_wench]

This is just too weird I gotta give the folks in EnZed (That's New Zealand if you hadn't guessed) props for ballsy billboards, though. Americans, even though this is a billboard in another country, it probably isn't worksafe here. Caveat emptor, all that good stuff. Thanks to sgt_durham for the link.

Why Not Just Genetically Engineer Women For Milk?

MAdGE (Mothers Against Genetic Engineering in Food and the
Environment) today launched a highly controversial billboard
campaign in Auckland and Wellington to provoke public debate
about the social and cultural ethics of genetic engineering
in New Zealand.

The billboards depict a
naked, genetically engineered woman with four breasts being
milked by a milking machine, and GE branded on her rump.

"New Zealanders are allowing a handful of corporate
scientists and ill-informed politicians to make decisions on
the ethics of GE. Our largest science company, AgResearch,
is currently putting human genes into cows in the hope of
creating new designer milks. The ethics of such experiments
have not even been discussed by the wider public. How far
will we allow them to go? Where is the line in the sand?
Why is the government lifting the moratorium on GE when we
have not even had a public debate on ethics?" said Alannah
Currie Madge founder and billboard designer.

Fonterra,
New Zealand's largest milk company recently purchased the
patent rights to large amounts of human DNA from an
Australian genetics company. (Dominionpost 15.9.2003) "The
mothers of New Zealand would like to know exactly what our
milk company are doing with this human DNA. We at MAdGE want
an assurance from Fonterra that they will continue to keep
our milk GE Free now and in the future and not use human
genes in cows to boost milk production." said Ms Currie.

MOTHERS, MILK AND COWS By FRANCES EDMOND

What is a mother? What does motherhood
mean?

"Our experience of our mother is immense and
long-lasting, from the beginning of our life onward;
[She]... fills our childhood. This woman accompanies us all
the days of our lives...we are nourished for years through
her efforts, her devotion." She gives us... "wisdom beyond
knowledge, benevolence, sheltering, sustaining, the...
[gift].. of fertility, growth, nourishment." [Aeppli] She
gives us life. And as each generation of women become
mothers they pass these things on to their daughters so they
in turn can become mothers and so on and so on through the
centuries.

What is the first thing a mother does when
she gives birth? She puts her baby to the breast and feeds
it. It is the most profound and the most intimate of
relationships. It is the way we bond with our children. And
mother's milk is the natural food for a baby, balanced,
sustaining, nourishing. No commercially made formula has
ever been able to replicate mother's milk. Doesn't that tell
us something, not just about its complexity, but about its
uniqueness, its perfect natural design?

What gives us
the right to think that we can tamper with 'mother' nature?
What arrogance is it that allows mankind to think that he
can improve on millennia of evolution? A woman is not a
cow, nor is a cow a woman. Do we, as human beings, have the
right to blur the boundaries between species, especially
when we do not know what the long term consequences may be?
As an experiment it transgresses the fundamental integrity
of both woman and cow. Not just physically, though to permit
human genes to be put into cows so that cow's milk is more
like human milk is an affront to both of us. But morally and
spiritually as well. The taking of land from indigenous
peoples here in New Zealand and in other countries around
the world took away from those peoples not just their
identity but their life force. If women's essence, their
milk, their means of nourishing their young is taken away
from then, usurped and commodified, the damage to their life
force is unimaginable. What monstrous arrogance to even
contemplate interfering with the material essence of
womanhood. Or for that matter, of cowhood. We must not allow
it to happen.

Think of some of the scientific
experiments of the twentieth century. Thalidomide, so women
didn't have to suffer the perfectly natural discomforts of
morning sickness. And the consequences of that? Deformed
babies. The agricultural pesticides that leave poisonous
residues in our food, the chemicals in timber that have left
some environments so contaminated they are uninhabitable.
How long did it take to recognise the appalling damage of
nuclear radiation? We meddle with the natural world at our
peril. Let us not do it again. Keep genetic engineering in
the laboratory and out of the environment.

Who knows
what mother earth will do to us this time if we, yet again,
fail to respect her integrity.

