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As I said in another thread on this article: On the one hand, hurray for them for trying to eliminate a couple of quite serious diseases. On the other hand, w
by AllegedAlec 8y ago
As I said in another thread on this article:
On the one hand, hurray for them for trying to eliminate a couple of quite serious diseases.
On the other hand, we have very little clue what the long term effects of not having CCR5 will be for these children. Furthermore, do we really trust China to start messing with people's DNA? I could think up several uses for this that are downright dangerous in the hands of a country like China.
Some of them:
- Remove a key gene in a metabolic pathway which can be mitigated by dietary supplements, creating a biological dead man's switch in order to make it easier to control the population.
- Inserting a viral genome into the host genome (preferably also under some deadman's switch), creating in effect a biological weapon
- abhishek0318 8y agoSure. Western countries are all good and pure.
- AllegedAlec 8y agoI never said anything about Western countries being paragons of moral clarity. However, for most of them, it has at least been a few decades since they last made camps where imprisoned people are subjected to torture. And in most Western countries you don't get imprisoned for speaking out against the government, or being a journalist without government permissions. And most Western don't feel they have to ban innocuous search terms, such as "Big yellow duck", or "Square", or the letter 'n'.
- landryraccoon 8y agoThis technology might not work at all, or it might be highly effective after refinements. If it is highly effective moral arguments are moot. Genetic engineering will be like nuclear weapons. A nation that desires to be competitive or have economic dominance won’t have any choice, it will be forced to adopt its usage (or be left behind). Even agreements to control nuclear weapons that could cause human extinction still leave nuclear weapons in the hands of many major nations (and a handful of tiny ones) so international agreements have little chance of curtailing genetic engineering.
- AllegedAlec 8y agoI'm not saying that we should try to ban genetic engineering. It's here to stay. I'm just trying to point out that the Gattaca situation people seem to be afraid of is not even in the top 10 of worst scenario's.
- sizzle 8y agoThis is truly terrifying and sounds like the plot of a dystopian film. What a time to be alive.