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>But here, too, the right approach is to be cautiously liberal: the burden is on society to justify when and why it is wrong to edit the genome. I think this s

>But here, too, the right approach is to be cautiously liberal: the burden is on society to justify when and why it is wrong to edit the genome. I think this sentiment hits the right note. I am wholly unpersuaded by moral arguments about "playing God". We've been doing that for our entire existence. Quite successfully, thank you very much. But tinkering with our genome and that of our children does present ethical quandaries that need to be discussed and resolved. By allowing by default except where there is a compelling objection, we can both avoid the majority of the negative consequences while embracing the real positives that gene modification will bring.

smacktoward 11y ago
> Quite successfully, thank you very much. The many victims of the various eugenics movements of the 19th and 20th centuries might disagree with this sentiment.
- redthrowaway 11y ago
  And the countless people whose lives were saved by medical research might disagree with yours. "Playing God" simply means changing the universe to better suit our needs. It is a synonym for "maximizing human agency", and it's a damned good thing.
  - thesimpsons1022 11y ago
    You must admit though that humans will sometimes do misguided things with good intentions? There are many examples of us thinking that we fully understand a process, when in reality we don't. This can and has led to terrible consequences in the past. One concern I harbor is that perhaps with gene modification we will lose the genetic variability that allows animals to adapt and survive and evolve further. Variability also allows species to survive black swan events.
cryoshon 11y ago
Sure, it's an ethical quandry to play with an unborn child's genes, but keep in mind, these children will be born to the same parents who elect to modify them. A parent who wants to genetically modify their child is a parent who has plenty of resources to raise a child, and plenty of good-will toward their child to the point where they are trying to intervene even before the child is born. These children who are genetically modified would likely grow up being sent to piano lessons, math tutors, and little league. So what if they're genetically modified to be good at these things? That's a child who will grow up with a leg up on the world already. This is the next step of our species evolution.
- maratd 11y ago
  > This is the next step of our species evolution. The ethical problem isn't necessarily with the individual or even the family. Genetic engineering isn't so simple. Genes frequently have multiple functions. You might edit a few genes and give someone a high IQ, but those same set of genes now make them socially inept. So let's say tons of parents do this. You now have a generation that can't effectively socialize and communicate. How does that affect our species as a whole? Most of humanity's accomplishments are a direct result of our ability to work together. We may worship the individual, but it's groups of people that actually get things done. So by tweaking that one little tidbit to increase IQ, you completely threw the delicate balance out of whack and sent everybody back to the stone age. That's just one hypothetical example. By bringing gene selection purely to the parent level, you're excluding millions of years of evolutionary pressure for the sake of whatever happens to be fashionable in that moment. The good news is that most genetic modifications will have immediate and nasty consequences. You can dick around with corn and have fields upon fields that go bad and simply pick out the winners ... try doing that with human beings and there will be a huge outcry, very quickly.
  - puredemo 11y ago
    >You now have a generation that can't effectively socialize and communicate. Not just one generation -- Crispr changes are passed down inter-generationally.
Chickenosaurus 11y ago
I agree with you that editing the human genome is not generally ethically objectionable and should be allowed, but I also think that tinkering with our genome will create a whole new set of societal issues that will reinforce the current ones, which humanity has been historically bad at solving. Imagine a world where genetical engineering is very effective, but not cheap. The already advantaged can create designer babies and therefore have the ability to give their offspring an additional edge. Social mobility could be seriously limited if unmodified humans have a worse chance to get good work or work at all. Even today, many people see the poor as inferior because they often have a bad education. In the future, they could be legitimately genetically inferior. Gattaca (1997) is an excellent movie with a similar theme: “A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel“.
- vectorjohn 11y ago
  I'm always pretty skeptical of the worry that this will be restricted to wealthy. For one, I don't think it would (or at least not for long), but additionally, won't that just mean that the people with these benefits will just out compete the rest? So over time everyone alive will have whatever the benefits are even if slowly. This is just a much faster version of natural selection. In other words, in the long run it won't matter is all I'm saying.
  - redthrowaway 11y ago
    Vaccines and clean drinking water used to be restricted to the wealthy, too.

smacktoward 11y ago

> Quite successfully, thank you very much. The many victims of the various eugenics movements of the 19th and 20th centuries might disagree with this sentiment.

redthrowaway 11y ago
And the countless people whose lives were saved by medical research might disagree with yours. "Playing God" simply means changing the universe to better suit our needs. It is a synonym for "maximizing human agency", and it's a damned good thing.
- thesimpsons1022 11y ago
  You must admit though that humans will sometimes do misguided things with good intentions? There are many examples of us thinking that we fully understand a process, when in reality we don't. This can and has led to terrible consequences in the past. One concern I harbor is that perhaps with gene modification we will lose the genetic variability that allows animals to adapt and survive and evolve further. Variability also allows species to survive black swan events.

cryoshon 11y ago

Sure, it's an ethical quandry to play with an unborn child's genes, but keep in mind, these children will be born to the same parents who elect to modify them. A parent who wants to genetically modify their child is a parent who has plenty of resources to raise a child, and plenty of good-will toward their child to the point where they are trying to intervene even before the child is born. These children who are genetically modified would likely grow up being sent to piano lessons, math tutors, and little league. So what if they're genetically modified to be good at these things? That's a child who will grow up with a leg up on the world already. This is the next step of our species evolution.

maratd 11y ago
> This is the next step of our species evolution. The ethical problem isn't necessarily with the individual or even the family. Genetic engineering isn't so simple. Genes frequently have multiple functions. You might edit a few genes and give someone a high IQ, but those same set of genes now make them socially inept. So let's say tons of parents do this. You now have a generation that can't effectively socialize and communicate. How does that affect our species as a whole? Most of humanity's accomplishments are a direct result of our ability to work together. We may worship the individual, but it's groups of people that actually get things done. So by tweaking that one little tidbit to increase IQ, you completely threw the delicate balance out of whack and sent everybody back to the stone age. That's just one hypothetical example. By bringing gene selection purely to the parent level, you're excluding millions of years of evolutionary pressure for the sake of whatever happens to be fashionable in that moment. The good news is that most genetic modifications will have immediate and nasty consequences. You can dick around with corn and have fields upon fields that go bad and simply pick out the winners ... try doing that with human beings and there will be a huge outcry, very quickly.
- puredemo 11y ago
  >You now have a generation that can't effectively socialize and communicate. Not just one generation -- Crispr changes are passed down inter-generationally.

Chickenosaurus 11y ago

I agree with you that editing the human genome is not generally ethically objectionable and should be allowed, but I also think that tinkering with our genome will create a whole new set of societal issues that will reinforce the current ones, which humanity has been historically bad at solving. Imagine a world where genetical engineering is very effective, but not cheap. The already advantaged can create designer babies and therefore have the ability to give their offspring an additional edge. Social mobility could be seriously limited if unmodified humans have a worse chance to get good work or work at all. Even today, many people see the poor as inferior because they often have a bad education. In the future, they could be legitimately genetically inferior. Gattaca (1997) is an excellent movie with a similar theme: “A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel“.

vectorjohn 11y ago
I'm always pretty skeptical of the worry that this will be restricted to wealthy. For one, I don't think it would (or at least not for long), but additionally, won't that just mean that the people with these benefits will just out compete the rest? So over time everyone alive will have whatever the benefits are even if slowly. This is just a much faster version of natural selection. In other words, in the long run it won't matter is all I'm saying.
- redthrowaway 11y ago
  Vaccines and clean drinking water used to be restricted to the wealthy, too.