Biology Research Notes: Ethics of Genetically Modified Animals

Note: These notes were intended to help prepare for a debate, in which I represented the anti-GM side. Thus, there is very little pro-GM information.

Fano, A (2001).One Man's Meat. The Ecologist. 34.

•Imutran, medical company commissioned to conduct transgenetic experimentations, was caught making over 520 medical errors and omissions during the studies, including seven monkeys being worked on even though they were labeled as unfit for use to do to occurrence of Herpes B, a virus lethal to humans.

•Since 1905, 82 humans have received whole organs from chimpanzees, baboons, pigs, goats and other animals, and all have died from infections and complications related to hyperacute rejection within hours or days of the surgeries.

•Viruses in animals could mutate in GM animals and become transmittable to humans.

•Pig flu epidemic of 1918 killed 40 million people.

•In September 2000, scientists gathered at the Royal Society of London to determine whether polio vaccines made with chimp kidneys and contaminated with the simian form of HIV could have triggered the epidemic of the AIDS virus which has stricken 53 million people.

GloFish fluorescent fish. Genetically modified. Da...

English: A chimeric mouse with its pups, which car...

In an effort to reduce corn stem-borer infestation...

•Porcine Endogenous Retroviruses (PERVs)--a family of AIDS-like viruses that are harmless to their hosts but potentially lethal when transferred to other species--are incorporated in the pig's genome and cannot be bred out.

(2006, July 20). Biotechnology: Transgenic animals. Retrieved March 11, 2008, from BBC Web site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/animals/using/biotechnology_2.shtml•Combining species of animals is an unethical alteration of the natural order of the universe.

•It is unethical to modify an animals genetic make-up without previous knowledge of whether or not the modification will have any detrimental side-effects.

•"Creating" animals means that they are being treated as commodities, and not living things.

•It is unethical to create "diseased" animals that are made to suffer.

•As these researchers want to conduct long-term investigations into the...