Posted by
Dawnsblood on Sunday, January 14, 2007 6:47:25 PM
It sounds a bit creepy, but
it could be the answer to a lot of the world's hunger problems. You remove a lot of the problems such as disease and space needed to house the livestock and other variables without introducing too many additional problems. I wonder if we can get past the creepy factor and the ethical problems? Science is moving to fast not to consider things like this.
The whole point of stem cells (embryonic, placental, uterine, or adult) is that they can be made to grow into any kind of cellular tissue needed;
and you needn't grow the entire organism in order to produce, say,
pancreatic tissue, liver cells, or neurons. Or, for that matter, muscle
tissue, grown from a "myoblast" stem cell... which brings up a very
interesting scenario.
What is another name for the muscle tissue of a steer, a castrated male bovine? Try ribeye steak, or T-bone, or rump roast. Another name for the muscle tissue of a pig is pork roast or bacon or sausage.
All right, you're way ahead of me; but the scientists are way ahead
of us both, because I didn't even think about this until I read this
article: biological researchers in the United States and the
Netherlands have been experimenting in growing meat directly from animal stem cells, without having to grow the entire pig or steer
Like it or not, we are about to make a lot of decisions that will shape the course of the future. Dafydd looks at it from a Sci-fi vantage, I suggest we look at it from an ethics vantage. A 'Brave New World' indeed.
Addendum: It seems A Jacksonian has been looking at this from an engineering standpoint. I agree it is amazing how quickly science turns into mere engineering.