Boy, Pam, you have opened up a subject that has conflicted me for decades now.

On one hand, I abhor animal testing and experimentation for any reason. I don't know what makes us think that just because we have opposible thumbs we are superior. God watches over even the lowly sparrow. Also, genetic manipulation of any sort for any reason scares me because I think we are getting dangerously close to playing God when we play with his building blocks.

On the other hand, I would be DEAD now if Minkowski had not removed that pancreas from that dog looking to study fat digestion, discovering instead the cause of diabetes. And I take recombinant DNA origin insulin every day. This is cow or pig insulin genetically altered to be identical to human insulin, to eliminate reactions and complications caused from injecting a substance from a foreign species in my body, thus enabling me to live healthier and longer.

I am conflicted.

Where I have no conflict, though, is experiemntation whose sole pupose is to satisfy someone's curiosity. I once saw a picture of a cat with permanent electrodes implanted in its brain. It was artificially, but permanently, in a state of REM so the experimenters could study dreams. Because so many people die from dreaming! The writer of the article nonchalantly stated the cat would be destroyed when the experiments were completed. This was not put out by PETA (whose motives are noble but whose methods I sometimes question) and it was not very long ago that I saw this (some 10-20 year ago). I also don't believe in genetic manipulation to produce a superior human. The analogies to selective mating are not quite the same, because it is still left largely up to nature, and no "inferior" embryos are destroyed in the process. And I doubt many diseases will be eliminated by genetic selection, because these diseases originate through mutations, anyway. I had always heard diabetes was a genetic disease, so I questioned my doctor's diagnosis, as there was no diabetes in my family. His answer was "the gene has got to mutate somewhere". Genetic THERAPY may eventually prove to be some benefit, but I really doubt genetic MANIPULATION will eliminate any disease. Those genes will just keep mutating.

To sum it up, I think we, collectively as human beings, need to ponder ALL the ramifications - actual benefit to humans, as well as all factors that bear on it - financial, moral, spiritual, natural. It's a heavy thing for our little minds to grasp.