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Nevertheless, it is still astonishing in this context that genetic engineering is capable at all of achieving intended results, but this circumstance too finds a solution, as pragmatic as it is pathetic in sign-theoretical terms, in the way genetic engineers express themselves. The engineering science of genetic crafting regards around 95% of the entire DNA strand quite simply as “genetic refuse”, which in fact only means that its function is as yet unknown. Information like this is so horrifying that it beggars belief. Instead of an appeal for trust, Ron James, director of the US company Pharmaceutical Proteins Ltd, should have his say: by introducing human genes, he succeeded in changing a sheep’s udder so that it produces the protein alpha-1 antitrypsin for the pharmaceutical industry. Speaking about the relationship of the maker of the genetically modified sheep, Tracy, with the enormous, unknown sea of signs of its genome, James says: “We left some of these accidental DNA fragments in the genes just as God produced them and so achieved a high level of productivity.” [9] I’m tempted to place Vološinov’s succinct comment, “The organism and the world meet each other here in the sign”, [10] alongside this. A brief look at the process whereby Tracy was produced should further emphasize the succinctness of the comment. Of the 550 sheep eggs into which the hybrid DNA was injected, as many as 499 survived, but after the eggs were implanted in the foster mothers, only 112 lambs were born. The human gene was also incorporated into only five of these lambs. Of these, only three produced milk containing alpha-1 antitrypsin, two of them in the low concentration of 3 grams per litre. Tracy was the only one of the 112 biotechnologically generated sheep that, with an output of 30 grams of alpha-1 antitrypsin for every litre of milk, lays the genetically engineered golden eggs, as it were.[11] What are we to think of such a science and what trust has it earned when it publishes studies on the environmental compatibility and biological safety of its machinations? Yet the issue here is not about destroying trust, using sign-theoretical considerations, in an up-and-coming scientific field that is considered paradigmatic for the current state of scientific research and has been presented with the most Nobel prizes for biological research since 1953, the year DNA structure was “discovered”. [12]
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