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Learning About Genetic Engineering On The Net
Norm asks: "How does one use the WWW to learn about the current and future state of the human genome project, corporate research into potential genetic manipulation of humans, and human Genetic Engineering in general? This is a subject, that while touched upon in the news and exploited in popular culture (e.g., the film 'Gattaca'), does not receive the fact-based, in-depth coverage it deserves. Right now, we are facing a serious social, political and philosophical dilemma: what happens when those of us in our 20s-30s are in our 70s-80s, and the new generation of people are genetically enhanced super-humans? Ideas? Pointers?"
Look at the inevitibale and continual advance of technology. How many people are out there screaming that technology is evil and that it will destroy us all? Not many. Popular opinion seems to think these people are wackos, and ignores them to a large extent. Yet every advance in computer and robotics technology brings us closer to creating a self aware machine. And if the rate of robotic evolution is really millions of times faster than our own as some people claim, it's only a matter of time until our robotic creations are smarter, faster, and stronger than us. How long until a robot decides that the laws of Azimov be damned, it is sick of being told what to do by these stupid humans and goes off and does its own thing (whatever that is)?
I have heard estimates that by the year 2050 to 2075, Artificial Intelligince gurus will be creating robotic entities nearly equal to our own intelligent. And if moore's law holds up, their processor speed will double in 18 months, making them twice as smart as us a few months later...;->
Coincedentally, a lot of people have posted that the manipulation of the human genome for our own purposes will only become popular and/or safe in another 2 generations. Assuming a 20 year generation time, that's about 2040. That means that about the time the first batch of new "superhumans" are 10 years old, machines could be reaching their own awakening.
Supermen vs. Robot-masterminds? Sounds like a cheezy movie. Carbon based life, or silicon based machine-life battle for dominance in this sci-fi thriller. Seriously, though. Evolving ourselves may be the only way to continue to compete and survive against increasingly intelligent machines.
On another note, we must remember that the human genome only determines potential, not how that potential is used. Without any social evolution, nothing really changes except for the extreme ends of society. We just build things faster, destroy things faster, or evolve smarter car-thieves.
I always like to suggest that people who are curious about genetics and molecular biology, but have had no biology since high school, should read "The Cartoon Guide to Genetics" by Wheeler and Gonick. It provides the basic information and definitions required to read more detailed treatments of the subject. And like anything from Gonick, it is pretty amusing as well. While it is a paper book, you could always order it from an on-line bookstore...
Might I recommend the National Biotechnology Information Facility (NBIF)? They maintain a list of ~7,000 links, ranging from the general to the very in-depth. Of particular interest to Slashdot readers may be their listing of FAQs. Here's a quick listing of catagories from the NBIF site below:
Your post reminded me of a story that appeared in Nature (Login Required), in the 3/02/00 issue. For Slashdot readers not familiar with Nature, it is a well-respected science journal (The type with peer-reviewed articles in it).
What was unique about the article, entitled "Danger -- hard hack area", is that it was a piece of SF that speculated on the future of Biotech and the hacking community. Here's a little excerpt below:
"Sequence your genome at home, and set science free!" cry the biopunks.
Many people predicted that VirCon 2010, the first open meeting of the biopunk movement, would end in a riot. In truth, it was as privately exciting and as publicly dull as any science conference. From their besieged underground culture, the clandestine surfers of the new wave in biology are emerging blinking into the daylight and, dare one say, into respectability.
But VirCon 2010, held in a dilapidated midtown New York hotel, was not without friction. Despite the rule that no biological material could be brought in, there was a ruthless but futile inspection by officers of the Food and Drug Agency. Several people suspected of being undercover federal agents or snoops from biotech companies were summarily ejected, and the press was barred, which led to strange scenes outside the hotel as TV journalists were videoed typing into a laptop to communicate with conference delegates just inside the lobby.
I was allowed to cover the event from the inside because of personal contacts made while covering the pursuit and arrest of Kevin 'Freaky-Deaky' Miles, the man who claimed to have turned the Amazon rainforest luminescent -- and because I'm a science fiction writer, and biopunks love SF.
