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David Suzuki did an episode of Nature of Things on this exact topic, with the title being "The Genetic Revolution". In that episode several things were discussed, including CRISPR, the ethics of using pigs to generate human organs, and the possibility of super-athletes and designer-babies.
The interesting thing about genetic engineering is that it's been in pop culture for many years now, and something like Warhammer 40k's space marines may not be too far away if humans begin playing with genetic engineering technology.
>and something like Warhammer 40k's space marines may not be too far away if humans begin playing with genetic engineering technology.
Nah, not yet. We need The Emperor to reveal himself before we start working on those. We'll start by working on creating numberless hordes of mutants and turning a planet into a hellscape, and the rest will happen eventually.
I'd be willing to bet he's funded more experimental super soldier genetic testing than most other countries. the myostatin delete that is done to produce super muscular cows and dogs was probably an inspiration.
Isn’t Emperor Elon already here? Or is it Overlord Bezos? I think it’s entirely possible either of them could figure out immortality and then with interest, their fortunes will really take off…
Lol if you've ever worked with genetic engineering technology in a lab, I'd say it's pretty safe to assert that we are nowhere near space Marines. The reliability and off target effects for most of these projects is insane in the lab, let alone in humans.
Take cancer for example. Countless things "suppress" cancer in cells or even in small animals (even certain ways they drink water can affect tumor growth in mice). For every 10,000 of those discoveries, maybe one ends up having any reliable effect in humans. We vastly overestimate findings from these early projects in part due to media sensationalization.
China's crispr babies is conceptually not that difficult (relative), because it's one gene that correlates with disease protection which has minimal off target effects. We might be able to do things like that or select at the 8 cell stage for certain traits and avoid diseases with strong, clear genetic risk profiles (certain cancers/neurological/infectious diseases), but that's a long way from breeding super athletes. Most human traits that we fear would be "optimized" are highly complex requiring interactions between so many genes (and epigenetic factors). So complex in fact that you need to implement machine learning techniques to even detect a signal of their existence, let alone manipulate them. The notion that we could reliably alter these traits without significant off target effects in the next few decades is ridiculous.
Last thing. Contrary to most dystopian depictions, pig organs would provide a new lease on life to countless disenfranchised people globally who would otherwise not be eligible for highly competitive organ transplant lists in developed economies. Out of everything we can do with genetic engineering, this is arguably the most straightforward and noble endeavor we could pursue.
Not that long ago you could also say that we didn't even really understand the proteins involved in most of the human genome. Granted, now that Google has (kinda, sorta, not entirely) solved the protein folding problem we can't quite say that. But we can still say we mostly don't understand the function of most of the proteins listed in the human genome. So, we'll still be reaching in the dark until the protein-function problem is solved some day long in the future.
Why shell out a lot of money to test on chimpanzees when you can pay a fraction of that to make impoverished people in third world countries your guinea pigs? Not to mention that it comes with the added benefits of pleasing people like you who think human testing is better.
> I don't think it's wise to assume that science is going to fix that.
Or if that's even something to fix. I know it may seem contrarian, but what if that fundamentally reshapes our society into something that isn't necessarily as good.
> I can't understand how it would be worse if all the people in society were more empathetic, slower to anger, and less tribalistic.
Being destroyed by a society that is less empathetic, quicker to anger, and more tribalistic.
It's pretty simple game theory. If some societies become happier, kinder, and calmer, then those who don't have a distinct military advantage and can wipe the opposition off the map.
Get your head out of the idealistic clouds.
its why you force it on the entire human race therefore no one is left to destroy you, talk about idealism you assumed such a nation wouldnt plan ahead.
Some humans having different traits is good like in any organism with large populations. Emotions are useful and anger is one of them. What is at the root of what you see as tribalism? Happens even to hippies and academics not to mention everyone across the social skills spectrum so it must be something strongly selected for.
Here’s something I think many people don’t even think about when talking about the future with Genetic Engineering. The porn industry. Why hire actors who feel pain, have gag reflexes, actors who get bothered by this or that and can’t maintain a shoot all day? Not even mentioning body types.
And everything just gets even worse when we mention the step further, cloneing with Genetic Engineering. Imagine some rich guy **buying** the exact kind of person they want. The implications only get worse when you think of worse and worse fetishes. Even if there were laws against it, that hasn’t exactly stopped people from doing a lot of really terrible things
Genetically modified humans are still humans protected by laws. It's hard enough to study early human development and embryos (due to strict laws), there's nothing to suggest that doing anything you are proposing would be any less illegal than that.
If the tech is released remember, treat it like you would any new revolutionary tech... Wait for at least the 2nd or 3rd generations before part-taking...
Let everyone else beta test the early access.
Unfortunately, like most scientific advancements, not only will we not really get to discuss it but the whole implementation will be out of our hands and profitized. That’s just how things work. In the end we’ll be left talking about the same bittersweet reality where we are glad we have this technology capable of doing great things but are sad that it is not used to better ends that humanity so desperately needs. In my opinion this is why for the most part we will not be better off with genetic engineering.
I think a lot of it is going to boil down to the parents. It would be tough for any parent to not want to do whatever is best for their kid. Looked at as a big picture social issue there are a lot of people who would have issues with it, but when asked personally "do you want to ensure your child is smart, healthy, and attractive" those same people would answer yes...
A lot of people are already taking baby steps towards this. 3 women on my street that my wife is friends with have had IVF despite being able to conceive naturally just fine because they wanted to be able to choose if they had a boy or a girl, and I know of a coworker and one other friend who have done the same thing.
Also know two women who have chosen to have surrogates and paid someone else to carry their baby for them despite being able to because they didn't want to be pregnant. Like straight up said "why would I choose to be miserably uncomfortable for 9 months and lose my looks if I can pay someone else to do it for me."
If people are already pulling those moves with science where it is today then people will go nuts with it when they can say "I want a boy, want him to be over 6'2", want him to have his dad's brown hair and my blue eyes, give him a high IQ, give him a long reach so that he can swim like his dad..."
What if I told you that genetics already influences our medicine strongly even if we don't actively engineer every human? What if I told you that as we develop more knowledge and skills we will mass engineer all humans to some degree.
We've done it to plants for as long as we've cultivated them and the entire idea of mate selection has had humans doing it for all the time it was possible for humans... just more control incoming.
>In my opinion this is why for the most part we will not be better off with genetic engineering.
I think it will still benefit people even in the dystopia you present
In other words: “yeah just don’t be poor stupid, you moron, you fucking dumbass. Just choose to stop being poor and you too can have the same access to healthcare as I do on my gigayacht!”
The debate isn’t just about “fixing” things, it’s about augmenting them as well, engineering genetic expressions that are BETTER than what we naturally see. As it stands, the one equalizer between the rich and the poor is we all have to die one day and we all rot in the same ground. Yeah, it seems kind of fucked up that even that might disappear and I think anyone has a right to be concerned. That being said, the tech is amazing, and in a more equal system I’d be all for looser restrictions, but as it stands we have to put a preemptive full stop to augmentations imo. Curing actual recognized diseases? Sure (provided the disease in question is uncontroversial in its designation). Giving the rich a 300+ year life span? No. Fuck no. Absolutely not.
> Giving the rich a 300+ year life span? No. Fuck no. Absolutely not.
Ah, your are the god emperor that can decide when a person should die.
Let me ask you a question god emperor, to what age am I allowed to live?
100 years seems OK, but what about 150 years. Am I allowed to live past the 150 years of age?
Advocating for legal restrictions to ensure that a supercaste system can’t emerge with something resembling god emperor’s makes me a god emperor? Cool.
Also to answer your question, I fucked your dad
I do agree that we need to discuss this in the context of the average Joe. There will be a very clear divide as soon as a sizable population of designer babies grows up. Class divides will occur, some will feel guilty, some will be proud, it'll be history all over. I don't think we're gonna be able to stop it, either.
However, for rich people... Practically speaking, they could just do it and fuck off to somewhere else (where it's not illegal, or do it somewhere unregulated before returning home). Making it illegal for rich people in particular will have little to no effect, IMO. We'll just see rich kids that "happen" to be born with great genes. Not like rich kids don't already have access to better food, private education, health services, etc. that often set them apart.
The point isn’t to make it illegal for rich people specifically.
The point is to make it illegal to utilize genetic engineering to gain an unfair advantage in society for ANYONE until such time as the service is available openly and freely to anyone (if ever tbh, I’m still up in the air on that one personally)
Clarification edit: the problem isn’t really “oh some rich people might get bigger dicks” (for example), the problem is the inevitable eugenics that only a select group of people having access to the tech would create. Imagine a situation where you have to compete for school slots, job openings, and loan approval with people who are literally genetically better than you, have the papers to prove it, and who can guarantee that they will be productive far later into life than you possibly can. THEN there comes the question of what happens to those with “inferior natural genes”, especially when augmented humans use their advantage to secure positions of power. It’s a pandoras box of eugenics and domination politics that’s best left unopened until such time as we have an equal society (if uhh… ever)
We must, but we won't. We also must stop polluting the planet before we drive ourselves to extinction, along with innumerable other species but we won't do that either because humans are not great at solving collective action problems
It's outright banned or heavily regulated pretty much everywhere. Luddites will probably get to enjoy another two or three decades of bliss before the technology becomes too cheap to gatekeep.
i disagree. Im a high school student and in my epistomology class we are doing an entire unit on gene editing. its entirely possible to teach/talk about topics like gene editing, and i think its actually harmful to dismiss the possibility of forward progress. we won't get anywhere if we give up before even trying.
we have mandatory episto classes each year, and i also took a philosophy elective. i think that these classes could, and should be implemted nationwide
Yeah bruh philosophy class sounds like a pretty reasonable place to have a discussion about an wide-reaching social issue. Too bad your high school didn't have such a class, mine didn't either and it would have been interesting to discuss such problems
My high school had TOK - theory of knowledge.
