- Title
- Human health care: the promise of animal biotechnology
- Creator
- Ries, Nola M.
- Relation
- Designer Animals: Mapping the Issues in Animal Biotechnology p. 159-188
- Relation
- http://www.utppublishing.com/Designer-Animals-Mapping-the-Issues-in-Animal-Biotechnology.html
- Publisher
- University of Toronto Press
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- The instrumental use of animals for human benefit is expanding through transgenic technologies, including the technological capacity to modify animals at the genetic level to enhance their suitability to meet human health needs. Numerous possibilities exist to use animal biotechnology to benefit human health. Through transgenesis, goats, cattle, rabbits, and other mammals can produce proteins in their milk to be extracted to develop pharmaceuticals for human use. Pigs can be genetically modified to produce organs and tissues compatible for transplantation in people. Transgenic animals can be engineered for immunity against diseases that afflict them and that can be transmitted across species to cause human disease. Livestock raised for human consumption can be genetically altered to produce more nutritious meat and milk, to eliminate allergenic components, or to reduce the environmental impacts of industrial animal production. Most of these applications are still at the research stage, but some may enter the marketplace or medical practice sooner rather than later. This chapter discusses these various uses of transgenic animals, all aimed at promoting human health. The chapter takes an expansive view of health, which includes the use of animals for direct therapeutic purposes such as drug production and organ supply, but also their use as sources of nutrition for humans, as disease vectors for humans, and as living beings whose cultivation by humans has environmental consequences.
- Subject
- transgenesis; genetic modification; health; animals
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1058558
- Identifier
- uon:16446
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781442639973
- Language
- eng
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