Genetically Engineered, Fearless Mice Created in Tokyo

November 13, 2007

Check out this link for the details Fearless Mice. Briefly, it gives the information about a genetically-engineered mouse that has no fear of cats, foxes, dogs, etc. Scientists in Tokyo changed the connections to the mouse’s olfactory bulb, in essence blocking the receptors that cause instinctive fear.

I have no problems with genetic engineering. A lot of the time it’s done as research. A way of getting to the center of mysteries. It clarifies things in the fields of science and medicine and, ultimately, makes our lives better.

But, I also have an overactive imagination. I started imagining how else something like this might be used.

Keep in mind this is all based on the premise that basal reactions like fear and anger are reactionary. In other words, there is something physical, outside of ourselves that draws a specific response from animals/humans.

Which, by itself, seems to bring up some interesting points about who we are and what we are made up of. Boiled down: Are we completely autonomous creatures, or are we products of our environment? That’s an old question, but if you accept that our emotions are responses to outside factors, you say that we are products of our environment.

That, seems to me, to be the core of this experiment in Tokyo. The mouse, because its perception of the outside world was changed, is completely and utterly different from his brethren. The mouse has been changed in a way that has removed it from it’s entire race. Which seems even more powerful when you consider how small a thing it is to change: its sense of smell.

So, where am I going with this?

Well, the fear-through-sense-of-smell is a hard to share basis on which to compare different species, so let’s change it to an inability to sense hormonal odors. Let’s say, using the same technique, that these scientists turned off the mouse’s ability to sense the pheromones secreted by mice of the opposite sex. A change like that would kill the mouse’s drive to procreate to a large extent. Or rather, his ability to find a method by which to procreate. An inability to find a suitable partner would render him a social eunuch.

Now, consider that as applied to a human. If you take away a person’s ability to take in the stimuli that cause specific reactions. The sound and smell and sight connection that cause fear, and lust, and anger, and greed. To be clear, I don’t mean their ability to see, smell, and hear altogether, simply the sensors that connect one with the other. Briefly, the person could still see, smell, taste, and hear, they simply wouldn’t have the built in reactions to certain things that we all come hard-wired with.

I think it’s obvious that it wouldn’t be the same person. But, what does that say about the solidity of “self?” What exactly does that imply about what we are made up of?

I think science and medicine is finally at the point to start solving some of these millennium old philosophical questions. And, I think we discover, more and more each day, that we are, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, “machines.”

The idea is that all of human existence is based on our emotions. From faith and love to prejudice and war all of our history is based on our built-in reactions to stimulus. Truly, to be “human” is to react a certain way to certain things. If those reactions were slightly tweaked, through science or evolution, would we be a completely different creature?

Would our history have been completely different?

I think so.
What do you think?

Posted by flowersjustin | Filed Under blog