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Basically this. I think that we are in a very awkward time right now, where are we understand how things work mainly in a read-only degree, but are just finally

Basically this. I think that we are in a very awkward time right now, where are we understand how things work mainly in a read-only degree, but are just finally turning on write access. The next genetic leaps in the next century are going to be stratospheric. Regarding the headline of this article, if anything, the past century has been great for keeping death at bay and promoting life when it otherwise would not have thrived, but I don't think there will be a major shift in evolution from this because there won't be enough time for it to manifest vs the changes we're about to institute via the above paragraph.

tremon 11y ago
> The next genetic leaps in the next century are going to be stratospheric. Agreed. I'm afraid your assumption may be completely true. The sad thing is that such a rapid market capture will preclude verification of cross-generational effects of our modifications. And we don't have a good track record for getting things right on the first try. As a hypothetical example, how many generations do you think it will take to recognize if one particular gene splicing will make interbreeding between spliced vs non-spliced offspring impossible?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Well, not impossible. Just splice again. Nothing is irreversible.
  - tremon 11y ago
    Of course, "just splice again". Why not. We can always take one of the original eggs, undo the modification, and put it back in the womb of the now 70-year old mother. And kill the 30-year old defective daughter, while you're at it. I do hope that is not what you meant with your comment though. I prefer not to think of fellow human beings as living petri dishes, so I don't consider field-patching an acceptable solution when discussing genetic manipulation.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Of course I meant, the next generation need not be split into two types of human. The next generation can change again. The point of genetic modification is, that the next generation doesn't have to exactly resemble the one before. So the straw-man of 'what if they can't interbreed' is moot.
- auganov 11y ago
  If we truly hit an exponential curve, won't standard sexual interbreeding become a thing of the past? I think the big problem will be actually figuring out which DNA configurations yield a human/whatever that's acceptable by human standards? That is mapping DNAs to expected phenotypes.

tremon 11y ago

> The next genetic leaps in the next century are going to be stratospheric. Agreed. I'm afraid your assumption may be completely true. The sad thing is that such a rapid market capture will preclude verification of cross-generational effects of our modifications. And we don't have a good track record for getting things right on the first try. As a hypothetical example, how many generations do you think it will take to recognize if one particular gene splicing will make interbreeding between spliced vs non-spliced offspring impossible?

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Well, not impossible. Just splice again. Nothing is irreversible.
- tremon 11y ago
  Of course, "just splice again". Why not. We can always take one of the original eggs, undo the modification, and put it back in the womb of the now 70-year old mother. And kill the 30-year old defective daughter, while you're at it. I do hope that is not what you meant with your comment though. I prefer not to think of fellow human beings as living petri dishes, so I don't consider field-patching an acceptable solution when discussing genetic manipulation.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Of course I meant, the next generation need not be split into two types of human. The next generation can change again. The point of genetic modification is, that the next generation doesn't have to exactly resemble the one before. So the straw-man of 'what if they can't interbreed' is moot.
auganov 11y ago
If we truly hit an exponential curve, won't standard sexual interbreeding become a thing of the past? I think the big problem will be actually figuring out which DNA configurations yield a human/whatever that's acceptable by human standards? That is mapping DNAs to expected phenotypes.