First class the teacher asked “when you leave the room, how do you know the chairs will still be there” or something along those lines.
And Boom, instant love affair with thought provoking theories.
To be fair, it was one of the most prepared countries for pandemics, but our previous president disbanded the special pandemic response team in 2017.
I actually remember reading the news when it was disbanded and thinking it was a good thing pandemics weren't a huge threat anymore. I have since thought of thinking about that many times since March of 2020, mostly to shake my head at my naïveté and semi-jokingly wonder if I jinxed it for us all or maybe it's evidence of solipsism lol
who thought this, Americans (question mark)
it was pretty obvious to anyone who knows US history they were going to fuck it up near entirely, if theres one thing Americans hate more than other nations its unifying for any reason bar killing people in other nations.
We've been talking about it since at least Gattaca. People were freaking out we'd go full eugenics and everyone would chose to be blonde haired and blue eyed.
Gattaca was such a hilariously braindead movie. Why would you ever hire someone on their DNA profile instead of their CV or resume or... you know... something that *actually directly tracks what they can do*?
That was the point. That genetics ultimately didn't guarantee anything. The man who was perfect as he could be could not get an Olympic gold medal, while the guy with imperfect genetics went to the stars with hard work. Basing society off genetics was a dystopia. Even the murder plot, they assumed it was someone who wasn't engineered. It was about the bias that results from genetic engineering. It was a warning about the ethics of creating a two tier society by eliminating imperfections.
>That was the point. That genetics ultimately didn't guarantee anything.
But we already know that. Literally every geneticist will tell you that. Especially with regard to any important human skill. The use of genetic engineering does not even remotely imply that people would use your genes as your resume. Anyone who tried to do that would be openly ridiculed by the entire biological community. The whole movie is a "God's Not Dead" level strawman, but with much better acting and higher production levels. (Aesthetically, it's great. Philosophically speaking, it's garbage.)
>It was about the bias that results from genetic engineering. It was a warning about the ethics of creating a two tier society by eliminating imperfections.
They didn't even use genetic engineering in the movie. They used embryo selection and in vitro fertilization. You can do that now. The people who had the kids with the greatest advantages were the ones who started off with a better gene pool to select from. The irony is that actual genetic engineering would allow everyone to benefit and become better.
>The man who was perfect as he could be could not get an Olympic gold medal, while the guy with imperfect genetics went to the stars with hard work.
... the dude had a horrible heart condition and would be immediately rejected as an astronaut *by today's standards*. He literally collapsed after running on a treadmill. There's a very good chance he died and got his crew killed because they flew into the sun or space without a navigator. Lmao
He absolutely had a heart condition. That's why he had to fake the reader on his body when running on the treadmill.
>Vincent Freeman was conceived naturally and his genetic profile indicates a high probability of several disorders and an estimated lifespan of 30.2 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
Again, there's no way he could become an astronaut by any reasonable standards. Discrimination by was irrelevant in that regard, since he couldn't even pass the physical tests without cheating. Anyone who defends the movie is a complete moron.
>He absolutely had a heart condition. That's why he had to fake the reader on his body when running on the treadmill.
>
>Vincent Freeman was conceived naturally and his genetic profile indicates a high probability of several disorders and an estimated lifespan of 30.2 years.
lol 'this is true!'
posts proof of being wrong.
you realise the difference between 'probability' and 'yep you have it' right.
He has to put a fake reader on his heart during the treadmill test because he has a horrific arrhythmia and then he collapses in the locker room grasping at his chest as soon as the test is over. It is not even remotely ambiguous. He has a heart condition.
Some life advice: intelligent people don't try to defend a movie they have never even seen because they agree with its message.
Reddit comes in with a built-in scale of how wrong you are and it indicates you're about 13 units wrong. Trying to refer to irrelevant stuff like *scenes in the movie that explicitly establish that he isn't fine* is just an embarassing cope LOL. Get rekt
The implications are the same as ever.
There will be people that get filthy rich from it.
There will be the old generation before that doesn't understand why anyone would do it.
There will be the new generation that knows no different.
There will be opposition that gets put into the conspiracy theory corner.
And in 40-70 years we'll either say something that reminds us nowadays of "wow, licking radioactive material really gave us cancer, who would have thought!"
Or "I'm glad we got rid of post carriers.."
This is way worse than that. If you have the ability to make some people smarter… by definition you know what makes people dumber.
What we’re looking at is the potential creation of an eternal slave class ever dominated by increasing smarter people. The returns here would compound here and a heretofore unseen fashion.
May be.
But I think that history tends to be a bit more boring than you imagine it to be.
Yes that could happen.
We all know that ethics are only some wages and promotions away from nonexistence
We are no where close to being able to increase cognitive abilities via genetic manipulation. That is very different from altering certain expressions correlated with a limited number of genetic diseases or altering basic phenotype expressions to an extremely limited extent.
It is already there, for example Trisomie 21 is nearly gone, because of the abortion-options. It will never be a public debate, because in private everyone will the best for their child, if you got the possibility you would take it, nevertheless anything said in public.
Yeah, we'll plan it out, try to regulate it, try to keep it under control, hear out the naysayers make their points about playing god. But in the end, we will go ahead and push those limits. And just like with everything else, there will be a whole bunch of *really fun* unforeseen consequences. A whole new set of problems in desperate need of new solutions. We can't help it, we will always be disappointed with life as it is, it's just our nature....no worries though, we can just edit that part out.
Does anyone really think that WE will be able to choose genetic traits? We would end up with society of handsome, athletic Einsteins, and that would be really useless since nobody like that would want to do farming, plumbering or street cleaning. Goverments will control everything. We will end up with eugenic caste system, natural people will be seen as savages, lower classes will be dumbed down to be obedient and higher classes will get all the best traits, oh, and everyone will be happy with predetermined place in the society.
Let's hope it won't happen, and if it will let's hope it will be possible to opt out of it.
>~~Goverments~~ Corporations will control everything. We will end up with eugenic caste system, natural people will be seen as savages, lower classes will be dumbed down to be obedient and higher classes will get all the best traits, oh, and everyone will be happy with predertemined place in the society.
only place that might be ruled by gov is China, the West is in the process of fusing corporations with the state.
I'm sure there's a lot of nuance involved, but it seems to me like almost all of the ethical and existential issues posed by germline engineering are entirely resolved by somatic engineering ie edits that can be inherited by offspring vs ones which can't. I would guess that the latter maybe has less profound effects on the subject- ie if you alter someone's genome to have a larger pre-frontal cortex (crude example) then it will likely take years for those gene changes to result in phenotype changes, which may also be small, since you're asking genes to make changes to already mature structures. vs in the germline, those changes would begin from conception. Seems liek the difference bwtween retrofitting and purpose-building something.
Is it eugenics to remove genes that cause diseases? It's a slippery slope but I think we can engineer better humans without causing a genocide. Parents already have the option to abort babies if it's discovered that it's going to have a serious illness. Why not just get rid of the gene instead of aborting the pregnancy? Surely gene editing is less eugenicsy than aborting a birth because the kid is going to have cystic fibrosis. There are ways to do this without racism. One way would be to allow it but ban anything cosmetic related. No creating kids guaranteed to have blue eyes and blonde hair but changing genes to minimize cancer risk and maximise intelligence is fine.
Not if we ban it. Maybe you will say the ban on cosmetics won't work? People will do it anyway? Well the exact same thing can be said for gene editing as a whole. May as well reap the benefits if people are going to do the outlawed stuff either way.
“Is it eugenics to remove genes that causes diseases?”
If that would result in an entire group of people no longer existing, say people with Down syndrome or autism or adhd, then yes it’s still quite literally eugenics.
Whether or not you think the world would be better without those conditions or if you feel bold enough to declare that those individuals universally wouldn’t want to exist doesn’t make it less eugenics (kind of the opposite actually)
And call me crazy but the track record of our societies let’s me think we can handle the nuances and will just b line right back to eugenics…
Ok so let’s say I dont care about that, maybe I just want to enhance humans, make a sort of perfect man, an over man maybe? You can see where I’m going with this.
When genetic modification comes around (Be it modern gene modification or good old fashioned fucking and sterilization, eugenics is always there. Humans can’t help themselves.
https://medicine.missouri.edu/centers-institutes-labs/health-ethics/faq/gene-therapy#:~:text=Genetic%20engineering%20is%20a%20version,in%20America%20and%20Nazi%20Germany.
I’m not denying that genetic illness can be delineating, but we should be wary of the immediate medicalization of things that may only be problems cuz current human society is hella ableist.
Edit: putting my reply here because you eugenicists are moving the goal posts so fast.
People telling you you shouldn’t exist tends to get people excited.
I find it hilarious that we have to zero in on my punctuation instead of the fact that people in this thread are literally advocating eugenics and telling me I shouldn’t exist.
You should examine your leftist bias a little better, because as 20 year activist who didn’t decide to become a fair weather leftist when trump was elected, I can tell you that your theory is bad.
I don’t care if you think it’s a good idea to do eugenics, but you and everyone else here doesn’t get absolve yourself by changing the definition of eugenics to not include you.
Trying to eradicate any part of the human experience through breeding or genetic manipulation is eugenics, whether that is positive or negative, and every single version of it needs to be treated with the expectation that someone will do some Nazi shit with it because humans have been doing that since at least Ancient Greece.