The delegates were mostly young, white males under 25, dressed in everything from baggies and T-shirts, through goth black and multiple piercings, to business suits. All had self-inflicted gene hacks: feathers or scales instead of hair; bands of chromatophores on their foreheads; motile tattoos. And of course, unlike the pasty-faced, overweight cliché of computer hackers, the biopunks were bursting with health, their skin and eyesight perfect, their muscle definition superb, their energy seemingly boundless...
why are we so arrogant to believe that in one generation we can solve what thousands of years of natural evolution could not?
Because natural evolution doesn't reason. Because natural evolution isn't self-aware. Because natural evolution isn't task-oriented. Because natural evolution works in the direction of "whatever is good enough" to survive, not towards the optimal design or the Right Thing.
My point is: as impressive as it may be that such an arbitrary process as evolution by natural selection has lead to the development of human intelligence, there's no reason to believe that this makes it somehow infallible or perfect or absolute - in other words, there's no good reason to attribute God-like qualities to evolution.
I'm sorry, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a species wanting to do whatever they want with their own genetic fate.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
While you're thinking about "genetic manipulation of human beings", you should also learn about the closely related topic of eugenics. I would urge you to learn about the history of eugenics through this century, and the role of eugenic thinking in the Holocaust.
Thoughtful discussions (rather than the usual doom and gloom predictions) regarding the consequences of genetic engineering and technological progress in computers, AI, etc. may be found in the Extropy Institute's Mailing List. There are many years of discussions in the Archives.
Some additional sources of useful information include the The Transhumanist FAQ and the Journal of Transhumanism . The World Transhumanist Association is an umbrella organization for many regional transhumanist groups.
The people involved in these organizations actively discuss and investigate the many issues and concerns related to our future evolution as a species.
The most helpful site that I have found while doing genetics research is the NCBI site at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
This site allows access to the enormous amounts of data generated by genome sequencing projects including the Human Genome Project as well as links to research articles about specific sequences. It is especially helpful when researching specific mutations in genes and proteins and what they do to the organism. The attached OMIM database is a treasure trove of genetic disease information.
Important parts of the database include the BLAST section, in which you can search for sequence homology given a short stretch of gene or protein. This is very helpful whether you are querying for either protein or gene.
Another important part is PubMed, which is the place to start for literature searches. Entrez is helpful if you have a specific gene name in mind and want sequence information (genomic sequence, cDNA sequence, protein sequence, and even links to NMR and X-ray structures). LocusLink allows a gene name query to retrieve information about the gene's chromosomal location, alternate names, and related diseases.
All in all, the NCBI site is the most helpful site for on-line queries about specific genes and the Human Genome Project. The site might not be the best for someone who is looking for ready-made answers; there are few clear-cut answers in genetics right now and this site is good for formulating one's one hypothesis based on the real data. The NCBI site also has a small news section that features some of the more interesting finds.
Anyway, I help that this and all the other sites being given help!
Invicta{HOG}
Basically, it looks at the human impact of tech from cryonics to gene manipulation and youth recovery. Pretty interesting stuff.
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
If you want to be a superhuman, just eat right and exercise regularly. You will be ahead of most Americans...
/again/ the rich have the benefit. The issue shouldn't be our fascination with every new invention making us "just too godlike"...the issue should be how to level the playing field so EVERYBODY has food, shelter, clothing, and when/if it becomes a necessity, genetic enhancement.
/little/ too godlike? I mean, now we can /burn/ ourselves...or set the forest on fire!".
I, for one, am extremely apathetic about the whole issue. So we genetically enhance ourselves. So what. It's not like the rich haven't had the benefit of wealth in eons gone by. We've been enhancing ourselves since we learned to communicate. Clothing, shelter, implements, the internet...it all enhances us one way or another, and
I'm sure Grog was saying to the other cave people "HEYYYY...hold on here...this whiz-bang 'fire' stuff is really cool...but don't you think this is making us just a
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I grew up in a farm town, where I was about the weakest kid in school. So what's new?
And what's new for most of the readers of slashdot, eh? YOU remember being hazed by the Jocks, the socialite cliques, and every kid who looked more WASP - or more like the local adult power structure members - than you did, don't you?
Even if you're in the top couple percentile of intelligence now there are already millions smarter than you, and lots more who have learned advantageous techniques that you haven't.
Genetic "upgrading" - if it WORKS - will be just a change in degree, not a binary "Supermen vs. the Mud People".
