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Hi my name's Paul, I'm studying A levels in a school in Kent and am aspiring to go to The University of Nottingham to study Plant Bioscience. Enjoy my blogs, they will mainly be about Biology. Contact me at rubiscoactivase@gmail.com

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Spider Goats

I normally talk about the crops and agriculture side of genetic modification, because that's what interests me. However a few months ago I watched a program on the BBC about the ethics involved in genetics and I saw something really interesting.

There's a farm at Utah State University that has a rather extraordinary goat. The goat has had a gene transplanted into it which means that it's milk contains an extra protein, which is extracted and spun into spider silk.

Spider silk is one of the strongest materials known to man,weight for weight it's stronger than steel. Do you think it's ethical to modify goats to produce this extra protein? The goats are treated extremely well at this farm, better than most farmed goats. Is this ethical?

10 comments:

  1. Ya, ratdog. I think it is ethical when its a mutual relationship like that.

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  2. I've seen this, and I think it's ethical. But it'll be creepy when goats start walking up walls.

    Regardless, I'm getting a shirt made of goat-silk as soon as they're available.

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    1. You know the world's **cked up when you see goats walking up walls

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    2. They are completely normal goats, if you saw them you couldn't tell the difference. There's just some spider silk protein in their milk, but the milk just looks normal too.

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  3. spider goats lol, that's out of a bad sci-fi film

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  4. I generally find unethical even to have animals sit into farms, let alone doing experiments/modifications on them. Then again, my position is extremely radical and perhaps somewhat excessive. On the one hand I think keeping them in farms kills their freedom, on the other hand there are some advantages for the animal too (the fact it doesn't risk getting killed by predators, to name one).

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  5. i'm more ok with this than some of the other stuff going on

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  6. If they are treated well, why not? We can make good use of it.

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  7. i dont think it is ethical to modify animals in any way...also GMO vegetables and friut is not really good for you because it contains a lot of shit...i think its the same with animals

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  8. Hmm part of me thinks its ok but another part of me think its not but since we are talking about spiderwebs hell yeah its ethical lol.

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