Fundie nightmare words mashed together to form futuristic super-Satan drug
Published by punkass marc October 17th, 2007 in Punkass!Genetics. Birth control.
Alone, each of those phrases strikes fear into the heart of nonrationalites everywhere. Together, they spell the apocalypse:
RNA interference is a way of “silencing a gene” to stop it working properly, and the researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston have identified a gene called ZP3 which is active in eggs just before they are fertilised.
ZP3 produces a protein which allows the sperm to bind to the surface of the egg. If this protein isn’t there, the egg can’t be fertilised.
The Boston team “silenced” the ZP3 gene in mice, and found they could not get pregnant.
Take heart, fundies. This new form of genocide is at least a decade away, which should give you plenty of time to prepare your next assault on human progress.
Okay, on the one hand: SUPER SWEET! If they could entirely shut off my fertility, particularily without pulling out my uterus, GREAT.
On the other hand, the history of steralization is not pleasant. I could see some fear of conducting this on “undesirable” groups as part of genocide.
When oh when will they come up with more BC options for men?
hey antigone,
it’s reversible, so it can’t be done permanently.
this all has a kinda of ‘children of men’ feeling to it.
Ugh, this is why biology should be mandatory for everybody. RNA is the intermediate between gene and protein:
DNA —–> RNA ——> protein product
Interrupting RNA production isn’t permanent, or bad, or scary. Our cells do it themselves all the time. After all, you don’t want every single gene active at all times. So it wouldn’t be sterilization and it wouldn’t make all women everywhere infertile. You can’t “catch” the effects of the birth control we have now from another woman, so what makes you think this would spread either? But it seems like this could open up another avenue of research into BC for men: why not look at the proteins in sperm that allow them to burrow into eggs, recognize eggs, etc?