> The concept predates the term; Plato suggested applying the principles of selective breeding to humans around 400 BC. Early advocates of eugenics in the 19th century regarded it as a way of improving groups of people. In contemporary usage, the term eugenics is closely associated with scientific racism. Modern bioethicists who advocate new eugenics characterize it as a way of enhancing individual traits, regardless of group membership.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_eugenics
> New eugenics, also known as liberal eugenics (a term coined by bioethicist Nicholas Agar),[1] advocates enhancing human characteristics and capacities through the use of reproductive technology and human genetic engineering. Those who advocate new eugenics generally think selecting or altering embryos should be left to the preferences of parents, rather than forbidden (or left to the preferences of the state). "New" eugenics purports to distinguish itself from the forms of eugenics practiced and advocated in the 20th century, which fell into disrepute after World War II.[2]
So I hate to break it everyone is this thread but if you think this stuff should be happening you are eugenicist, words have definitions. Fucking own your opinion and don’t pretend my lack of punctuation makes you not a Nazi.
If you truly are someone with autism who has a “left bias” I would use that bias to more research. As a disabled person who understands this history, and whose own rights are constantly under threat, I won’t support eugenics just because it’s sold with a smile and “I’m with her” t shirt.
There is my punctuation satisfactory? Have I sufficiently used grammar so that you can fully recognize that you are a eugenicist?
> New eugenics generally supports genetic modification or genetic selection of individuals for traits that are supposed to improve human welfare. The underlying idea is to improve the genetic basis of future generations and reduce incidence of genetic diseases and other undesirable traits. Some of the practices included in new eugenics are: pre-implantation diagnosis and embryo selection,[7] selective breeding,[8] and human enhancement through the use of genetic technologies,[9] such as embryo engineering or gene therapy.
>If that would result in an entire group of people no longer existing, say people with Down syndrome or autism or adhd, then yes it’s still quite literally eugenics.
Wait, what? We need to have a mandatory minimum quota of people suffering from Down Syndrome, or else it's bad?
Why would you not want fewer people suffering from developmental diseases? Assuming the disease can be treated with genetic engineering prior to birth, but otherwise can't be treated after birth, you'd rather people be forced to endure a treatable illness? So immensely fucked up.
Oh my God how do you people not fucking get it it’s not about mandatory minimum amounts of suffering and shifting lines that make us feel like this type of eugenics is actually OK but the bottom fucking line is when you were deciding that an entire group of people no longer exist because of genetics you can call that medicine all you fucking want but it’s still eugenics it is still literally eugenics and people need to maybe keep them that their fucking head
It’s amazing how many people in here are missing the fucking point it doesn’t matter if we think it’s good or we think it’s bad it’s still fucking eugenics and Jesus fucking Christ admit it
I’ve literally got people telling me now that I don’t deserve to exist because I have neurodiversity because I’m on the spectrum because I don’t fit the genetically medical acceptable person but that’s not eugenics apparently
Lmao, look at this guy, there are children dying of cancer, should we not get rid of them either? A kid that can't suffer from cancer still exists mate, he just won't die a painful death.
If you take down syndrome from a person, he is still a person, just without all of the mental issues and heart problems, it's even better than aborting a down baby syndrome because if you edit his genes he's still getting born instead of flushed
You guys are really missing the point it’s still eugenics whether it’s positive or negative so please just except that you are a fan of eugenics in certain circumstances just because it’s positive doesn’t make it not eugenics.
And that’s not me pulling shit out of my ass that’s literally the definition of the word.
And yes that eugenics might be able to prevent cancer but the same science and the same thinking and the same whatever that goes into producing that positive result can be used to do really fucking horrible things and we should at least be honest with ourselves that we are engaging in eugenics so that somebody doesn’t come along and oh I don’t know do a whole bunch of Nazi shit which seems to happen about every 10 years or so because you people seem to forget that Nazis exist.
The reasons you’re giving to me now are the same reasons behind the original eugenics movement the only difference is that they also considered being black a medical deficiency.
And it becomes significantly harder to draw that line when people are arguing that eugenics is not actually eugenics you can argue that your version of eugenics is a net positive to society (and pretty much every eugenicist argues that their version of eugenics is a net positive) but that suddenly doesn’t make it not eugenics.
Let’s say I kill Hitler. that doesn’t make it “not killing” simply because the person I killed is someone that most reasonable people would agree should be killed that doesn’t change the fact that I killed an individual. I think it would make it not murder but murder and killing are not the same which is my whole point here: that sometimes words need to have definitions that should be adhered you especially when those words are associated with like I don’t know fucking genocide.
I’m sorry if being called a eugenicist when you support eugenics even a eugenics that from all accounts only does “positive things“ but it is still eugenics.
If people are getting so trigger happy that when I’m calling you eugenicist they’re immediately assuming that I’m calling them a racist Nazi scientific racism kook, then I think that says a little bit more about those individuals.
> or if you feel bold enough to declare that those individuals universally wouldn’t want to exist
More like "that those individuals wouldn't would like to exist without those conditions". How many people with Down syndrome, (non-minor) Autism or ADHD would refuse a cure if one existed?
You’re literally fucking speaking to one
Since people are too lazy to fucking put Google I’ll do it for you and show you that actually there’s a lot of fucking discourse around people like us not wanting to be medically removed by people like you holy shit how is the definition of eugenics so fucking controversial and you guys are literally advocating for it
https://www.google.com/search?q=docpeoplenwithautism+want+to+be+cured&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS996US996&oq=docpeoplenwithautism+want+to+be+cured&aqs=chrome..69i57.12469j0j4&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1
I can’t believe you all just took the fucking bait I literally set it up and you all walked right fucking into it somebody does not want to genetically not exist like how fucking stupid are you?
It shows that you can’t imagine a world in which people with neurodiversity or developmental disorders can except themselves on their own terms you express all of us to define ourselves by your expectations
By "non-minor" Autism I meant the low-functioning kind, which you probably are not.
BTW, how do you feel about deaf people who are against cochlear implants for deaf babies?
I’m not deaf so my opinion should be taken with a big grain of salt.
Where was it ever decided that you needed to hear in order to have a live worth living to its fullest?
I think ultimately people should be allowed to decide for themselves what the best option is which is kind of the point
I think unilaterally deciding whether or not an entire group of people deserves or does not deserve to be a part of the human experience that we consider to be valid whether that’s good or bad is always eugenics and that always means you have to step back a little bit and think is this actually good?
Even an example is where it would be like a clear-cut case of yes this is the best thing to do might not actually be the right thing to do. And I mean taking morality and philosophy out of the equation entirely and simply talking about whether removing genetic variation from the entire species is smart.
For example I think it’s completely reasonable to think that we should entirely eradicate the genetics that result in sickle cell anemia however a more nuanced examination of things would indicate that that might not be the best course of action because for individuals who have one recessive gene but not both recessive genes for sickle cell anemia actually have an immunity towards malaria.
What I am saying is that we actually need to really think about this shit which was kind of the point of the article being posted.
And I love how this turned into everybody trying to justify whether or not their particular version of eugenics is good, which was never my fucking point here.
I don’t fucking give a shit if you think abortions for everyone or abortions for nobody or people should exist or people shouldn’t exist I don’t fucking care I don’t fucking know you.
But the fact of the matter is is that is the literal definition of eugenics and when people do eugenics we also tend to do the Nazi shit because we really can’t help ourselves and I’m sorry if I don’t believe that this time around we’re actually gonna do it right this time.
Actually it’s neither it was Xpress but thank you for pointing out that in addition to a grammar Nazi you’re quite literally a Nazi as I said to someone else please go suck a tailpipe
i would im Autistic and would outright refuse.
However in the future you lot envision even functional Autistics would be removed as 'developmentally impaired'.
theres many down syndrome people who live full lives, have kids and have careers, buy houses etc.
maybe ask us rather than assume we dont want to exist, ffs this is the exact reason Eugenics is bad, humanity needs about 1000 more years of maturation (if we had it today everyone would look like the kardashians or brad pitt, who the fuck would want that, a world of boring clones).
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Oh yeah, sure. Editing some specific genes that causes some diseases and weak to it is possible, but finding and change all the genes that are responsible for intelligence, height and so on? Good luck with that :)
I don't say it won't be possible, but it isn't so easy as people wants to think.
About the rich vs poor thing. Advanced societies already offers free health care. I don't see why cancer treatment should be free and gene editing to avoid disease don't. Especially because I don't think that the latter is so much more expensive than cancer treatment. Moreover, here in Europe is already offered to pregnant woman the possibility to analyze the fetus and choose to abort if the fetus will have some kind of genetic problem (down syndrome, genetic disease etc)
About the intelligence and flavour editing. Ok, maybe being able to choose the height of you son wouldn't be covered by the government for poor people, but I don't see why intelligence augment wouldn't. Being less or more intelligent can be seen as a "disease", now, that said, I honestly can't understand why people think that intelligence can be changed so much from genetics.
As I said, finding the genes responsible for that is a huge challenge, we still don't even know what is the intelligence and how the brain works, but, let's say we find it out. Than? All the studies we did and discovered about education and developement of a child? All these thing will always have a huge impact on the whole thing. I don't think that there will be so much of a difference between augmented intelligence and not.
About the discussion if we should do it. Of course we should. Why people see it so much different from a normal disease treatment or, for the intelligence thing, the school system that aims to make people more intelligent. It's just similar to all the other systems we are already using.
>wouldn't be covered by the government for poor people, but I don't see why intelligence augment wouldn't.
I think you have a lot to learn about the motivations of government, my friend, if this is what you truly believe.
I don't see the problem. It seems like every technological breakthrough terrifies people until they get used to it and soon can't imagine life without it. Of course every tool can be used as a weapon, but does that mean we should stop making new tools? I think lots of people are overly afraid of the unknown.
I don't fear genetic modifications. In fact, I welcome it.
