The horror. The horror…

And yes, “huance” is really a word.

MMB

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axlotl_tank

I’m not saying I’m full on against it, just that I am wary, as I am with most all new technology. Do you have any idea how long I kept my walk-man before I upgraded to a Disc-man? *shrug*

You know though, it just occurred to me that I eat a great number of things that I try not to think about while I am eating them (bottom shelf hot dogs, the kind that simply say “meat”, but not what kind), perhaps I’m already eating vat meat. Or something infinitely more disturbing.

As a fan of science fiction almost anything so fantastic as vat-grown meat holds a certain allure, but I’ve seen the “harmless” holodecks on Star Trek malfunction too many times to think that this scientific miracle food wouldn’t do similar. I am talking of course of meat-monsters! Sentient masses of meat bent on the destruction of the human race! Ok, maybe not meat-monsters, but something more along the line of ill effects on the human body.

Third arms, third legs (hehe), third eyes, it all sounds cool until you sprout one… then it stops sounding cool and starts BEING cool! Heh, I don’t know, I think I’d rather eat less meat than eat something that didn’t naturally come from the earth. Am I alone in my dubiety?

Actually, a lot of what a cow *actually* lives on is single-cell protein from the microbes in its gut that do the real work of digestion. AFAIK, no multi-cellular organism can break down cellulose on its own.

As for hormones, I understand that tissue cultures have been commonplace in medical experimentation for a very long time, and I don’t know that they actually require growth hormone.

Sekrit science fact: no-one knows what they really require. AFAIK there are *no* completely defined media for growing mammalian cells. Even if you mostly use a defined medium (that is, one with a strict chemical recipe) you always end up “topping it off” with blood serum or other body fluids. Dancing in circles waving a dead chicken and then adding the chicken feet to the mix may also be involved. “Black art” is what other scientists call it.

“Growth factors” are the things that are in the blood serum that are necessary but you have no idea what they are. It’s fancy science talk for “stuff. that you need. to grow!” Growth hormone may be involved, as well as other hormones *hands wave wildly* — and stuff! that you need!

Yeah, you could add pituitary glands, thyroid, etc. — but then you’d have to add other tissues that *they* depend on, and they would depend on others, and before you know it — you’re growing a cow.