Well, the speaker is still unfamiliar with managing A1s. So it was a genuine mistake. (although encouraged by her distress)
At least, that is how I intended it. Not that its really important.
Any actual A1s will likely find people who treat them as objects, slaves or equals.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Brother Oni
If they're made from yeast, there's no requirement for a male appearance, just make the default (female) model stronger. If you're using human hormones like testosterone to influence their development, they're no longer yeast derived but human derived, which opens another massive can of ethical and legal worms.
They're made from yeast. However, alot of developmental logic (eg. the Wnt pathway, FGF4, MAPK cascade, etc.) can be very easily copied without actually understanding how or why they work.
You just build a signal-effector system with the same kinetics and that crosses the same membranes and has analogous downstream effects.
They just use different molecules. Crib it from some other organism, mutagenize it or directed evolution to tweak the Kd and Km up and down as desired. Test it to see if it works in vitro, put into latest yeast model and check.
~1 million scientists working for 70 years to get strain A? Might be doable with some improvements to biochemical assays. (Not saying that's likely to happen. Organizing 1 million scientists to work on a systematic project of this scale is on the deep end of impossible. Like herding cats)
Much easier than trying to work out what all the pathways actually mean. While they say they "understand" how the human developmental program works, what they really mean is "we have all the bits written down", but they still don't know how those bits are actually put together.
It is much easier to stamp collect instead of actually having to think about it. =)
So, while changing things like psychological and physical development is possible (they CAN make females stronger if they want to), it is alot of work to find out what all the bits mean and how to rearrange it. Work that is unnecessary if you just copy the logic behind the human version and never mind the details. (but don't copy the genes outright since they want to dodge the no-modifying humans and thus want the strains to be 100% artificial)
Of course, the way that Sintarra Labs has managed to keep it silent for 30 years, when it involved 1 million scientists is also next to impossible. Even if you're a backwater, poorly funded research colony, you can't possibly find 1 million amoral scientists willing to work on this for the rest of their lifetime...
Or that no scientist decided to break off from Sintarra and try commercializing it... (neuron stem cell treatment immediately comes to mind)
Or that how no one noticed Sintarra Labs suddenly requiring alot of cloning-vat related supplies (or the equipment to make it)...
All these real-world problems would have shot the entire project down from the start.
But then I wouldn't have my nice clean ethical questions, now would I?
So... *handwaves* =P