Human Animals
by Peter R Wills, Associate Professor Department of Physics
University of Auckland

Some time in the very
near future it will probably be possible to use genetic
engineering to create human animals. The cells and organs
of human animals would be virtually the same as ordinary
humans, except the creatures would have underdeveloped
minds. Scientists may be able to develop and breed lines of
human animals that behave as nicely as friendly pets or
other domestic animals. The existence of farm animals whose
with genuinely human cellular biology could solve major
problems facing medical industries. Females could be
engineered to overproduce human proteins of pharmaceutical
interest in their milk, with production being turned on and
off by the administration of hormones.

Most people find
this idea repugnant and our moral code is constructed as if
we should treat anything of human origin with proper
respect. We do not condone killing other members of our
species. We do not eat human flesh. We sometimes care for
injured or sick people for years when there is only a faint
hope of their ever recovering consciousness. The legal
systems of most modern societies allow individuals to claim
certain basic rights that restrict the power of
authorities.

But when it comes to other species we act
differently. Cruelty is generally outlawed, but animals are
killed for sport and the consumption of their flesh is
allowed. We are only just in the process of developing laws
that may protect our closest evolutionary relatives, the
other hominids, from virtual extinction. Their closeness to
humanity has made them targets for medical experimentation.
They are still hunted and driven off their lands, just as
indigenous peoples were by colonizing powers. In the
meantime, the use of domesticated species like cows has been
industrialized in modern societies.

Large numbers of farm
animals are conceived by human design and action. Virtually
every aspect of their exploitation has been mechanized or
modified by the application of some sort of technology. Now
it is possible to manipulate the molecular details of their
biological constitution by using genetic engineering to
create animals whose organs, down to the level of their
metabolism, have modified functions that serve commercial
goals.

New Zealand has been at the forefront of using
genetic engineering to turn animals into material
commodities, being the first country to grant a patent on
the kin of Herman, the Dutch bull who carried a human gene
in his chromosomes. Our scientists have genetically
engineered farm animals in various ways to make them
humanoid. We have allowed the insertion of human genes into
goats. Flocks of sheep that produce a human protein have
been bred in the Waikato. Now cows are being genetically
engineered at Ruakura for a mixture of medical, scientific
and commercial purposes, in many cases by inserting human
genes into them.

All of this has been approved and taken
place in what amounts to an ethical vacuum. There has been
scant attention paid to the ethical, cultural and spiritual
aspects of interference with the genetic make-up of animal
species. We have adopted applications of genetic
engineering in the same way as we have adopted new
technologies in warfare. As long as some new instrument is
considered to be appropriately goal-oriented and an argument
can be made that its effect is somehow the same as what we
are used to, no further discussion is necessary, except to
allay the concerns of Luddites.

It has been normal in
history for the desires and concerns of those who have no
power to be trampled on by those who serve to gain from
exploiting the world around them. But never before has this
been done with so little foresight as is happening now with
genetic engineering. The use of animals for GE
experimentation is a particularly poignant demonstration of
the determination of modern humans to push aside even
biological restrictions on their pursuit of material power.
But in the end it is humanity, not animalhood, which is
denigrated.

If we want to respect both ourselves and our
evolutionary kinsfolk, our animal friends, we should start
by thinking about what rights we might extend beyond the
boundaries of our own species, like the right not to be
genetically engineered. The rights we claim over the
integrity of our biology, like the right not to be exploited
through genetic engineering, should apply somehow to species
whose biology is similar to our own. We would enhance human
rights by finding appropriate ways of extending them beyond
narrow definitions of who we are.

Comments

[djfiggy.livejournal.com]

You're right, that is an interesting billboard.

wow, that's both attention getting...

[mamawrites.livejournal.com]

... and profoundly thought-provoking.

I don't know much about genetic engineering, but I sure am motivated to learn more about how research on GE can be done without creating threats for humans or for the ecosystems in which we live.

Re: wow, that's both attention getting...

[ambitious-wench.livejournal.com]

GOOD! I'm glad you are motivated to learn. I look forward to reading what you've learned.

Edie