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this wierd idear i had..

why havent any scientist tried to put chloropasts into humans cells? or maybe they have? idk, it seems like a way to reduce the amount of food people would have to eat but we wouldnt be dependant on it. maybe just human arms or something that is usually in the sun..and maybe this would reduce sunburing for people like me who burn with sunscreen on..

o..feel free to tell me how stupid this is..or tell me how brillant it is..

thanks

Brad
 
It is neither stupid nor brilliant. It is simply unethical. Messing with the human physiology like that is dangerous and unnecessary.

We aren't even ready to think about trying stuff like that at this point in time. We don't even understand much simpler things, like the potential long-term effects of bio-engineered corn yet!
 
The two systems are apples and oranges. Just dropping an element from one into the other won't accomplish much... the body won't know how to take advantage of it. I'm guessing almost the entire system would have to be "hybridized" for it to begin to work...

Plus plants don't use up much energy just sitting there. For all I know just eating a candy bar could get you the same amount of energy you'd photosynthesize in a day.

So, even totally ignoring all the ethical concerns, there's a lot more to it.
 
Interesting idea.
 
Or put muscle cells in vegetable plants and the garden will weed & harvest itself.
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (herenorthere @ Jan. 24 2006,7:28)]Or put muscle cells in vegetable plants and the garden will weed & harvest itself.
You'd have to be careful when harvesting them. If they take arms and revolt you'll be in a world of hurt. And moms all over the world would have to find another way to get their kids to eat their vegies. They could no longer say, "Eat your brussel sprouts, it won't kill you!"
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it'd be pretty hard to get human cells to not immediately destroy these weird green things that somehow penetrated the outer defenses.  it would be even more difficult to get the cells to reroute their chemistry to make use of the chloroplasts.

if we could splice the human genome to include the genes that plants have that say "make chloroplasts and use them", that might work.  The plant genes would develop right along with all the normal human genes in the embryo.  

But the genes we have and the genes plants have are so radically different...it could never work out.  It would be like taking a French class, and all of a sudden one day the teacher starts speaking Martian.  It's one thing to hybridize two closely related species of Sarracenia...it's quite another to hybridize a human and a plant.

It would be really sweet though!!  
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Interesting, but I'll tell you this - I won't be volunteering for that kind of study.
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Peter
 
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