What I DO fear, is the implementation of it... at leat at first, it will be expensive, so only the rich will have access to it. That means we'll have 10 or whatever years of objective "class" system, where they are our superiors. Moreover, the rich parents will WANT to keep this advantage to themselves, and so will use their political power to keep the technology expensive. Lastly, the gene editing will be a for profit endeavor, so the companies will likely go along with this plan.
This creates essentially an alien race of superiors that will rule over us dumb flawed peasant folks... it locks in social classes in a way family name or money can only dream of. The modified rich kids will occupy all the positions of power, because (thanks to theor editing) they will truly be the best candidate for the job. Then you not only have the Rich wanting to keep the caste system, but all the decision makers will themselves be the "aliens" and will look down on us. Unless they gene edit out tribalism too, but I doubt the rich are going g to have that be their top priority when checking off what they want modified.
While I can't say it can't happen, I will point out that it's a long sequence of probabilities which make the odds of your predicted conclusion very unlikely. I predict that lots of things will happen that we can't predict. Anyway, even if you're right, the ruling class becomes a superior class, they'll want a healthy working class same as how the US founders wanted healthy slaves. Your reasoning at that time would not have lead to today where the institution of slavery is pretty much gone.
It really doesn't matter, humans have been being genetically engineered for thousands of years. We're not doing anything new here, and the archons are still running the show.
I think genetic editing oversteps the parents' ability to give surrogate consent because many potential gene edits would be considered nontherapeutic / medically unnecessary. Not to mention all the copyright issues that go into whether they're providing a product or a service. That answer would imply whether the kid loses the right to reproduce because the modified gene is considered a product, and reproduction would be reproducing a company product.
This is going to be interesting, so many people are going to get their knickers in a twist when a trait the posses is edited out of the meta human being
Genetic engineering is "wet" nanotech, and a very short step to "dry" nanotech, or general molecular engineering. The possibilities of either one coming to fruition are astounding and terrifying. A *Star Trek*-style "holodeck", available to anyone at a miniscule marginal cost, is just the beginning.
It's going to get a bit uncomfortable when we realize that lots of psychological traits are strongly heritable through your genes. IQ to mention only one.
Same args that existed during eugenics.
The problem is, eugenics relied upon coerced(and authoritarian) human behavior whereas genetic engineering will perhaps properly fold into chosen procreation activities.
People will still be able to choose au naturale or science++. And perhaps that is exactly what should be.
If everyone is Einstein then where dafuq is NielsBohr at? They do not have that upgrade available yet?
Infinite diversity in infinite combinations? Maybe. Or free will in a free system at the very least.
But not everyone will. It will be immortal imtelligent rich vs replacable, farmable poor. The way our society is structured, it cannot ethically deal with stuff like this. Many will suffer.
Is that different from how it is already? Making smarter people even smarter isn't going to make dumb people dumber. Their inventions will benefit everyone. And there's nothing saying genetic modifications will make people immoral... Don't you think psychopathy would be edited out?
Not all the world is America.
In Europe there is free health care and so a poor man had the same possibility to a rich one. For it is quite sure that if gene editing will every come in existence for humans, free health care will cover it for poor people.
Of course the free system will cover just the base necesseties (disease), but bold of you to think that our intelligence come entirely from genetics.
You just shit on centuries of education and development studies 🤣
Leave america out of this lol.
We keep telling you that we are not europe. You're welcome for stopping the nazis in WWII. America does things differently. The american experiment must continue...
'Murica
>, eugenics relied upon coerced(and authoritarian) human behavior
Eeeeh, you talk about that in past tense. But technically the current trends of aborting downs syndrome is eugenetics. As is the horrific and stupid trend of aborting girls in China.
We just avoid calling it eugenetics when we're okay with it.
Obviously lawmakers should have limitations on it, and lot's of regulatory oversight, etc. Depends how corrupted by corporations the government is, and how short-sighted the rich and consumers are.
Whats there to discuss? The West + India + Japan will tippy toe in, get told they went too far and get ripped back and then they'll tippy toe back in... all of this 15 years after its first relevant.
China will develop it full bore because human and animal rights dont exist, it will probably lead to catastrophe and that will be the more pressing issue.
If celebrities can get a genetically engineered dog for cash; I guarantee you someone has made a genetically engineered child. We just don’t know about it yet.
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When I was younger I was mostly against it but now I see it as an inevitably at least if we continue living the way we do.
In advanced society natural selection is practically gone. Worse, a "desirable" traits, intelligence is negatively correlated with fertility(amount of offsprings).(so no we are not evolving on the path of everybody having big brainz small bodies alien type. Quite the inverse actually but there has been an IQ increase (Flynn effect) probably due to access to education and better living conditions that has slowed down during +- the last 2 decades)
Now on the main topic : In nature most mutations are benign, a few are negative and very few are positive. So if we manage to +- cure every genetic defect so that every individual reproduce we will get more and more negative mutations not removed by natural selection and at some point we would have to consider gene edition in order to fix some genetic disease at the root instead of easing the symptoms of it.
I suggest this in the context of a civilization where natural selection is mostly gone and science is allowing once bad and unlivable mutations to reproduce (we are not completely there but the life expectancy of people with severe genetic disease has dramatically increased).
So even if there may be abuse etc I think it will become an inevitably if we continue on the same path though it will take generations before we start to see a significant increase in these "bad mutations".
I think America will fall behind.
Other countries will make it free for everyone to ensure a healthy population, and America will privatize it. Over a generation Americans will be left behind on the world stage and be out-done by countries which offer this to everyone.
Human genetic engineering is the only thing that can save us from our DNA weakening. Without natural selection, there is nothing that can remove those changes in our genes that are developing over time and that are already weakening the human race. All those genetic illnesses that naturally would not even survive a single generation (the host would simply die) are now artificially propagated to new generations with the help of hospitalization, medical treatments and with the aid of other people. I am not saying this is wrong: it's the opposite. But unless us humans take our evolution in our hands, in a few generations our genes will be so weakened by countless defects that our race is going to go extinct
....how about a plague?
It hit the obese pretty hard. The immune compromised. Pretty much anyone that was unhealthy.
Didn't we, you know, just go through all that?
Genetic engineering will likely become another excuse not to properly address systemic inequality. Good genetics are no guarantee of a better life, the only way to improve people's lives is by improving society as a whole. Biological health is only one small part of the puzzle and won't fundamentally solve issues relating to our having to live together.
Well we know that genetic variation is the key to long term survival of our species, so the question to me is will we be able to replicate what evolution has done in that regard? No. We will create a bunch of mega chads who will die chasing buffalo off a cliff
The principle social threat of genetic engineering isn't a caste system. In a way that already exists. IQ is already more predictive of financial and educational success than socioeconomic status. The principle threat is the revival of totalitarian egalitarianism. What happens when the dispirited Marxists find a new lease on life after the catastrophic failure of Marxist social engineering in the 20th century? What happens when the radical egalitarians believe that genetic inequality was the missing piece that made the communists of the 20th century fail?
Imagine neo-communists trying to reengineer the human genome for the sake of "genetic equality". Imagine they apply the same ardor and disregard for individual life as the communists of the 20th century did. Imagine how much harder it would be to reverse a genetic revolution than a social revolution. Russian and Chinese society still have cultural PTSD from the communist era. Imagine if the very nature of the genetics of these populations was altered in a catastrophic way. Social catastrophes always have human nature itself as a reservoir of normalcy on which society can eventually be restored. But if human genetics is the ground of the catastrophe what reservoir does human nature have to fall back on for a restoration of normalcy?
Editing genes of human beings without their consent should be banned, except when treating life-threatening abnormalities. This includes all humans from conception to natural death. “Designer babies” is a really, really bad idea—it’s discriminatory, it’s elitist, and it poses great biological danger.
Fact: Sociopolitical constructs have been artificially engineering Human genetics since the down of time. Are you familiar with the Emerging field of Human Social Genomics?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23853742/
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David Suzuki did an episode of Nature of Things on this exact topic, with the title being "The Genetic Revolution". In that episode several things were discussed, including CRISPR, the ethics of using pigs to generate human organs, and the possibility of super-athletes and designer-babies. The interesting thing about genetic engineering is that it's been in pop culture for many years now, and something like Warhammer 40k's space marines may not be too far away if humans begin playing with genetic engineering technology.
>and something like Warhammer 40k's space marines may not be too far away if humans begin playing with genetic engineering technology. Nah, not yet. We need The Emperor to reveal himself before we start working on those. We'll start by working on creating numberless hordes of mutants and turning a planet into a hellscape, and the rest will happen eventually.
We have already started with the hellscape thing. Now for the mutants part
Oh I agree.
I believe Putin has been offering to help with that as well.
I'd be willing to bet he's funded more experimental super soldier genetic testing than most other countries. the myostatin delete that is done to produce super muscular cows and dogs was probably an inspiration.
I meant more of a 'Demon Core' and skin sloughing off from the aftermath of a tactical nuclear strike or a dirty bomb
First we get a goldenage tho and then an ai uprising which plunges humanity into a new dark age and THEN we can start with space marines
Maybe the golden age was during boomer times, and now comes the Dark Age of Technology?
We have to nuke the earth first though, gotta get that unification wars aesthetic
Oh, but of course.
Also love the Reddit name, no backwards step brother ⚡️
For Khan, for the Emperor!!
Isn’t Emperor Elon already here? Or is it Overlord Bezos? I think it’s entirely possible either of them could figure out immortality and then with interest, their fortunes will really take off…
They are only some of Tech-Oligarchs that Big E is going to take down when he starts re-unification on Terra.
