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Let's not pretend ... if babies can be artificially created, why not tweak its genes a little bit? It's harmless right; what's wrong with going for brown hair,

• Ygg2 9y ago
  I for one, welcome viruses that target people with green eyes!
• afthonos 9y ago
  > Let's not pretend ... if babies can be artificially created, why not tweak its genes a little bit? Why not indeed? We have taken, or are trying really hard to take, natural selection out of the equation for ourselves. Doing so without an alternative way to bring out desirable traits and reduce undesirable ones condemns our descendants to lifetimes of treatment for ever more exotic and complicated genetic diseases. I don't think that's ethical, and I don't think stopping medical research is either, leaving us with gene editing of embryos (and hopefully someday fully developed humans) as the only way to ensure the health of coming generations. Of course, you're right that this will have profound social effects. But so will doing nothing while continuing medical advances.
  • jansho 9y ago
    The question is do you want to survive or do you want to be more super. IMO the gene-editing/eugenics topic falls under the latter. No one is saying that curing diseases is bad. But the fact is our lives will always be blighted with something, if not Disease A then it's Disease B and if not Accident C. Nature has a wonderful way of intervening, somehow or another. If you find one, then it'll just get more creative. And by the way, I would argue that most of the current ailments are human-generated - like climate change and lung cancer caused by smoking. The only leeway I can sort of accept is serious hereditary diseases like madness passed down through generations - but even then I'm cautious that it'll open the floodgates. No. The risk is too much - a new human race with a clearly defined code of what's good and what's not good for them? What about those who can't "make it"? What about the rest of us who can't afford fancy genes? Geez, this is Darwinian struggle taken to the extreme.
    • afthonos 9y ago
      > No one is saying that curing diseases is bad. But the fact is our lives will always be blighted with something, if not Disease A then it's Disease B and if not Accident C. But our entire history has seen us making it safer to be alive. From cooking to antibiotics to now immunotherapy, we have reduced the risk of death at every turn. This even extends to mobility: we have reduced the ways in which we move (what is a road but a disincentive to use any other path?) in exchange for making them massively safer. Safety hasn't monotonously increased, but the pattern is clear. And successful. Saying that it can't be perfect isn't an argument against continuing. > No. The risk is too much - a new human race with a clearly defined code of what's good and what's not good for them? What about those who can't "make it"? What about the rest of us who can't afford fancy genes? This is a very valid ethical concern, and I agree that getting it wrong is a scary prospect. But I don't think that getting it wrong is inevitable, nor do I think that inaction is better. In particular, the "never" position relies instead on blind chance. It may seem seductive because, hey, after all, blind chance is how we got here in the first place, but we suffer from tremendous survivor bias; our fitness to our environment is built on billions upon billions of failed experiments that resulted in death for each of the test subjects. I think it's perfectly fine to look for better models. The societal problems you're worried about are very real, but I think the solution is to talk about them and work them out.
      • jansho 9y ago
        > but I think the solution is to talk about them and work them out. Hey you're right, and I appreciate that you're open about your thoughts. But my position differs in that I think there isn't anything to "work out", because it's a non-essential technology. Sure it might eradicate diseases, it might. But there are other ways to tackle them that have far less controversial impact. > But I don't think that getting it wrong is inevitable, nor do I think that inaction is better. With tools that have greater potential to be massively destructive, they inevitably end up like that. Look how we shot ourselves in the foot with the inventions of dynamite and nuclear fission. Yes they did open doors, but arguably we've upped our own risk of self-destruction too. "Inactive" here just means rejecting this path and taking up another instead. And, the latter may well open doors more beneficial to us. Look, I have to say that I dislike looking at society and social issues from the Darwinian perspective. It's just too cynical, and kinda missing the point of living. We're not just here to survive. Whatever age we live to, every one has a chance to witness the wonder of just existing. We keep passing the torch of enlightenment, but we're not supposed to fall in the trap that we have control and therefore power. Trust me, Nature will laugh right back at us. And you can't compare this issue with our rich history of wit and innovation. For a start, the generations before were trying to change the world, and this is radically different to creating a new "breed" of humans, where going down this path is not only superficial, it's most likely very painful for a lot of us. Let's shift perspective a bit here: with this new "species", ours can get wiped out.
• wyager 9y ago
  That's still not eugenics. I also think it's a very good idea. I will be using this technology if it becomes available by the time I have children.