If it was practical to do this, I think it would be a good idea.
I do not think it is practical or possible to do this on a large scale in our lifetimes. Trying to mess with the genetics of 80 billion animals from 10 million different species seems inherently doomed to failure, and I can think of so many ways it could go catastrophically wrong.
I would be interested in a post arguing otherwise though!
Regarding “10 million species”: most of the impact would be from doing this for the few species that are farmed in very large numbers like chickens and whiteleg shrimp
I am interested in writing a more thorough follow up post. If you would be willing, could you briefly explain some of your concerns. I want to be thorough in my response! Thank you
Issue 1:What genes cause pain expression? are they the same for every animal of every species? It seems likely that an intervention which works in one animal won’t work in another.
Issue 2: How do you check that your intervention is working? For example, suppose your original raccoons screech when you poke them, but the genetically engineered racoons don’t. Is that because they are experiencing less pain, or have they merely evolved not to screech? You’ll have to figure this out for every single species you work on.
issue 3: When humans lose the abililty to feel pain, it usually results in them dying young, as they don’t realise subconciously that their body is being damaged. How would you avoid a similar thing happening to wild animals?
issue 4: Following on from the above, it seems that feeling pain is a huge evolutionary advantage (which is why we evolved it in the first place). If you found a way to genetically modify, say, 90% of a wild coyote population to feel far less pain, wouldn’t the remaining unmodified 10% outcompete them until the original design won out again? Or even if you got 100%, wouldn’t they eventually just re-evolve pain on their own?
Issue 5: How would you actually implement wild animal genetic modification on such a large scale, for so many different species?
Issue 6: Ecosystems can be very fragile and interventions often have severe unknown consequences. It seems likely that genetically modifying large amount of wild animals could have severe effects that could indirectly kill many humans and animals.
Issue 8: Even if you had a way to do all of the above, what would the cost be? It seems likely to be extremely high.
Issue 9: How on earth do you think you will convince governments to let you do this, given the extreme backlash to far less controversial genetic modifications?
A lot of these arguments apply for wild animals but not so much for farmed.
Even if most humans die young if they lose the ability to feel pain, that is not true for Jo Cameron. And the idea of some people thinking about this is to just modify the mutated gene she has in others. I asked GPT-4 and it says that other animals have that gene too.
But it’s not such a big issue if farmed animals injure themselves or die young because they injure themselves. I imagine that injuries are mostly bad because of pain. Higher pre-slaughter mortality would make it less profitable but farmers might find ways to prevent them from dying young or meat prices could be higher.
If it was practical to do this, I think it would be a good idea.
I do not think it is practical or possible to do this on a large scale in our lifetimes. Trying to mess with the genetics of 80 billion animals from 10 million different species seems inherently doomed to failure, and I can think of so many ways it could go catastrophically wrong.
I would be interested in a post arguing otherwise though!
Regarding “10 million species”: most of the impact would be from doing this for the few species that are farmed in very large numbers like chickens and whiteleg shrimp
I am interested in writing a more thorough follow up post. If you would be willing, could you briefly explain some of your concerns. I want to be thorough in my response! Thank you
Sure.
Issue 1:What genes cause pain expression? are they the same for every animal of every species? It seems likely that an intervention which works in one animal won’t work in another.
Issue 2: How do you check that your intervention is working? For example, suppose your original raccoons screech when you poke them, but the genetically engineered racoons don’t. Is that because they are experiencing less pain, or have they merely evolved not to screech? You’ll have to figure this out for every single species you work on.
issue 3: When humans lose the abililty to feel pain, it usually results in them dying young, as they don’t realise subconciously that their body is being damaged. How would you avoid a similar thing happening to wild animals?
issue 4: Following on from the above, it seems that feeling pain is a huge evolutionary advantage (which is why we evolved it in the first place). If you found a way to genetically modify, say, 90% of a wild coyote population to feel far less pain, wouldn’t the remaining unmodified 10% outcompete them until the original design won out again? Or even if you got 100%, wouldn’t they eventually just re-evolve pain on their own?
Issue 5: How would you actually implement wild animal genetic modification on such a large scale, for so many different species?
Issue 6: Ecosystems can be very fragile and interventions often have severe unknown consequences. It seems likely that genetically modifying large amount of wild animals could have severe effects that could indirectly kill many humans and animals.
Issue 8: Even if you had a way to do all of the above, what would the cost be? It seems likely to be extremely high.
Issue 9: How on earth do you think you will convince governments to let you do this, given the extreme backlash to far less controversial genetic modifications?
A lot of these arguments apply for wild animals but not so much for farmed.
Even if most humans die young if they lose the ability to feel pain, that is not true for Jo Cameron. And the idea of some people thinking about this is to just modify the mutated gene she has in others. I asked GPT-4 and it says that other animals have that gene too.
But it’s not such a big issue if farmed animals injure themselves or die young because they injure themselves. I imagine that injuries are mostly bad because of pain. Higher pre-slaughter mortality would make it less profitable but farmers might find ways to prevent them from dying young or meat prices could be higher.
Thank you! Great thoughts.