PSS is not the only example of when artificial selection has gone wrong. There are many positives to artificial selection people just need to become educated and make sure they are not breeding for genes that can have adverse reactions, other than what was originally expected. This does raise the question of the ethics of artificial selection in relation to the quality of life the pigs will have living with the stress gene. Humans have been doing artificial selection for a long time with many successes and some failures. When working with live animals the mutations can become even more apparent in the behavior of the animal. With every success has to come some failures and as they are to be expected with any science. Mutations are very unpredictable
…show more content…
This later changed with the introduction of Medellin genetics which allowed people to understand a little better the complex process of breeding livestock for desirable traits. Today, there is a lot more technology that can help a breeder to breed the livestock, helping to bring up another question. The other question is how we can or should look into animal welfare while artificially breeding. This is not occurring in the case of the PSS gene in show pigs as the pigs are living with a disease that causes them many anxieties throughout their life, and even rougher in their last minutes. With the invention of the artificial insemination (AI) rod natural breeding was no longer required making it easier for people to get the boar they want to breed with the sow they want. Some other points of interest include superovulation which is allowed several embryos/ eggs from a single donor, more than they would usually produce. Some people have gone so far as to start cloning animals like Dolly the sheep who was the first animal to be cloned from an adult. (Sandøe, P., Christiansen, S., & Gamborg, C. n.d). The further ethical implications of ignoring genetic diseases such as PSS are quite large and hard to comprehend. There are many times that humans inadvertently breed a bad thing in with a good gene. The only problem with that is that they do nothing to fix the issue, and just
This later changed with the introduction of Medellin genetics which allowed people to understand a little better the complex process of breeding livestock for desirable traits. Today, there is a lot more technology that can help a breeder to breed the livestock, helping to bring up another question. The other question is how we can or should look into animal welfare while artificially breeding. This is not occurring in the case of the PSS gene in show pigs as the pigs are living with a disease that causes them many anxieties throughout their life, and even rougher in their last minutes. With the invention of the artificial insemination (AI) rod natural breeding was no longer required making it easier for people to get the boar they want to breed with the sow they want. Some other points of interest include superovulation which is allowed several embryos/ eggs from a single donor, more than they would usually produce. Some people have gone so far as to start cloning animals like Dolly the sheep who was the first animal to be cloned from an adult. (Sandøe, P., Christiansen, S., & Gamborg, C. n.d). The further ethical implications of ignoring genetic diseases such as PSS are quite large and hard to comprehend. There are many times that humans inadvertently breed a bad thing in with a good gene. The only problem with that is that they do nothing to fix the issue, and just