This is wrong, but interesting
Researchers at UCLA have co-opted genes in E. coli and plants that burn fat and inserted them into rats, allowing the rats to eat a high-fat diet while showing activity and body size exhibited by thin rats.
Link to the Technology Review article.
The genetic alterations enabled the animals to convert fat into carbon dioxide and remain lean while eating the equivalent of a fast-food diet. [emphasis mine.]
The feat, detailed in the current issue of Cell Metabolism introduces a new approach to combating the growing obesity problem in humans. Although the proof-of-concept study is far from being tested in humans, it may point to new strategies for borrowing biological functions from bacteria and other species to improve human health.
This is just wrong, imho. First, the story later notes that because the fat isn’t converted into sugar, “which could have the dangerous side effect of promoting high blood sugar and diabetes.” Instead, the story said, it’s as if the fat disappears in thin air. Though I don’t know the volumes of CO2 we’re talking about, do we really want to celebrate a new way to get 6 billion (and rising) people producing more greenhouse gases with every breath? (I dunno; this comment may be akin to the global-climate-change deniers who mock the rest of us by saying that carbon dioxide is “natural,” done by every living being. How could that be bad?)
It’s wrong secondly because the world doesn’t need a technology that allows it to continue consuming at American levels. The costs of profligacy in food have individual effects, of course, in all the gross and misshapen bodies, ill health, and early mortality. But it has collective costs as well, such as all the resources that go into producing all the “extra” stuff we stuff into our faces, ’cause we can.
Likewise, even the individual effects are not confined only to bloat and blighted quality of life. There is a theory that substance abuses (and their consequences) are nature’s signals of spiritual pain, in the same way that exploding pain in one’s chest is nature’s signal of a heart attack.
The implication is that even if science can take away the physical manifestations of a malady, it doesn’t mean the malady is no longer present. Would you really think yourself better off if, say, you didn’t feel pain when you were on fire? It wouldn’t hurt, but you’d be severely injured.
Through years of dieting and hundreds of pounds lost, my life didn’t start getting better — I didn’t start experiencing a routine state of happiness — until I addressed some of the reasons that were feeding my overfeeding, instead of just the overfeeding itself.
If they can come up with gene therapy that fills my spiritual deficit, great. But the current prospect, to me, is just another example of humankind’s ignoring a problem and addressing the symptom instead.