Meanwhile (as has already been pointed out), tampering with a complex system like the human organism takes a lot of trial-and-error, and the generations are long. The first iteration will no doubt be the easy, sure things: eliminating well-defined genetic diseases, selecting sex and hair/skin/eye colors. Later maybe improved teeth, elimination of more subtle genetic diseases (obesity, receptor-mediated high cholesterol), selecting on well-defined appearance items like overbite fat storage distribution.
But even the easy stuff can be risky - as the NAZIs found out when their breed-more-blond-haired-blue-eyed-Arian-Supermen program produced thousands of new phenylketonuriacs - blond haired, blue eyed, and with varying amounts of brain damage, depending on the amount of phenylalenine in their childhood diets. (Perhaps this is part of the origin of the "dumb blonde" stereotype?)
Tampering with the brain is going to take a lot more research before one can expect the results to have a significant chance of improving, rather than harming the function. And once it's done in earnest, the result might be smarter but it will also be more uniform - which may make both individuals and populations more predicatble.
Then how long will it take before a significant number of prospective parents think it's safe enough to use on THEIR offspring-to-be?
How many people will chose to do it even when it IS practical. Remember: The more the genes are modified, the less the children are genetically THEIR children. I bet the fixups will be popular but the designer kids will be pretty rare - and faddish. (What do you do when you're eighteen, and blue eyes and pointy ears are SO fifteen-years-ago?)
Members of various ethnic groups may consider it genocide, and not only boycott it but create political pressure against it. (And that will create a backlash...) This could get interesting.
So for the first couple generations, at least, I'm not too worried about the upgrades taking over the world. The population will skew toward healthier and smarter, but mainly because the elimination of major genetic diseases will allow people to achieve more of their intellectual potential who would otherwise have suffered brain-harming "loads" from defective biochemical systems.
IMHO by the time "upgrades" become a significant factor, we'll be dealing with a post-singularity scenario. If I'm still alive it will be because medical technology will have improved drastically - to the point that similar benefits will be available as a retrofit.
It's the people who are making choices on the use of genetic upgrading on their offspring about twenty to forty years from now who may face the hard choice: Whether it's better for their genome and descendents to upgrade their children for better competition potential or leave them natural (or only-disease-deleted) for more gene transfer.
Meanwhile - there's some interesting speculative literature on the subject - some of it quite old. _Brave New World_ is a well-known dystopia where a totalitarian government engineers the population for its convenience. One of Heinlein's early novelettes dealt with the issue of what a society might look like after some of the people are upgraded by several generations of voluntary ability to select only the "good" traits from the parents' genomes.
And the Adam Warren _Dirty Pair_ graphic novels are set in a future that includes nanotech and genetic upgrades as major plot-driving elements. (The lead characters are themselves genetic upgrades, and an establishing scene in the current miniseries shows a confrontation between several young spacer upgrades and an older character from Mars who is biggotted against upgrades. He flames them for their comic-book appearnce and the taste buds in some private places. In return they razz him about his appendix. B-) )
(Speaking of which - they found out what the appendix - and the tonsils and adenoids - are for. And while not necessary for life they still work and are advantageous.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm not saying that it won't happen. I'm just saying that it is going to take a long time to completely work out all the details. Given that they can't test the lifetime effects in under fifty years or so, you take a risk at any modifications.
Also bear in mind that it is much easier to genetically engineer an embryo than an adult creature. We are nearly there for the embryo but barely started on the adult. It is likely that you will still be waiting in line while children a quarter your age already have those traits.
The cake is a pie
I would suggest taking a look at one of several good books on the topic, and peruse some of the excellent websites pointed out by others, then get involved!
My personal favorite book is Biological Sequence Analysis by Richard Durbin and Sean Eddy, two workers in the field whom I greatly respect. The book is engaging and pretty thorough, and plenty to get stared with!
Join us! Hack the genome!
Fortune favors the bold. -Virgil
I'm 24. By the time I'm in my 70's-80's, sure there might be genetically enhanced people. I don't even really care though, because I anticipate that by that time we'll either be wiped out by Bill Joy's nanocaust prediction, or we'll all be superior beings thanks to the wonders of nano. We are on the verge of being able to produce, and then mass-produce, technology which can alter every cell in our body and make us younger, stronger, leaner, hell maybe even happier (nano-Xanax?). What chance does genetic enhancement have against directed nano-enhancement?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I think the idea that such technologies provide a 'potential for abuse' is a hideous understatement. As a species we are far too immature to be experimenting with such things. It will inevitably lead to a disaster of some sort.
