3 ms·
Life will continue to provide sufficient travails, even to those with "perfect" genetics, that I don't think this is a real concern. On the very, very minor en
by finnh 11y ago
Life will continue to provide sufficient travails, even to those with "perfect" genetics, that I don't think this is a real concern.
On the very, very minor end of the spectrum: If I could guarantee that my child (or i) would never have a cold, I would choose that for sure. There is zero downside. My resulting life will not be excessively perfect; people being mean in high school will still scar people for life, etc.
- FussyZeus 11y agoPoint of order: We don't know there's no downside to never having a cold. Unforeseen consequences and all that.
- finnh 11y agoThat's a different argument than OP was making. Clearly if "never having a cold" happens to also mean "dies at 50" then it's not a good idea. But OP was arguing that the experience of having a cold makes you a better person, and thus we perhaps should not edit colds out of our genome.
- Ygg2 11y agoOP, didn't declare any logical means to achieve it. If "never having a cold" might also mean you suffer allergies due hyper immune system. Or be susceptible to a future disease people without cold can easily overcome.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Delmania 11y agoI'm struggling to find the right way to disagree with this. On one hand, we do know the downsides, provided there is no immunization. We don't develop the antibodies needed to fight the disease, and we're at greater risk for an outbreak. Polio was defeated largely due to immunizations, but there's still outbreaks that are devastating because people don't get vaccinated. I'm also not sure we can vaccinate against the cold, I think it's like the flu, it mutates too quickly.
- FussyZeus 11y agoWell right I'm not disagreeing directly, I'm more saying if we could choose to simply not get colds, we don't know definitively what that would mean because it's impossible to test currently in any sort of practical way.