Quote:
Originally Posted by tore
You're asking me to educate you on the value of knowledge?
Whatever you think you know about the human genome project, knowing the sequence of our genes makes it simple for us to make primers and isolate genes so that they can be studied or the proteins they code for can be artificially produced, like how human insulin is made by bacterias. This knowledge just has a very direct benefit in practical applications. Knowing the sequence of the human genome revolutionizes molecular medicine and as long as modern society exists, we will continue to reap those benefits in the future. It's useful not just for medicine, but potentially in a number of other fields. It sounds to me like you have some pre-concieved misguided opinions about this. Perhaps you should take a look at the human genome poster?
As for the value of knowledge in itself, it pleases me to know that humans developed from a shared ancestor with chimpanzees for example. I feel like I know a little more about where we come from. If it's true, then humanity is a little less stupid than before. If others feel like me, that knowing something pleases or benefits them somehow, then that in itself is enough to benefit mankind in some way. Perhaps facts can help replace misconceptions that cause suffering in the world. Then you've found another way such discoveries can help.
The discovery of cosmic background radiation helps support the big bang theory and helps us date the age of the universe. You can really think of no way that knowledge is beneficial to humankind? |
I tend to value actual practical knowledge as opposed to patting myself on the back for discovering a dot that we have no communication, contact, or ability to interpret aside from the use of high powered telescopes. I live on this planet, and for the time being so do the rest of the 7 billion humans currently known to exist in this universe. These are not facts, they are merely support for theories that remain unproven and will remain so because there is no way of truly knowing the origin of life or the universe. The Human Genome Project has been deemed a failure not just by me and my "misguided preconceived notions", but by intellectuals and scientists across the world. We have had the ability to synthesize nearly every enzyme or compound in the body since the fifties and sixties, when molecular biology actually produced viable and beneficial results. You seem to think that being able to forward research yet produce no results as of yet aside from lateral information and processes is somehow beneficial to science as a whole. The project was billed as giving mankind an opportunity to not only develop personalized medicine, a proposition which is now seen as folly and a pipe dream, but to revolutionize the treatment and diagnosis of disease and illness, something it has failed miserably to live up to
at this point. We are no closer to finding the genetic proof that disease and our DNA are linked in a definitive way as to support the idea of causative genes. There are numerous articles being published every year, in the NY Times, Scientific American, and the Guardian just for example, that outline the belief that what we believed would arise from the project did not, and will not aid in medical study as significantly as some would think.
I think this should sum up my "sources" pretty well:
A Spiegel interview with Craig Venter:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...709174,00.html