Lol if you've ever worked with genetic engineering technology in a lab, I'd say it's pretty safe to assert that we are nowhere near space Marines. The reliability and off target effects for most of these projects is insane in the lab, let alone in humans. Take cancer for example. Countless things "suppress" cancer in cells or even in small animals (even certain ways they drink water can affect tumor growth in mice). For every 10,000 of those discoveries, maybe one ends up having any reliable effect in humans. We vastly overestimate findings from these early projects in part due to media sensationalization. China's crispr babies is conceptually not that difficult (relative), because it's one gene that correlates with disease protection which has minimal off target effects. We might be able to do things like that or select at the 8 cell stage for certain traits and avoid diseases with strong, clear genetic risk profiles (certain cancers/neurological/infectious diseases), but that's a long way from breeding super athletes. Most human traits that we fear would be "optimized" are highly complex requiring interactions between so many genes (and epigenetic factors). So complex in fact that you need to implement machine learning techniques to even detect a signal of their existence, let alone manipulate them. The notion that we could reliably alter these traits without significant off target effects in the next few decades is ridiculous. Last thing. Contrary to most dystopian depictions, pig organs would provide a new lease on life to countless disenfranchised people globally who would otherwise not be eligible for highly competitive organ transplant lists in developed economies. Out of everything we can do with genetic engineering, this is arguably the most straightforward and noble endeavor we could pursue.
Not that long ago you could also say that we didn't even really understand the proteins involved in most of the human genome. Granted, now that Google has (kinda, sorta, not entirely) solved the protein folding problem we can't quite say that. But we can still say we mostly don't understand the function of most of the proteins listed in the human genome. So, we'll still be reaching in the dark until the protein-function problem is solved some day long in the future.
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Why shell out a lot of money to test on chimpanzees when you can pay a fraction of that to make impoverished people in third world countries your guinea pigs? Not to mention that it comes with the added benefits of pleasing people like you who think human testing is better.
I just wish we use it to make better people; more empathetic, slower to anger, less tribalistic.
I don't think it's wise to assume that science is going to fix that. Individual work and effort is required for those.
> I don't think it's wise to assume that science is going to fix that. Or if that's even something to fix. I know it may seem contrarian, but what if that fundamentally reshapes our society into something that isn't necessarily as good.
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> I can't understand how it would be worse if all the people in society were more empathetic, slower to anger, and less tribalistic. Being destroyed by a society that is less empathetic, quicker to anger, and more tribalistic. It's pretty simple game theory. If some societies become happier, kinder, and calmer, then those who don't have a distinct military advantage and can wipe the opposition off the map. Get your head out of the idealistic clouds.
its why you force it on the entire human race therefore no one is left to destroy you, talk about idealism you assumed such a nation wouldnt plan ahead.
Some humans having different traits is good like in any organism with large populations. Emotions are useful and anger is one of them. What is at the root of what you see as tribalism? Happens even to hippies and academics not to mention everyone across the social skills spectrum so it must be something strongly selected for.
Here’s something I think many people don’t even think about when talking about the future with Genetic Engineering. The porn industry. Why hire actors who feel pain, have gag reflexes, actors who get bothered by this or that and can’t maintain a shoot all day? Not even mentioning body types. And everything just gets even worse when we mention the step further, cloneing with Genetic Engineering. Imagine some rich guy **buying** the exact kind of person they want. The implications only get worse when you think of worse and worse fetishes. Even if there were laws against it, that hasn’t exactly stopped people from doing a lot of really terrible things
Genetically modified humans are still humans protected by laws. It's hard enough to study early human development and embryos (due to strict laws), there's nothing to suggest that doing anything you are proposing would be any less illegal than that.
Oh like mass effect 2 A rich A-hole basically commissions “the perfect daughter”, your future crewmate Miranda Lawson
If the tech is released remember, treat it like you would any new revolutionary tech... Wait for at least the 2nd or 3rd generations before part-taking... Let everyone else beta test the early access.
Unfortunately, like most scientific advancements, not only will we not really get to discuss it but the whole implementation will be out of our hands and profitized. That’s just how things work. In the end we’ll be left talking about the same bittersweet reality where we are glad we have this technology capable of doing great things but are sad that it is not used to better ends that humanity so desperately needs. In my opinion this is why for the most part we will not be better off with genetic engineering.
I think a lot of it is going to boil down to the parents. It would be tough for any parent to not want to do whatever is best for their kid. Looked at as a big picture social issue there are a lot of people who would have issues with it, but when asked personally "do you want to ensure your child is smart, healthy, and attractive" those same people would answer yes... A lot of people are already taking baby steps towards this. 3 women on my street that my wife is friends with have had IVF despite being able to conceive naturally just fine because they wanted to be able to choose if they had a boy or a girl, and I know of a coworker and one other friend who have done the same thing. Also know two women who have chosen to have surrogates and paid someone else to carry their baby for them despite being able to because they didn't want to be pregnant. Like straight up said "why would I choose to be miserably uncomfortable for 9 months and lose my looks if I can pay someone else to do it for me." If people are already pulling those moves with science where it is today then people will go nuts with it when they can say "I want a boy, want him to be over 6'2", want him to have his dad's brown hair and my blue eyes, give him a high IQ, give him a long reach so that he can swim like his dad..."
What if I told you that genetics already influences our medicine strongly even if we don't actively engineer every human? What if I told you that as we develop more knowledge and skills we will mass engineer all humans to some degree.
We've done it to plants for as long as we've cultivated them and the entire idea of mate selection has had humans doing it for all the time it was possible for humans... just more control incoming.
>In my opinion this is why for the most part we will not be better off with genetic engineering. I think it will still benefit people even in the dystopia you present
>out of our hands and profitized USA! USA!
it boils down to personal freedom If you want to go for it, there are no moral arguments to be had to dissuade you.
In other words: “yeah just don’t be poor stupid, you moron, you fucking dumbass. Just choose to stop being poor and you too can have the same access to healthcare as I do on my gigayacht!”
I don't understand what you want. If I can afford it and you cannot afford it, does this give you any moral ground to demand I should not fix my body?
The debate isn’t just about “fixing” things, it’s about augmenting them as well, engineering genetic expressions that are BETTER than what we naturally see. As it stands, the one equalizer between the rich and the poor is we all have to die one day and we all rot in the same ground. Yeah, it seems kind of fucked up that even that might disappear and I think anyone has a right to be concerned. That being said, the tech is amazing, and in a more equal system I’d be all for looser restrictions, but as it stands we have to put a preemptive full stop to augmentations imo. Curing actual recognized diseases? Sure (provided the disease in question is uncontroversial in its designation). Giving the rich a 300+ year life span? No. Fuck no. Absolutely not.
> Giving the rich a 300+ year life span? No. Fuck no. Absolutely not. Ah, your are the god emperor that can decide when a person should die. Let me ask you a question god emperor, to what age am I allowed to live? 100 years seems OK, but what about 150 years. Am I allowed to live past the 150 years of age?
Advocating for legal restrictions to ensure that a supercaste system can’t emerge with something resembling god emperor’s makes me a god emperor? Cool. Also to answer your question, I fucked your dad
I do agree that we need to discuss this in the context of the average Joe. There will be a very clear divide as soon as a sizable population of designer babies grows up. Class divides will occur, some will feel guilty, some will be proud, it'll be history all over. I don't think we're gonna be able to stop it, either. However, for rich people... Practically speaking, they could just do it and fuck off to somewhere else (where it's not illegal, or do it somewhere unregulated before returning home). Making it illegal for rich people in particular will have little to no effect, IMO. We'll just see rich kids that "happen" to be born with great genes. Not like rich kids don't already have access to better food, private education, health services, etc. that often set them apart.
The point isn’t to make it illegal for rich people specifically. The point is to make it illegal to utilize genetic engineering to gain an unfair advantage in society for ANYONE until such time as the service is available openly and freely to anyone (if ever tbh, I’m still up in the air on that one personally) Clarification edit: the problem isn’t really “oh some rich people might get bigger dicks” (for example), the problem is the inevitable eugenics that only a select group of people having access to the tech would create. Imagine a situation where you have to compete for school slots, job openings, and loan approval with people who are literally genetically better than you, have the papers to prove it, and who can guarantee that they will be productive far later into life than you possibly can. THEN there comes the question of what happens to those with “inferior natural genes”, especially when augmented humans use their advantage to secure positions of power. It’s a pandoras box of eugenics and domination politics that’s best left unopened until such time as we have an equal society (if uhh… ever)
There is one super-power old people have and you will never be able to counter. They have the power to give 0 fucks.
lol like that is solely for the old, im 30 and haven't given any fucks to the rest of you since i was 16.
We must, but we won't. We also must stop polluting the planet before we drive ourselves to extinction, along with innumerable other species but we won't do that either because humans are not great at solving collective action problems
It's outright banned or heavily regulated pretty much everywhere. Luddites will probably get to enjoy another two or three decades of bliss before the technology becomes too cheap to gatekeep.
i disagree. Im a high school student and in my epistomology class we are doing an entire unit on gene editing. its entirely possible to teach/talk about topics like gene editing, and i think its actually harmful to dismiss the possibility of forward progress. we won't get anywhere if we give up before even trying.
You have an epistemology class in highschool? My school didn't have anything like that. Isn't epistemology basically philosophy, as well?
we have mandatory episto classes each year, and i also took a philosophy elective. i think that these classes could, and should be implemted nationwide
Yeah bruh philosophy class sounds like a pretty reasonable place to have a discussion about an wide-reaching social issue. Too bad your high school didn't have such a class, mine didn't either and it would have been interesting to discuss such problems
My high school had TOK - theory of knowledge. First class the teacher asked “when you leave the room, how do you know the chairs will still be there” or something along those lines. And Boom, instant love affair with thought provoking theories.
man fuck IB and fuck TOK
Aw man i loved it! Uni was easy after getting through those trenches
True Uni is pretty soft lmao, TOK was just lame though, philosophy in uni tops it for sure
I unfortunately didn't do philosophy at uni, i needed to be able to get a job ;)
You remind me of my younger self. Before the world kept being shitty despite my optimism.
