Would animals altered by Science so as not to feel pain help humanise the meat industry?

international | animal rights | other press Wednesday September 09, 2009 16:02 by über ironic

A US based philosophy worker has it appears teamed up with the tech industry and media complex this week to suggest "Yes".
Other people think the technologically feasible (if near perfecting technique) of altering DNA and brains of animals might not constitute a humane use of science. Nobody is wondering if pain free animals are feasible how long do we have to wait for pain free soldiers or on the more optimistic side of this knowledge economy debate pain free children, who would save a fortune on first aid, emotional support & no doubt a career in sport.

science is fiction until it is fact..... or is it?

".........With advancements in genetic engineering, researchers say that it may soon be possible to breed farm animals that don't feel pain. The suggestion has sparked controversy on whether denying animals the ability to feel pain is inhumane itself, even if it does limit the amount of suffering the animals endure when raised at factory farms......he solution may be.....

Adam Shriver, a philosopher at Washington University in St. Louis says, "If we can't do away with factory farming, we should at least take steps to minimize the amount of suffering that is caused."

In recent years, scientists have made progress in manipulating the molecular and genetic bases for pain. A recent study found that mice that lack the Nav1.7 gene are less sensitive than normal mice to heat and pressure. Possibly, farm animals that lack such a gene would also suffer less under factory farm conditions. In another study, scientists have engineered mice that lack specific enzymes and genes in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This alteration enabled the animals to still sense pain, but not feel it as an unpleasant sensation. By still feeling physical sensation, the animals could avoid unintentionally injuring themselves, which often happens in individuals who are born without the ability to feel pain at all............"

there there hush now don't you cry.

Here's two articles in the popular science press for people who aren't über enough on the formal journal press. http://www.physorg.com/news171216895.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327243.400-pain....html

The opinion response of the "New Scientist" (heed ye well all you BA young scientist competitioneers) cam in the form of an Editorial : "Pain free animals would not be guilt free".
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327242.300-pain....html

Quite,but as I wrote the other day about something or other - "all the gultt aint always all the blame".

Anyway their editoial begins very engagingly : "IN Douglas Adams's novel The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, the character Arthur Dent is horrified when a cow-like creature is wheeled to the restaurant table, introduces itself as the dish of the day and proceeds to describe the cuts of meat that are available from its body. The cow has been bred to want to be eaten, and to be capable of saying so.

As so often happens with Adams's work, the truth isn't too far behind. This week we report on proposals to genetically engineer livestock to be untroubled by pain - something all too common in intensively farmed animals (see "Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming"). The concept treats cows, pigs and chickens as if they were inanimate objects whose suffering is like a computer program in need of debugging." : If they start debugging animals DNA like that you'll be virus free by this side of Nostradamus.

some background glances at the science and philosopher, because this could be the cutting edge of irony we're dealing with here, now, don't you know. -
Young Dr Shriver -
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/people/index.php?positi...tus=1
his formative papers and bag was on cognitive and mind concepts in mammals.
I daresay he could well be a vegan trying to start an ethical head fk session. How many would notice, eh?

The Scientist's real position :

".....Adam Shriver (2006). Minding Mammals. Philosophical Psychology 19 (4):433-442.
Many traditional attempts to show that nonhuman animals are deserving of moral consideration have taken the form of an argument by analogy. However, arguments of this kind have had notable weaknesses and, in particular, have not been able to convince two kinds of skeptics. One of the most important weaknesses of these arguments is that they fail to provide theoretical justifications for why particular physiological similarities should be considered relevant. This paper examines recent empirical research on pain and, in particular, explores the implications of the dissociation between the sensory and the affective pain pathways. It is argued that these results show that the belief that nonhuman animals experience pain in a morally relevant way is reasonable, though not certain. It is further argued that the proposal to explore the relationship between consciousness and various forms of learning challenges the aforementioned skeptics to provide more physiological details for their claims that nonhuman mammals are probably not conscious...."

The Real science :
The Nav1.7 gene can be slienced but currently only in a dosis dependent way, combining that with an altered animal which had congenitally been altered to remove DNA associated with the proper pain processes ((???) is unproven & well, here's the gene card & profile so maybe any currently unemployed knowledge economy Irish human resource market people might like to give us an opinion on the genomic and pronomic procedures.

http://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=Scn9a