Scientists Create Lady Goats Trapped in Male Bodies

by Stephen Messenger, Porto Alegre, Brazil on 06.12.11



As you probably already know, male goats are called bucks or billies, and female goats are called does or nannies, but the results of some strange genetic modification have given rise to a new term altogether, "goys" -- transgender goats which are essentially females in male bodies. Scientists working for a genetic research institute in New Zealand have begun breeding for these transgender goats, equipped with full male anatomy, in order to see if the milk they produce will bear similarities with human breast milk.

Oh goy, this can't be good.

According to Steffan Browning, an official from New Zealand's Soil and Health Department who recently toured the facility, operated by AgResearch, around 75 percent of the goats bred there are females trapped in the bodies of sterile males. Browning raised concerns about the work being done there, which includes various bioengineering experiments and pharmacological studies -- namely that the transgender modifications could find their way into the broader goat gene pool or even on to other species.

In fact, he wants to see the facility closed immediately.

On the other hand, AgResearch general manager Dr. Jimmy Suttie apparently sees nothing wrong with the work he and his bio-engineering colleagues are up to. He says that transgender goats are born naturally from time to time -- it just so happens that they've decided to breed for this trait specifically in order to test out the milk they produce for traces of human protein. That's right, they're milking billy goats in hopes that human-like milk will come out them.

more

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/06/scientists-create-lady-goats-trapped-in-male-bodies.php

That line never worked for me.

Sonoman

Sometimes science is really sick.

"Gay/Lesbian" is a person(or goat)'s sexual orientation of the brain, i.e., the mind is wired to love another of the same physical sex. "Gay/Lesbian" has no bearing here; this is more like what Chaz Bono has lived and so bravely shared.

It seems to me that fears of this particular gene-tampering experiment spilling over into other species seem unfounded.

But you are right, this is not the same thing. I have no fears of this particular experiment spilling over into other species. But I keep thinking that they will not stop at goats. In fact, I am quite sure that they will not stop there. Even though my college major was in the sciences, I still cringe at some of the things they are doing.

:sarcasm:

If you breed an polled (naturally hornless) sire to a polled dam any offspring that should be male will be hermaphrodites. They can appear female but cannot get pregnant all the way to having female and male genitalia. Goat owners learn not to breed polled to polled and so avoid this problem.

I'm not sure what this fellow is doing. It would be the opposite of the hermaphrodites as they are male with female appearance.

Starting in 2002 ,when Canadian researchers I think, produced 'spider-goats' genetically altered goats that produced spider silk fibers in their milk.

Spider yarn apparently, was used by the US military...the company was Nexia Biotech.. but I've no idea what has happened to the company over the years...

Did I miss the bit where they played with the goat's genome prior to the breeding program?

Are they saying that we only expect human females to produce milk because they're actually females in sterile male bodies? That seems hardly right since female is the default expression of the human genome.