5 ms·

I love everything you said, but the last sentence gave me pause. There are a few cases were experiments on themselves using CRISPR may be at best morally "wron

I love everything you said, but the last sentence gave me pause. There are a few cases were experiments on themselves using CRISPR may be at best morally "wrong". Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your offspring, for example. Another (probably less likely but more interesting to me) example is altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others.

curryst 11y ago
I don't think it's any different from many things we already do that are considered "right". > Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your offspring Is it wrong for someone who has a genetic disorder to breed? What about cases where both parents are carriers of a recessive genetic disorder, which gives the child a 25% chance of expressing the disease and a 50% chance of being a carrier themselves? > altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others. Again, this isn't something we consider morally wrong. Is it morally wrong to let your basement be damp and grow mold? Sure, it's stupid, but is it morally wrong? Is it morally wrong to have unprotected sex? We generally consider an action's morality based on the intent. If your intent is to spread disease, it's wrong. If you had a different intent, but didn't realize the consequences you're not considered to be wrong. I think the more compelling argument is, what happens to people who don't want to alter their DNA if this actually works? If this is allowed in sports, much like steroids, other athletes will be compelled to undergo treatment just to remain competitive. If we can make people smarter, then people who won't undergo treatment could be relegated to doing menial tasks simply because they won't edit their own DNA. To add another interesting corollary to that, what about people that won't do it for religious reasons? I know some people who oppose any kind of genetic alterations for whatever reason because it violates "God's design". I'm sure someone will call it discrimination when they have to flip burgers because they haven't undergone treatment to have an Einstein level IQ like the rest of the workforce.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > > altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others. > Again, this isn't something we consider morally wrong "we" who? I suspect that it something quite a lot of people who consider to be morally wrong (whether they would consider it the kind of moral wrong that it would be desirable to formally sanction, as through legal prohibition on doing it or legal restriction on public interaction if you do it, is a separate consideration, but consider the issue of mandatory vaccination which involves legal restrictions if you fail to take active steps, involving treatment of your own body, to protect yourself and, through herd immunity, others from communicable disease -- its not implausible that many would consider active steps, even involving modifying your own body, that increase the risk of communicable disease sufficiently to not only be abstractly morally wrong, but the kind of moral wrong for which legal sanction is appropriate.) > We generally consider an action's morality based on the intent. If your intent is to spread disease, it's wrong. If you had a different intent, but didn't realize the consequences you're not considered to be wrong. In morality, as in law, while intent is usually important, actions taken without intent to cause harm but in which known risks of harms to others exist and are ignored, or even cases where risks of harm exist which would have been discovered with due care and are unknown to the actor due to their lack of concern, are often also considered wrong despite the absence of specific ill intent.
  - curryst 11y ago
    You touch on mandatory vaccination, which is already largely polarized, but what about any of the hundreds of ways you can decrease your immune response that we don't commonly talk about? Lack of exercise, overconsumption of alcohol, being overweight, these things all decrease the functioning of your immune system, thus inviting disease. Are they morally reprehensible? And how does one way the cost benefit of the genetic modifications? We already have a substantial number of people on immunosuppressants for transplants, among other things. Is it okay for them to invite communicable disease because they would die otherwise? If so, where is the line where it is acceptable to compromise your immune system? > in which known risks of harms to others exist and are ignored What level of possible risk defines an immoral action? If we compare it to driving, there's a known risk that I'm going to kill someone while driving. With genetic modification, there's a very low assumed risk because we honestly haven't the faintest idea what's going to happen. The assumption of benefit is about the same as the assumption of detriment. > cases where risks of harm exist which would have been discovered with due care and are unknown to the actor due to their lack of concern, are often also considered wrong despite the absence of specific ill intent. This is a more nuanced area, especially in medicine. We have a lot of medical research that was enabled, or greatly hastened, by experiments undertaken with little knowledge of what the outcome would be. This would have the advantage of the subjects providing consent, since they seem to be acutely aware that there could be serious side effects. How far can we go without actually applying this research to people? How long will it take to get there, and how much time will trying the research on people save? How many lives could be saved by trying it on people now? > due care I also disagree with the use of this term. What is "due care", and at what point have you satisfied it? It seems to me that if you get to the point where you know all of the potential outcomes, the value of actually doing the experiment is greatly diminished. From my understanding, it seems highly unlikely for this gene splicing to have a radical effect either way. The two most likely outcomes, I think, are that no noticeable change in expression occurs, or the patient dies.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Society will evolve around them and they'll be bread out within a few generations of gene editing can lead to such drastic changes. Considering that even today intelligence isn't that important as far as what limited natural selection we might still be experiencing it might not be such an easy task to accomplish. Also because natural selection has considerably become less effective as we became a technological species gene editing might be our only way to continue our evolution. That said widespread gene editing also decreases the genetic diversity so don't expect anyone to promote it anytime soon until controlled mutation can be successfully added to the process. And while this is an interesting philosophical exercise we are probably at least 5 decades away from it becoming a reality and by then the overall standing of society will change drastically.