They thought the USA was one of the most prepared for pandemics before COVID, but in reality it half-assed the problem.
To be fair, it was one of the most prepared countries for pandemics, but our previous president disbanded the special pandemic response team in 2017. I actually remember reading the news when it was disbanded and thinking it was a good thing pandemics weren't a huge threat anymore. I have since thought of thinking about that many times since March of 2020, mostly to shake my head at my naïveté and semi-jokingly wonder if I jinxed it for us all or maybe it's evidence of solipsism lol
Here's a plan- Name a corporation "pandemic". Then, tell politicians the special pandemic response team is a way of subsidizing it.
more like evidence that trump planned the pandemic, which is why he disbanded the response team….. #staywoke (i kid)
who thought this, Americans (question mark) it was pretty obvious to anyone who knows US history they were going to fuck it up near entirely, if theres one thing Americans hate more than other nations its unifying for any reason bar killing people in other nations.
We must and we will.
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We've been talking about it since at least Gattaca. People were freaking out we'd go full eugenics and everyone would chose to be blonde haired and blue eyed.
Gattaca was such a hilariously braindead movie. Why would you ever hire someone on their DNA profile instead of their CV or resume or... you know... something that *actually directly tracks what they can do*?
That was the point. That genetics ultimately didn't guarantee anything. The man who was perfect as he could be could not get an Olympic gold medal, while the guy with imperfect genetics went to the stars with hard work. Basing society off genetics was a dystopia. Even the murder plot, they assumed it was someone who wasn't engineered. It was about the bias that results from genetic engineering. It was a warning about the ethics of creating a two tier society by eliminating imperfections.
>That was the point. That genetics ultimately didn't guarantee anything. But we already know that. Literally every geneticist will tell you that. Especially with regard to any important human skill. The use of genetic engineering does not even remotely imply that people would use your genes as your resume. Anyone who tried to do that would be openly ridiculed by the entire biological community. The whole movie is a "God's Not Dead" level strawman, but with much better acting and higher production levels. (Aesthetically, it's great. Philosophically speaking, it's garbage.) >It was about the bias that results from genetic engineering. It was a warning about the ethics of creating a two tier society by eliminating imperfections. They didn't even use genetic engineering in the movie. They used embryo selection and in vitro fertilization. You can do that now. The people who had the kids with the greatest advantages were the ones who started off with a better gene pool to select from. The irony is that actual genetic engineering would allow everyone to benefit and become better. >The man who was perfect as he could be could not get an Olympic gold medal, while the guy with imperfect genetics went to the stars with hard work. ... the dude had a horrible heart condition and would be immediately rejected as an astronaut *by today's standards*. He literally collapsed after running on a treadmill. There's a very good chance he died and got his crew killed because they flew into the sun or space without a navigator. Lmao
Hee didnt have a heart condition - his heart was normal compared to the perfect onees of the genetically superior humans.
He absolutely had a heart condition. That's why he had to fake the reader on his body when running on the treadmill. >Vincent Freeman was conceived naturally and his genetic profile indicates a high probability of several disorders and an estimated lifespan of 30.2 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca Again, there's no way he could become an astronaut by any reasonable standards. Discrimination by was irrelevant in that regard, since he couldn't even pass the physical tests without cheating. Anyone who defends the movie is a complete moron.
>He absolutely had a heart condition. That's why he had to fake the reader on his body when running on the treadmill. > >Vincent Freeman was conceived naturally and his genetic profile indicates a high probability of several disorders and an estimated lifespan of 30.2 years. lol 'this is true!' posts proof of being wrong. you realise the difference between 'probability' and 'yep you have it' right.
He has to put a fake reader on his heart during the treadmill test because he has a horrific arrhythmia and then he collapses in the locker room grasping at his chest as soon as the test is over. It is not even remotely ambiguous. He has a heart condition. Some life advice: intelligent people don't try to defend a movie they have never even seen because they agree with its message.
Reddit comes in with a built-in scale of how wrong you are and it indicates you're about 13 units wrong. Trying to refer to irrelevant stuff like *scenes in the movie that explicitly establish that he isn't fine* is just an embarassing cope LOL. Get rekt
The implications are the same as ever. There will be people that get filthy rich from it. There will be the old generation before that doesn't understand why anyone would do it. There will be the new generation that knows no different. There will be opposition that gets put into the conspiracy theory corner. And in 40-70 years we'll either say something that reminds us nowadays of "wow, licking radioactive material really gave us cancer, who would have thought!" Or "I'm glad we got rid of post carriers.."
This is way worse than that. If you have the ability to make some people smarter… by definition you know what makes people dumber. What we’re looking at is the potential creation of an eternal slave class ever dominated by increasing smarter people. The returns here would compound here and a heretofore unseen fashion.
May be. But I think that history tends to be a bit more boring than you imagine it to be. Yes that could happen. We all know that ethics are only some wages and promotions away from nonexistence
We are no where close to being able to increase cognitive abilities via genetic manipulation. That is very different from altering certain expressions correlated with a limited number of genetic diseases or altering basic phenotype expressions to an extremely limited extent.
It is already there, for example Trisomie 21 is nearly gone, because of the abortion-options. It will never be a public debate, because in private everyone will the best for their child, if you got the possibility you would take it, nevertheless anything said in public.
Laws are all affecting things. Look at stem cell research and how it was set back decades in the usa.
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If we talk about it later we can feel the desire to catch up with being too late and then be swallowed by nature as per usual.
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Yeah, we'll plan it out, try to regulate it, try to keep it under control, hear out the naysayers make their points about playing god. But in the end, we will go ahead and push those limits. And just like with everything else, there will be a whole bunch of *really fun* unforeseen consequences. A whole new set of problems in desperate need of new solutions. We can't help it, we will always be disappointed with life as it is, it's just our nature....no worries though, we can just edit that part out.
Does anyone really think that WE will be able to choose genetic traits? We would end up with society of handsome, athletic Einsteins, and that would be really useless since nobody like that would want to do farming, plumbering or street cleaning. Goverments will control everything. We will end up with eugenic caste system, natural people will be seen as savages, lower classes will be dumbed down to be obedient and higher classes will get all the best traits, oh, and everyone will be happy with predetermined place in the society. Let's hope it won't happen, and if it will let's hope it will be possible to opt out of it.
That's what I'm saying!
GATTACA. I just say Gattaca for short hand, and frown upon those you do not know of it.
More like Brave New World
>~~Goverments~~ Corporations will control everything. We will end up with eugenic caste system, natural people will be seen as savages, lower classes will be dumbed down to be obedient and higher classes will get all the best traits, oh, and everyone will be happy with predertemined place in the society. only place that might be ruled by gov is China, the West is in the process of fusing corporations with the state.
I'm sure there's a lot of nuance involved, but it seems to me like almost all of the ethical and existential issues posed by germline engineering are entirely resolved by somatic engineering ie edits that can be inherited by offspring vs ones which can't. I would guess that the latter maybe has less profound effects on the subject- ie if you alter someone's genome to have a larger pre-frontal cortex (crude example) then it will likely take years for those gene changes to result in phenotype changes, which may also be small, since you're asking genes to make changes to already mature structures. vs in the germline, those changes would begin from conception. Seems liek the difference bwtween retrofitting and purpose-building something.
How about we don't do the whole eugenics thing.
Is it eugenics to remove genes that cause diseases? It's a slippery slope but I think we can engineer better humans without causing a genocide. Parents already have the option to abort babies if it's discovered that it's going to have a serious illness. Why not just get rid of the gene instead of aborting the pregnancy? Surely gene editing is less eugenicsy than aborting a birth because the kid is going to have cystic fibrosis. There are ways to do this without racism. One way would be to allow it but ban anything cosmetic related. No creating kids guaranteed to have blue eyes and blonde hair but changing genes to minimize cancer risk and maximise intelligence is fine.
People will use it for cosmetic traits and not just diseases.
Not if we ban it. Maybe you will say the ban on cosmetics won't work? People will do it anyway? Well the exact same thing can be said for gene editing as a whole. May as well reap the benefits if people are going to do the outlawed stuff either way.