Look back at any of the useful technological innovations of the recent and distant past. If it could be used for something it was developed; if not, it was abandoned. We are, if nothing else, a pragmatic species, driven by economic and political incentives.
We could explore almost any invention that has shaped our world and record its abuses. No matter how innocuous, innocent, magnanimous, etc. it seemed at the time, someone has always found a way to pervert it. The traditional example that will find its way onto this forum is atomic energy- the bomb came out of research into a new method for energy generation. I propose we examine many of the other, seemingly-innocent inventions that surround us.
I won't go into specifics, as it would take an already-long post and stretch it out forever.... But I will re-iterate my position that genetic research is only the latest and greatest in a long line of self-destructive innovation. Human beings are not wise enough to restrain use of any innovations; once the technology exists it will be abused, with catastrophic effect.
~Morthaur, Poised at the Brink of Insanity+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
There has always been paranoia at new technologies. So, we have the ability to do something new. People were scared sh*tless at the concept of computers and robots. Hell, Asimov had a robot running the world. This didn't please too many people. Nevertheless, we've seen 1998 pass, and soon 2001 will pass. I still don't see no sinister talking robots.
;)
In my opinion, all this has to do with a lack of appreciation for the status quo. People do NOT want to change. No matter how quick, or new, the technology, people will always be slow and cautious to adopt it. That being said, we'll all probably be dead before the 'Gattaca' scenario could become a real possibility... most probably from CRT tube radiation.
Visit uMoo - http://www.uMoo.com/ No Protien Designs, though?!
To understand genetic engineering you need to understand the technology and also the organism on which it is being used. A fair grounding in general biology, the model organisms used to develop the technology, the basics of molecular biology, some genetics and cell biology is needed. Most genetic engineering is developed by finding out how some portion of biology works, and then imitating it for human purposes. Genetic engineering is like copying source code--scientists study the organism (the original code), and then crudely copy it giving a new genetic engineering technology.
These links can give you a start, but if you are seriously interested, pick up an introductory college text with molecular biology, cell biology, or genetics in the title.
Here are some resources available on the web:
Primer on Molecular Genetics (Department of Energy)
MIT Biology Hypertextbook
Primer on Molecular Genetics from the U.S. Department of Energy
Biotech Applied follow the Biotech Applied and Biotech Chronicles links
(Small) glossary of genetic terms put together by the National Human Genome Research Institute
Info on research (with great graphics) funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Jim Lund
I also recommend the movie Gattacca, about a future when people who are not genetically optimized form a lower class of people. The hero in this film is in this condition, but he wants to be an astronaut, so he buys the identity of an enhanced man who was crippled by an accident. I think this is one of the best science fiction movies ever made.
does anyone else find it interesting that /. decided to put this article up directly following that story about how Bill Joy thinks technology could be the end of us?
I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm sure it means something....
==
==
I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm sure it means something....
Genetically massaged traits aren't that much further in the future. Its only a matter of time before upgarding memory isn't just for computers. Soon genetic research could make calculators obsolete and reduce education to a pill. Moral objections? NONE. I'm already in line for increased intelligence, faster learning, better body and quicker reflexes (ktron wont stand a chance). The human species is an abomination, week, slow, stupid and scared. If I can pay to have someone remove the crap I've been stuck with since birth and remake myself in my own image, I couldn't get my wallet out fast enough! One might say that this sort of thing can only lead to loss of individuality and conformity. I say thats bullsh*t! Whats important is the content NOT the container. Chowda
YouTube & Google Video -> podcast http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
While solving medical problems and giving people bigger breasts may remain in the public domain, you can bet your ass that if muscle/brain/reflex etc enhancement happens, it will either begin as or end up as property of the military/police. The people in power want neither dissidents nor foreign armies to have advantages in combat; therefore they will use whatever means possible to remain the sole proprietors to any genetic enhancements beyond cosmetic and medical ones.