curryst 11y ago

I don't think it's any different from many things we already do that are considered "right". > Changing your genes that may introduce defects to your offspring Is it wrong for someone who has a genetic disorder to breed? What about cases where both parents are carriers of a recessive genetic disorder, which gives the child a 25% chance of expressing the disease and a 50% chance of being a carrier themselves? > altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others. Again, this isn't something we consider morally wrong. Is it morally wrong to let your basement be damp and grow mold? Sure, it's stupid, but is it morally wrong? Is it morally wrong to have unprotected sex? We generally consider an action's morality based on the intent. If your intent is to spread disease, it's wrong. If you had a different intent, but didn't realize the consequences you're not considered to be wrong. I think the more compelling argument is, what happens to people who don't want to alter their DNA if this actually works? If this is allowed in sports, much like steroids, other athletes will be compelled to undergo treatment just to remain competitive. If we can make people smarter, then people who won't undergo treatment could be relegated to doing menial tasks simply because they won't edit their own DNA. To add another interesting corollary to that, what about people that won't do it for religious reasons? I know some people who oppose any kind of genetic alterations for whatever reason because it violates "God's design". I'm sure someone will call it discrimination when they have to flip burgers because they haven't undergone treatment to have an Einstein level IQ like the rest of the workforce.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> > altering yourself in a way that invites a communicable disease to take hold, optionally mutate, and begin infecting others. > Again, this isn't something we consider morally wrong "we" who? I suspect that it something quite a lot of people who consider to be morally wrong (whether they would consider it the kind of moral wrong that it would be desirable to formally sanction, as through legal prohibition on doing it or legal restriction on public interaction if you do it, is a separate consideration, but consider the issue of mandatory vaccination which involves legal restrictions if you fail to take active steps, involving treatment of your own body, to protect yourself and, through herd immunity, others from communicable disease -- its not implausible that many would consider active steps, even involving modifying your own body, that increase the risk of communicable disease sufficiently to not only be abstractly morally wrong, but the kind of moral wrong for which legal sanction is appropriate.) > We generally consider an action's morality based on the intent. If your intent is to spread disease, it's wrong. If you had a different intent, but didn't realize the consequences you're not considered to be wrong. In morality, as in law, while intent is usually important, actions taken without intent to cause harm but in which known risks of harms to others exist and are ignored, or even cases where risks of harm exist which would have been discovered with due care and are unknown to the actor due to their lack of concern, are often also considered wrong despite the absence of specific ill intent.
- curryst 11y ago
  You touch on mandatory vaccination, which is already largely polarized, but what about any of the hundreds of ways you can decrease your immune response that we don't commonly talk about? Lack of exercise, overconsumption of alcohol, being overweight, these things all decrease the functioning of your immune system, thus inviting disease. Are they morally reprehensible? And how does one way the cost benefit of the genetic modifications? We already have a substantial number of people on immunosuppressants for transplants, among other things. Is it okay for them to invite communicable disease because they would die otherwise? If so, where is the line where it is acceptable to compromise your immune system? > in which known risks of harms to others exist and are ignored What level of possible risk defines an immoral action? If we compare it to driving, there's a known risk that I'm going to kill someone while driving. With genetic modification, there's a very low assumed risk because we honestly haven't the faintest idea what's going to happen. The assumption of benefit is about the same as the assumption of detriment. > cases where risks of harm exist which would have been discovered with due care and are unknown to the actor due to their lack of concern, are often also considered wrong despite the absence of specific ill intent. This is a more nuanced area, especially in medicine. We have a lot of medical research that was enabled, or greatly hastened, by experiments undertaken with little knowledge of what the outcome would be. This would have the advantage of the subjects providing consent, since they seem to be acutely aware that there could be serious side effects. How far can we go without actually applying this research to people? How long will it take to get there, and how much time will trying the research on people save? How many lives could be saved by trying it on people now? > due care I also disagree with the use of this term. What is "due care", and at what point have you satisfied it? It seems to me that if you get to the point where you know all of the potential outcomes, the value of actually doing the experiment is greatly diminished. From my understanding, it seems highly unlikely for this gene splicing to have a radical effect either way. The two most likely outcomes, I think, are that no noticeable change in expression occurs, or the patient dies.
dogma1138 11y ago
Society will evolve around them and they'll be bread out within a few generations of gene editing can lead to such drastic changes. Considering that even today intelligence isn't that important as far as what limited natural selection we might still be experiencing it might not be such an easy task to accomplish. Also because natural selection has considerably become less effective as we became a technological species gene editing might be our only way to continue our evolution. That said widespread gene editing also decreases the genetic diversity so don't expect anyone to promote it anytime soon until controlled mutation can be successfully added to the process. And while this is an interesting philosophical exercise we are probably at least 5 decades away from it becoming a reality and by then the overall standing of society will change drastically.