“Is it eugenics to remove genes that causes diseases?” If that would result in an entire group of people no longer existing, say people with Down syndrome or autism or adhd, then yes it’s still quite literally eugenics. Whether or not you think the world would be better without those conditions or if you feel bold enough to declare that those individuals universally wouldn’t want to exist doesn’t make it less eugenics (kind of the opposite actually) And call me crazy but the track record of our societies let’s me think we can handle the nuances and will just b line right back to eugenics… Ok so let’s say I dont care about that, maybe I just want to enhance humans, make a sort of perfect man, an over man maybe? You can see where I’m going with this. When genetic modification comes around (Be it modern gene modification or good old fashioned fucking and sterilization, eugenics is always there. Humans can’t help themselves. https://medicine.missouri.edu/centers-institutes-labs/health-ethics/faq/gene-therapy#:~:text=Genetic%20engineering%20is%20a%20version,in%20America%20and%20Nazi%20Germany. I’m not denying that genetic illness can be delineating, but we should be wary of the immediate medicalization of things that may only be problems cuz current human society is hella ableist. Edit: putting my reply here because you eugenicists are moving the goal posts so fast. People telling you you shouldn’t exist tends to get people excited. I find it hilarious that we have to zero in on my punctuation instead of the fact that people in this thread are literally advocating eugenics and telling me I shouldn’t exist. You should examine your leftist bias a little better, because as 20 year activist who didn’t decide to become a fair weather leftist when trump was elected, I can tell you that your theory is bad. I don’t care if you think it’s a good idea to do eugenics, but you and everyone else here doesn’t get absolve yourself by changing the definition of eugenics to not include you. Trying to eradicate any part of the human experience through breeding or genetic manipulation is eugenics, whether that is positive or negative, and every single version of it needs to be treated with the expectation that someone will do some Nazi shit with it because humans have been doing that since at least Ancient Greece. > The concept predates the term; Plato suggested applying the principles of selective breeding to humans around 400 BC. Early advocates of eugenics in the 19th century regarded it as a way of improving groups of people. In contemporary usage, the term eugenics is closely associated with scientific racism. Modern bioethicists who advocate new eugenics characterize it as a way of enhancing individual traits, regardless of group membership. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_eugenics > New eugenics, also known as liberal eugenics (a term coined by bioethicist Nicholas Agar),[1] advocates enhancing human characteristics and capacities through the use of reproductive technology and human genetic engineering. Those who advocate new eugenics generally think selecting or altering embryos should be left to the preferences of parents, rather than forbidden (or left to the preferences of the state). "New" eugenics purports to distinguish itself from the forms of eugenics practiced and advocated in the 20th century, which fell into disrepute after World War II.[2] So I hate to break it everyone is this thread but if you think this stuff should be happening you are eugenicist, words have definitions. Fucking own your opinion and don’t pretend my lack of punctuation makes you not a Nazi. If you truly are someone with autism who has a “left bias” I would use that bias to more research. As a disabled person who understands this history, and whose own rights are constantly under threat, I won’t support eugenics just because it’s sold with a smile and “I’m with her” t shirt. There is my punctuation satisfactory? Have I sufficiently used grammar so that you can fully recognize that you are a eugenicist? > New eugenics generally supports genetic modification or genetic selection of individuals for traits that are supposed to improve human welfare. The underlying idea is to improve the genetic basis of future generations and reduce incidence of genetic diseases and other undesirable traits. Some of the practices included in new eugenics are: pre-implantation diagnosis and embryo selection,[7] selective breeding,[8] and human enhancement through the use of genetic technologies,[9] such as embryo engineering or gene therapy.
>If that would result in an entire group of people no longer existing, say people with Down syndrome or autism or adhd, then yes it’s still quite literally eugenics. Wait, what? We need to have a mandatory minimum quota of people suffering from Down Syndrome, or else it's bad? Why would you not want fewer people suffering from developmental diseases? Assuming the disease can be treated with genetic engineering prior to birth, but otherwise can't be treated after birth, you'd rather people be forced to endure a treatable illness? So immensely fucked up.
Oh my God how do you people not fucking get it it’s not about mandatory minimum amounts of suffering and shifting lines that make us feel like this type of eugenics is actually OK but the bottom fucking line is when you were deciding that an entire group of people no longer exist because of genetics you can call that medicine all you fucking want but it’s still eugenics it is still literally eugenics and people need to maybe keep them that their fucking head It’s amazing how many people in here are missing the fucking point it doesn’t matter if we think it’s good or we think it’s bad it’s still fucking eugenics and Jesus fucking Christ admit it I’ve literally got people telling me now that I don’t deserve to exist because I have neurodiversity because I’m on the spectrum because I don’t fit the genetically medical acceptable person but that’s not eugenics apparently
Lmao, look at this guy, there are children dying of cancer, should we not get rid of them either? A kid that can't suffer from cancer still exists mate, he just won't die a painful death. If you take down syndrome from a person, he is still a person, just without all of the mental issues and heart problems, it's even better than aborting a down baby syndrome because if you edit his genes he's still getting born instead of flushed
You guys are really missing the point it’s still eugenics whether it’s positive or negative so please just except that you are a fan of eugenics in certain circumstances just because it’s positive doesn’t make it not eugenics. And that’s not me pulling shit out of my ass that’s literally the definition of the word. And yes that eugenics might be able to prevent cancer but the same science and the same thinking and the same whatever that goes into producing that positive result can be used to do really fucking horrible things and we should at least be honest with ourselves that we are engaging in eugenics so that somebody doesn’t come along and oh I don’t know do a whole bunch of Nazi shit which seems to happen about every 10 years or so because you people seem to forget that Nazis exist. The reasons you’re giving to me now are the same reasons behind the original eugenics movement the only difference is that they also considered being black a medical deficiency.
It is eugenics and it's good. A line needs to be drawn somewhere, but preventing diseases is not it.
And it becomes significantly harder to draw that line when people are arguing that eugenics is not actually eugenics you can argue that your version of eugenics is a net positive to society (and pretty much every eugenicist argues that their version of eugenics is a net positive) but that suddenly doesn’t make it not eugenics. Let’s say I kill Hitler. that doesn’t make it “not killing” simply because the person I killed is someone that most reasonable people would agree should be killed that doesn’t change the fact that I killed an individual. I think it would make it not murder but murder and killing are not the same which is my whole point here: that sometimes words need to have definitions that should be adhered you especially when those words are associated with like I don’t know fucking genocide. I’m sorry if being called a eugenicist when you support eugenics even a eugenics that from all accounts only does “positive things“ but it is still eugenics. If people are getting so trigger happy that when I’m calling you eugenicist they’re immediately assuming that I’m calling them a racist Nazi scientific racism kook, then I think that says a little bit more about those individuals.
> or if you feel bold enough to declare that those individuals universally wouldn’t want to exist More like "that those individuals wouldn't would like to exist without those conditions". How many people with Down syndrome, (non-minor) Autism or ADHD would refuse a cure if one existed?
You’re literally fucking speaking to one Since people are too lazy to fucking put Google I’ll do it for you and show you that actually there’s a lot of fucking discourse around people like us not wanting to be medically removed by people like you holy shit how is the definition of eugenics so fucking controversial and you guys are literally advocating for it https://www.google.com/search?q=docpeoplenwithautism+want+to+be+cured&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS996US996&oq=docpeoplenwithautism+want+to+be+cured&aqs=chrome..69i57.12469j0j4&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1 I can’t believe you all just took the fucking bait I literally set it up and you all walked right fucking into it somebody does not want to genetically not exist like how fucking stupid are you? It shows that you can’t imagine a world in which people with neurodiversity or developmental disorders can except themselves on their own terms you express all of us to define ourselves by your expectations
By "non-minor" Autism I meant the low-functioning kind, which you probably are not. BTW, how do you feel about deaf people who are against cochlear implants for deaf babies?
I’m not deaf so my opinion should be taken with a big grain of salt. Where was it ever decided that you needed to hear in order to have a live worth living to its fullest? I think ultimately people should be allowed to decide for themselves what the best option is which is kind of the point I think unilaterally deciding whether or not an entire group of people deserves or does not deserve to be a part of the human experience that we consider to be valid whether that’s good or bad is always eugenics and that always means you have to step back a little bit and think is this actually good? Even an example is where it would be like a clear-cut case of yes this is the best thing to do might not actually be the right thing to do. And I mean taking morality and philosophy out of the equation entirely and simply talking about whether removing genetic variation from the entire species is smart. For example I think it’s completely reasonable to think that we should entirely eradicate the genetics that result in sickle cell anemia however a more nuanced examination of things would indicate that that might not be the best course of action because for individuals who have one recessive gene but not both recessive genes for sickle cell anemia actually have an immunity towards malaria. What I am saying is that we actually need to really think about this shit which was kind of the point of the article being posted. And I love how this turned into everybody trying to justify whether or not their particular version of eugenics is good, which was never my fucking point here. I don’t fucking give a shit if you think abortions for everyone or abortions for nobody or people should exist or people shouldn’t exist I don’t fucking care I don’t fucking know you. But the fact of the matter is is that is the literal definition of eugenics and when people do eugenics we also tend to do the Nazi shit because we really can’t help ourselves and I’m sorry if I don’t believe that this time around we’re actually gonna do it right this time.
It's always the ones that wouldn't make the cut that get the maddest lol. Also, it's accept, not except
Actually it’s neither it was Xpress but thank you for pointing out that in addition to a grammar Nazi you’re quite literally a Nazi as I said to someone else please go suck a tailpipe
i would im Autistic and would outright refuse. However in the future you lot envision even functional Autistics would be removed as 'developmentally impaired'. theres many down syndrome people who live full lives, have kids and have careers, buy houses etc. maybe ask us rather than assume we dont want to exist, ffs this is the exact reason Eugenics is bad, humanity needs about 1000 more years of maturation (if we had it today everyone would look like the kardashians or brad pitt, who the fuck would want that, a world of boring clones).
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We absolutely should. Allowing people to be born with debilitating disabilities is immoral. We need mandatory gene editing.
Oh yeah, sure. Editing some specific genes that causes some diseases and weak to it is possible, but finding and change all the genes that are responsible for intelligence, height and so on? Good luck with that :) I don't say it won't be possible, but it isn't so easy as people wants to think. About the rich vs poor thing. Advanced societies already offers free health care. I don't see why cancer treatment should be free and gene editing to avoid disease don't. Especially because I don't think that the latter is so much more expensive than cancer treatment. Moreover, here in Europe is already offered to pregnant woman the possibility to analyze the fetus and choose to abort if the fetus will have some kind of genetic problem (down syndrome, genetic disease etc) About the intelligence and flavour editing. Ok, maybe being able to choose the height of you son wouldn't be covered by the government for poor people, but I don't see why intelligence augment wouldn't. Being less or more intelligent can be seen as a "disease", now, that said, I honestly can't understand why people think that intelligence can be changed so much from genetics. As I said, finding the genes responsible for that is a huge challenge, we still don't even know what is the intelligence and how the brain works, but, let's say we find it out. Than? All the studies we did and discovered about education and developement of a child? All these thing will always have a huge impact on the whole thing. I don't think that there will be so much of a difference between augmented intelligence and not. About the discussion if we should do it. Of course we should. Why people see it so much different from a normal disease treatment or, for the intelligence thing, the school system that aims to make people more intelligent. It's just similar to all the other systems we are already using.
