Three Little Piggies...Sad as can be :(

In Biology this week we have been studying Animal Biotechnology . We have reviewed the concerns and benefits of Animal Biotechnology and it's applications and based on that information I have formed my own opinion , which is represented in this political cartoon. 

The Cost of a Humane Hamburger

Have you ever experienced excruciating pain? Have you ever expereinced the moment when you suddenly realize that the pain you were in has ceased? Being able to feel pain, not only allows us to learn how to prevent ourselves from self-inflicted pain, but it also allows us to feel the happiness and sensation that occurs when pain fades or disappears. If we could not feel pain, we would have the potential to injure ourselves without meaning to (much more frequently than we already do) but it would also prevent us from being able to recognize and relax in the knowledge of comfort, because we would not have anything to compare comfort to.

Researchers say that due to advancements in genetic technology, it may soon be a possibility that animals can be genetically altered so as not to feel pain. With these advancements in place, animals on factory farms would be breed so that they do not feel pain when raised in conditions of suffering. Researchers are beginning to see this as a potential option since factory farms cannot be persuaded to raise animals in more humane/ gentle environments.

Personally, I disagree with the suggestions to create animals that do not feel pain. Animals were not created by God to be insensitive to pain. God created them with apt pain tolerences and I do not believe that the pain tolerence of an animal is something that we should be tampering with. I feel that the solution to the problem of factory farms is to decrease the consumption of meat in the USA as well as build up family farms who are raising livestock in humane ways that don't require the use of genetic technology to alter animals.

The Innocence Project

The Innocence Project is an independent non-profit organization that helps people who are wrongfully convicted of crimes become exonerated. To date the Innocence Project has used DNA testing to exonerate 280 people. One of which is Peter Rose.

Peter Rose:

Peter Rose was charged and convicted of rape, kidnapping, and forced oral copulation and was sentenced to 27 years in jail. The incident that occurred in which Peter was wrongfully convicted happened in California in the year 1994. Peter's wrongful conviction can be attributed to an eyewitness misidentification, government misconduct, and invalidated or improper forensic science.

Peter Rose ended up serving 8 years of jail time of his original 27 year sentence for a crime that he did not commit. Peter's innocence was proven due to DNA testing that found that he was not the source of the semen found on the clothing of the young rape victim. 

The Progression of DNA Testing:

In 1985 Gregor Mendel made the first theories about the idea of heredity and the passing on of genetic  traits. As Mendel was much ahead of his time with these theories, it took several years for the scientific community to catch up and understand his theories. In 1935 Andrei Nikolaevitch Belozersky isolated the pure state of DNA for the first time. Once having been isolated, the structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 as being a double helix. In 1958 Coenberg discovered DNA polymerase one of the enzymes used to produce DNA from a test tube. In 1972 in California the first DNA cloning experiments were successfully performed. The first splicing of DNA took place in 1973 to create a dual antibiotic resistance . In 1984 DNA fingerprinting is first used in order to identify people however it is not until the following year that this technique enters the court room. DNA fingerprinting has been used in various court cases as evidence since it's court room origin in 1985.

My Thoughts:

I think that this story has changed my perspective of the United States justice system in that I now understand that as with any system the justice system makes mistakes. This story has softened my faith in the justice system and in the idea that the justice system in this country will protect me and others from the "bad guys" of this world. One thing that will stay with me and that I will ultimately take away from this story and others similar to it is that not everything is as simple as it seems. It is not a simple thing to just send the bad guys away to jail because sometimes the people that we think are bad guys are just normal people, people who have lives and who want to go on living their lives without the weight of crimes that they did not commit weighing down on their shoulders. Learning about this story of the Innocence Project among other Innocence Project stories gives me a much greater appreciation of science and the capabilities of science as well as the benefits and consequences of the use of science both in and out of the court room.

The Story of Lucy the Chimpanzee

           The story that we listened to was about Lucy the chimpanzee and her upbringing and eventual integration into the wild. Lucy was a chimp that was brought up by two people in a home, where she was raised and treated like a human being. This story involves Lucy’s “parents”, Charles Seiber and his wife, Rodger Faults her sign language teacher, and Janice, a former cage cleaner and close friend to Lucy, as well as Lucy herself.

                Lucy was human-like in that she was raised and treated as a human being until the point where she became too strong for the continuation of her treatment as a daughter. Lucy during her time in the Seiber house learned to communicate through sign language, eat at the table with silverware, make tea and serve drinks. The transition from a home environment to living in the wild among other chimps was not an easy experience for Lucy. Upon her first arrival in Africa, Lucy came down with many infections and did not react well to the departure of her parents. However her friend and former cage cleaner Janice, stayed behind to help assist Lucy through her transition. Janice took Lucy and a few other chimps who were undergoing similar transitions to an empty island where her and the chimps were able to live for several years. However quickly into the experience on the island Janice realized that the chimps would not leave her side and therefore not integrate themselves into the environment on the island. So Janice had a cage built for her to live in so that the chimps cold no longer cling to her side and refuse to live on their own. Eventually the other chimps left Janice and began to live on their own, but Lucy stayed, Lucy after a year finally began to drift away from Janice’s cage and live on her own.

                There’s a lot that can be learned from Lucy and her experience. One of many things being that chimps have many of the capabilities that we accredit solely to humans. They have the ability to utilize language, to feel and read emotions, and to make connections. We can also learn the negative effects that such lessons can have on chimps in that they become lost between being human and being an animal. What I will remember most about this story is the sadness, that Lucy made connections with people and loved them, yet she was forced away from them and the only life that she truly understood. 

Let's Start At The Very Beginning...

HI!
My name is Shannon and I am a sophomore at Animas High School. This blog is to record and discuss the activities I do this year in Biology and my opinions and views on the studies we do in class and discussions we hold.