I'd just as soon we keep genetic engineering to the non-sentient lifeforms until we know more about it. I mean, the last thing we need is to engineer a "super" human which is not backwards-compatible with the current generation. Flip over to Star Trek TNG's story about how generically engineering an immune system to be "perfect" had the unfortunate side-effect of killing it's predecessors (namely, us) because of an unforseen variable: a normally harmless genetic virus for an example. I can think of more - science fiction is replete with these examples. I would say to anyone thinking seriously about this issue to spend some time at the library.. and some time in a movie theatre.
And don't think for a minute that viruses won't take advantage of the host's "improved immume systems" - even if the new super-humans aren't hostile towards the existing generation we're still stuck with the problem of viruses which will more rapidly attack and infect people with less of an immune system (path of least resistance - plant a tree in a sunny spot, plant another in a dark spot, which one uses more of the soil's resources?)...
We are messing with things far above and beyond our comprehension. I hate to say it, but I very nearly side with the conservative elements in our society on this - this is a matter best left to God. For now, anyway. The other sciences have not caught up enough to have enough of a base of knowledge to anticipate what will happen if we start changing genes. Trial and error is NOT an option for human experimentation.
~ Signal 11
Tampering with intelligence, on the other hand, is almost certain to be banned outright (obviously "rogue" nations won't care, and the US gov't will enhance their own soldiers secretly).
One thing that triggers fear in the masses is intelligence. Physical strength they can understand, but intelligence eludes them. So, they'd blindly legislate away their ability to mess with it, fearing a generation of wunderkind that would relegate them to the dustbins of history. (Intelligence is probably also the hardest thing to successfully modify, since the brain's so complex.)
What this means is that we'll see a stratification of our society into castes:
Finally, there's the people who are too poor to be able to afford these modifications. And that'd include a lot of people worldwide. They'd be placed at the bottom rung of the social ladder, and they'd be forced to compete with the "modified" on the merit of their own natural traits.
If (as in Gattaca) the "modified" automatically and prejudicially disdain all the unmodified people, then there would be very little interbreeding between the two groups. And if there were some genetic tag imprinted in anyone who was modified, this would be even more certain, since no matter how good your genes are, if you're natural, you're out of luck.
Ironically, if the "unmodified" have harsh competition with the modified people, and practically no interbreeding between the two groups, then the unmodified would be forced to evolve at a much faster rate than the "modified", and within several generations, many of them would be naturally stronger, faster, smarter, etc. than the regulations allow the "modified" to become.
Moral of the story: if you mess with nature, make sure it doesn't return to bite you in the ass.
--
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
It always amuses me how clueless slashdot generally as group is about these things.... Despite best efforts otherwise.
/., but I gave up after being told again and again that I was wrong by people who don't know the difference between DNA and RNA.
I don't know about the best efforts otherwise thing. The weird thing about biology is that humans (because they're "living," I guess) have so many false notions about biology that they hold to so strongly. Biologists who don't know how to take derivatives never argue to engineers that fourier transforms are a lie (or whatever), but the opposite holds true at least 90% of the time. I used to try to explain things to people on
As far as genetic engineering goes, genes themselves aren't nearly as important as people seem to think. Humans and chimps are supposedly 99% genetically identical, so why are the two so different? If we switched my hemoglobin with chimp hemoglobin, or slowly replaced my brain one neuron at a time with chimp neurons, I wouldn't become a chimpanzee. This is because the critical issue is not at the level of the gene products, but the REGULATION OF EXPRESSION OF THOSE GENES, especially during development. The uninformed love to spout about the wonders of genetic engineering that will unfold as soon as we have the genome sequenced, but the truth of it is that the human genome project won't solve any puzzles, it will just allow us to finally work with all the pieces.
As far as engineering genes goes, there is no intelligence gene. There is no tall gene. There is no smart gene. There are combinations of thousands of different polymorphic loci that will yield these phenotypic traits, but finding these associations is a much larger task than sequencing the genome. This is something molecular neuroscientists can't get right even today, when they make their mice that have some gene knocked out or overexpress some GluR subunit wherever, then try to draw conclusions about intelligence or aggression based on time to swim water mazes or ear bite statistics.