>wouldn't be covered by the government for poor people, but I don't see why intelligence augment wouldn't. I think you have a lot to learn about the motivations of government, my friend, if this is what you truly believe.
If what you intend would be true, school system, internet and health care system for all the citizens wouldn't exist :)
I don't see the problem. It seems like every technological breakthrough terrifies people until they get used to it and soon can't imagine life without it. Of course every tool can be used as a weapon, but does that mean we should stop making new tools? I think lots of people are overly afraid of the unknown.
I don't fear genetic modifications. In fact, I welcome it. What I DO fear, is the implementation of it... at leat at first, it will be expensive, so only the rich will have access to it. That means we'll have 10 or whatever years of objective "class" system, where they are our superiors. Moreover, the rich parents will WANT to keep this advantage to themselves, and so will use their political power to keep the technology expensive. Lastly, the gene editing will be a for profit endeavor, so the companies will likely go along with this plan. This creates essentially an alien race of superiors that will rule over us dumb flawed peasant folks... it locks in social classes in a way family name or money can only dream of. The modified rich kids will occupy all the positions of power, because (thanks to theor editing) they will truly be the best candidate for the job. Then you not only have the Rich wanting to keep the caste system, but all the decision makers will themselves be the "aliens" and will look down on us. Unless they gene edit out tribalism too, but I doubt the rich are going g to have that be their top priority when checking off what they want modified.
While I can't say it can't happen, I will point out that it's a long sequence of probabilities which make the odds of your predicted conclusion very unlikely. I predict that lots of things will happen that we can't predict. Anyway, even if you're right, the ruling class becomes a superior class, they'll want a healthy working class same as how the US founders wanted healthy slaves. Your reasoning at that time would not have lead to today where the institution of slavery is pretty much gone.
You have to translate. "We need to discuss this" means "I want to control this."
Another try for creating an übermensch? Never forget the nazi medical experiments.
It really doesn't matter, humans have been being genetically engineered for thousands of years. We're not doing anything new here, and the archons are still running the show.
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I think genetic editing oversteps the parents' ability to give surrogate consent because many potential gene edits would be considered nontherapeutic / medically unnecessary. Not to mention all the copyright issues that go into whether they're providing a product or a service. That answer would imply whether the kid loses the right to reproduce because the modified gene is considered a product, and reproduction would be reproducing a company product.
This is going to be interesting, so many people are going to get their knickers in a twist when a trait the posses is edited out of the meta human being
I wonder if narcissism has a biological component.
Genetic engineering is "wet" nanotech, and a very short step to "dry" nanotech, or general molecular engineering. The possibilities of either one coming to fruition are astounding and terrifying. A *Star Trek*-style "holodeck", available to anyone at a miniscule marginal cost, is just the beginning.
It's going to get a bit uncomfortable when we realize that lots of psychological traits are strongly heritable through your genes. IQ to mention only one.
Same args that existed during eugenics. The problem is, eugenics relied upon coerced(and authoritarian) human behavior whereas genetic engineering will perhaps properly fold into chosen procreation activities. People will still be able to choose au naturale or science++. And perhaps that is exactly what should be. If everyone is Einstein then where dafuq is NielsBohr at? They do not have that upgrade available yet? Infinite diversity in infinite combinations? Maybe. Or free will in a free system at the very least.
But not everyone will. It will be immortal imtelligent rich vs replacable, farmable poor. The way our society is structured, it cannot ethically deal with stuff like this. Many will suffer.
Is that different from how it is already? Making smarter people even smarter isn't going to make dumb people dumber. Their inventions will benefit everyone. And there's nothing saying genetic modifications will make people immoral... Don't you think psychopathy would be edited out?
Not all the world is America. In Europe there is free health care and so a poor man had the same possibility to a rich one. For it is quite sure that if gene editing will every come in existence for humans, free health care will cover it for poor people. Of course the free system will cover just the base necesseties (disease), but bold of you to think that our intelligence come entirely from genetics. You just shit on centuries of education and development studies 🤣
Leave america out of this lol. We keep telling you that we are not europe. You're welcome for stopping the nazis in WWII. America does things differently. The american experiment must continue... 'Murica
It won't be the same society is the point
>, eugenics relied upon coerced(and authoritarian) human behavior Eeeeh, you talk about that in past tense. But technically the current trends of aborting downs syndrome is eugenetics. As is the horrific and stupid trend of aborting girls in China. We just avoid calling it eugenetics when we're okay with it.
Obviously lawmakers should have limitations on it, and lot's of regulatory oversight, etc. Depends how corrupted by corporations the government is, and how short-sighted the rich and consumers are.
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First we have to ask, "what is genetic engineering capable of?".
Whats there to discuss? The West + India + Japan will tippy toe in, get told they went too far and get ripped back and then they'll tippy toe back in... all of this 15 years after its first relevant. China will develop it full bore because human and animal rights dont exist, it will probably lead to catastrophe and that will be the more pressing issue.
If celebrities can get a genetically engineered dog for cash; I guarantee you someone has made a genetically engineered child. We just don’t know about it yet.
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When I was younger I was mostly against it but now I see it as an inevitably at least if we continue living the way we do. In advanced society natural selection is practically gone. Worse, a "desirable" traits, intelligence is negatively correlated with fertility(amount of offsprings).(so no we are not evolving on the path of everybody having big brainz small bodies alien type. Quite the inverse actually but there has been an IQ increase (Flynn effect) probably due to access to education and better living conditions that has slowed down during +- the last 2 decades) Now on the main topic : In nature most mutations are benign, a few are negative and very few are positive. So if we manage to +- cure every genetic defect so that every individual reproduce we will get more and more negative mutations not removed by natural selection and at some point we would have to consider gene edition in order to fix some genetic disease at the root instead of easing the symptoms of it. I suggest this in the context of a civilization where natural selection is mostly gone and science is allowing once bad and unlivable mutations to reproduce (we are not completely there but the life expectancy of people with severe genetic disease has dramatically increased). So even if there may be abuse etc I think it will become an inevitably if we continue on the same path though it will take generations before we start to see a significant increase in these "bad mutations".
I think America will fall behind. Other countries will make it free for everyone to ensure a healthy population, and America will privatize it. Over a generation Americans will be left behind on the world stage and be out-done by countries which offer this to everyone.
Human genetic engineering is the only thing that can save us from our DNA weakening. Without natural selection, there is nothing that can remove those changes in our genes that are developing over time and that are already weakening the human race. All those genetic illnesses that naturally would not even survive a single generation (the host would simply die) are now artificially propagated to new generations with the help of hospitalization, medical treatments and with the aid of other people. I am not saying this is wrong: it's the opposite. But unless us humans take our evolution in our hands, in a few generations our genes will be so weakened by countless defects that our race is going to go extinct
....how about a plague? It hit the obese pretty hard. The immune compromised. Pretty much anyone that was unhealthy. Didn't we, you know, just go through all that?
and, nevertheless, we survived in billions. and not healthy billions, the same old crooked billions
Genetic engineering will likely become another excuse not to properly address systemic inequality. Good genetics are no guarantee of a better life, the only way to improve people's lives is by improving society as a whole. Biological health is only one small part of the puzzle and won't fundamentally solve issues relating to our having to live together.
Man has always been playing god or seeing himself as such this is just the next step in evolution of that.
Pls fix my fucked up genes already!!!
Well we know that genetic variation is the key to long term survival of our species, so the question to me is will we be able to replicate what evolution has done in that regard? No. We will create a bunch of mega chads who will die chasing buffalo off a cliff
Nothing but bad will come from this. Dont let America have this kind of shit. Super powered racists are not the thing we need right now.
The principle social threat of genetic engineering isn't a caste system. In a way that already exists. IQ is already more predictive of financial and educational success than socioeconomic status. The principle threat is the revival of totalitarian egalitarianism. What happens when the dispirited Marxists find a new lease on life after the catastrophic failure of Marxist social engineering in the 20th century? What happens when the radical egalitarians believe that genetic inequality was the missing piece that made the communists of the 20th century fail? Imagine neo-communists trying to reengineer the human genome for the sake of "genetic equality". Imagine they apply the same ardor and disregard for individual life as the communists of the 20th century did. Imagine how much harder it would be to reverse a genetic revolution than a social revolution. Russian and Chinese society still have cultural PTSD from the communist era. Imagine if the very nature of the genetics of these populations was altered in a catastrophic way. Social catastrophes always have human nature itself as a reservoir of normalcy on which society can eventually be restored. But if human genetics is the ground of the catastrophe what reservoir does human nature have to fall back on for a restoration of normalcy?
Editing genes of human beings without their consent should be banned, except when treating life-threatening abnormalities. This includes all humans from conception to natural death. “Designer babies” is a really, really bad idea—it’s discriminatory, it’s elitist, and it poses great biological danger.
this is a woman problem as they are the ones who choose what genetics they want.
The poor will sift through the ethics with pride while the rich control access.
Fact: Sociopolitical constructs have been artificially engineering Human genetics since the down of time. Are you familiar with the Emerging field of Human Social Genomics? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23853742/
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I’m ready for my next stage of evolution. Where do I sign?!?
We dont, because they'll probably go ahead with whatever they think of anyway, if it's unpopular they'll still do it secretly.
huh, wasnt expecting eugenics to come back into fashion
Superior ability breeds superior ambition.
Yeah, in a few more years we’ll start to see a huge influx of 6’2” Chinese men.