GE Soldiers - The future?

Scientists have discovered that deactivating a gene in mice makes them fearless!

www.newscientist.com...

Deactivating a specific gene transforms meek mice into daredevils, researchers have found. The team believe the research might one day enable people suffering from fear – in the form of phobias or anxiety disorders, for example – to be clinically treated.

he research found that mice lacking an active gene for the protein stathmin are not only more courageous, but are also slower to learn fear responses to pain-associated stimuli, says geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky, at Rutgers University in New Jersey, US.

In the experiments, the stathmin-lacking mice wandered out into the centre of an open box, in defiance of the normal mouse instinct to hide along the box’s walls to avoid potential predators.

And to test learned fear, the mice were exposed to a loud sound followed by a brief electric shock from the floor below them. A day later, normal mice froze when the sound was played again. Stathmin-lacking mice barely reacted to the sound at all.

truely fearless soldiers probably aren't far away

Well if it will happend I don't think that anyone of us will be here to wittness it... It is extremely hard to make a robot to do a thing, and to make the whole procedure go smoothly... And what if something went wrong... At the end of the day humans will always be better to judge than robots...But this is just my opinion!!!

good find, warpboost, just saw that myself. I wouldn't be suprised if they start using gene therapy on people with mental disorders (fear-related ones) to cure them.

Figher Master FIN: we aren't really talking about robots although emotionless soldiers with no sense of right or wrong might seem similar to robots.

I personally think they will have gay/transexual genes removed (this is possible)

LOL what does this have to do with anything?
Ever hear of Alexander the Great?

Besides, any race of genetically engineered super-soldiers, outside the moral objections to creating a subspecies that is useless except for battle, would quickly become the greatest threat to those who created them in the first place....

[edit on 11/20/05 by xmotex]

Did you actually read on the other page where we discussed that the gene for homophobia could be removed, all the soldiers could be straight or all the soldiers could be gay.

It may sound a bit weird in hindsight but was supposed to be for morale purposes.

Yeah sorry, missed your explanation later in the thread.

It might be simpler just to make them asexual, getting rid of the issue entirely.

That might serve to make them less human, but I think once we've given them chitin armor and ears like a bat the point would be moot anyway

[edit on 11/21/05 by xmotex]

Good point as to making them asexual but without it do you think we might see a lack of agression.

Not saying this is necessarily a bad thing (makes them calm, emotionless killers and removes certain anatomical weakpoints).

I glad you took the time to reread the thread, saved me from reposting my ideas.

[edit on 21-11-2005 by fatcat2]