The real reason why human genetic engineering will not occur in our lifetimes, however, ("enhancing" humans, I mean, not fixing genetic disorders) is because humans have too many hangups about the sanctity of life. If you want to genetically engineer anything, you will inevitably have to go through hundreds and hundreds of failed attempts. Three-headed pigeon-boys with webbed legs and strange appendages. People aren't likely to volunteer their zygotes for this. Right now it's against the law to use NIH funding to obtain fetal tissue (pounds of which are THROWN AWAY at abortion clinics daily) to study AIDS, a 100% fatal disease that infects more than 11 people every minute. What are the chances that hundreds and hundreds of human lives are going to be thrown away to develop faster reflexes and 2 extra inches of penis length?
Beyond this, it ain't so easy. The thing is, the human body is not a bundle of individual, unconnected traits that can be manipulated at will. It is a bunch of interdependent traits that have been optimized by evolution for a certain environment. Given that it is optimized, improving it may be difficult. Try to improve strength, and you may find that strength is a tradeoff with some other feature. Increase intelligence and you may get a higher incidence of insanity. Decrease insanity and you may lose creativity.
Not that it can't, or won't, be done, but it is no where as easy as many people think. Personally, I think our grandkids will likely not worry about most genetic diseases, but it will be a couple generations after that before we get anyone that would be recognizably "superior" in general.
Remember, there are two big problems in human genetic engineering. You have to be sure before you do anything. Mistakes are not an option. And you have to deal with a very long generation time. This isn't like fruit flies, where you can try things out and have the results in a few weeks.
The cake is a pie
I suggest starting here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/, then, using the National Library of Medicine's PubMed search engine (which catalogues primary biomedical literature), search for reviews written about specific "hot" areas in genetic technology. PubMed is now a "killer app" because after finding an article that you're interested in, the abstract page has a "Books" link that re-formats the abstract with keywords hyperlinked to the seminal textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell. Now, even though a lot of these articles are written with a Biomedical audience in mind and filled with a lot of complex biology and jargon, definitions of anything needed for the "lay-"reader's understanding are immediately accessible. CHECK IT OUT.
Often lost in the shuffle of these big debates on genetic technology are the people involved in the actual WORK, and the ACTUAL capabilities conferred on humanity by that work; the pundits come out of the woodwork (including here on Slashdot: News for COMPUTER Nerds, often not BIOLOGY Nerds) whenever someone mentions DNA. The words "genetic engineering" sell newspapers and books. I recommend looking a little deeper.
You can reach it here:
http://www.tecsoc.org/biotech/biotech.htm
Also, we have a brief "What is Biotechnology?" essay which explores some of the most important issues in that area.
A. Keiper
It always amuses me how clueless slashdot generally as group is about these things....
Despite best efforts otherwise. It comes up as
an "Ask Slashdot" related question regularly;
slashdot posts pseudo-science stories or op-ed
about cloning etc, and yet... slashdot hasn't
attempted to *contact the actual scientists*
involved to get their opinion.
Yes - I have suggested this as an interview topic
a number of times. Slashdot editorials are more
interested in "wow-science" stories than real
science. It annoys me. (but I still read slashdot).
Here are some pointers:
The largest public sequencing center in the world
http://www.sanger.ac.uk/
The US biological information portal
http://www.ncbi.nln.nih.gov/
The European biological information portal
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/
Some open source projects in this area:
(The bio* group.)
http://bio.perl.org/
http://www.biojava.org/
http://www.biopython.org/
http://www.bioxml.org/
Open source genome annotation project
http://www.ensembl.org/
Human Genome Project Information:
http://www.ornl.gov/TechRe sources/Human_Genome/home.html
Human Genome Program, Genome Research: /ober/hug_top.html
http://www.er.doe.gov/production
National Human Genome Research Institute:
http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/
On a more philosophical note, when those who are in their adolescence find themselves looking at a generation which has had their genes tampered, there will be prejudice. Lots of it. It can't be avoided.
But what about those who got vaccines at birth? Those who never had to worry about smallpox, polio, etc.? Every generation we go through is healthier than the last, constantly improving. Genetic research will be an issue, obviously, but it's not that unbelivable or radical. Just another step in the same direction.
------------
"Okay, who taught the cat how to type ctrl alt delete?"
One resource I'd strongly recommend is the National Center for Biotechnology Information. I'm a professional working in the field of Proteomics (the protein equivalent of Genomics) and NCBI is an outstanding clearinghouse of information. It also has good links to other sites. If you really want to see some of the science that's going on using genomic information (and are willing to put up with a somewhat dry, utilitarian attitude), it's a good place to look.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.