Tasteless giant turkey breeding

[Cartollomew]

With a title like that, who can resist?

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008 ... ytech.html

(ignore the comments, they are, for the most part, utterly stupid)

So in essence, we are breeding a turkey that couldn't possibly survive without human interference - as I understand it, this isn't really that uncommon as far as domestic breeding type stuff goes.

It's kinda scary really. Technically, it's still a turkey, just not the one best built to ensure the continuity of the species.

[Vampirial]

I read an article once on the inbreeding of dogs to maintain the "perfect" breed such to the extent that many are developing deformities that they cannot possible exist without human help. Not as in we have to feed them/ look after them, but that some of them are incapable of reproduction unless assisted, many are in constant pain or suffer various health and disease problems through their life time, yet they are prized by dog breeders and so the cycle continues.
I think the worst one was this breed of dog (cannot remember what it was) that its brain is essentially too large for its head, the dog spends its life in agony...... I'm all for genteic manipulation but sometimes I think people forget we need diversity as well to survive.

And while all the turkeys may be great now for eating its only gonna make them more succeptible for extinction in the long run as the closer they genetically are the less chances they have of surviving something (ie new wave of disease). Where are the ethics people when you need them? I was always taught in uni that everything is meant to be authorised and closely watched, so its umm ok stem cells are bad but we can make a genotype nearly exactly the same between a species and thats ok?

[Cartollomew]

Whenever I think about genetic engineering like this, I'm reminded of the one of the Red Dwarf books (Better than Life?) where the human race put all its GM research into the area it was most wanted:
Sports.

Boxers with heads of solid bone and muscle and brains in their shorts, swimmers with flippers for feet and so on and so forth.

Everyone realised it had gone too far when a Scottish soccer team fielded a goalie who was just a solid block of flesh, 24 feet wide by 8 feet high.

Somehow they still lost.

Regardless, I believe the moral of the story was that the freaks the world had created for its own entertainment eventually rallied for better rights and treatment, whereupon the normal humans were able to indulge in their favourite sport of all: war against people who are different.

With food production (and obviously any domesticated animal breeding), there are so many blurry grays that it's hard to know when to draw the line. Especially in a day and age where we have (on average, worldwide) a food crisis and there isn't enough to go around.

For example: If you could create sustainable food sources by breeding mindless humans at extremely low prices to act as a source of food and income for impoverished nations, what would you do? People are dying from not eating while you weigh up the ethics.

(okay, that's an extreme example, but there are only so many lines we can cross before we reach something extreme)