Frankenstein Time

Despite the soothing caveats about ethical standards, staving off discrimination and privacy issues, the completion of the so-called human map offers benefits and nightmares in almost equal proportions. Once unleashed, powerful technologies are tough to contain or control. There was lots of megahype chatter about curing cancer, heart disease and aging, but this is now officially Frankenstein time, the era of the "perfect baby" and human quality control. Unfortunately for the world, it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society to deal with the Human Genome Project than the U.S.

Responding to the announcement that the Human Genome Project was complete, President Clinton gushed that "Today we are learning the language in which God created life."

Maybe. Or maybe we are just trying to steal his job.

When last seen, almost two hundred years ago, Dr. Frankenstein's monster was heading off into the frozen wastes of the Antarctic. If he's still around, he ought to come back. It's safe now. This is Frankenstein time.

It's hard to imagine many societies more arrogant, thoughtless or poorly equipped to deal with the fascinating, even miraculous Human Genome Project that the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. Although researchers from all over the world worked on the map, the United States is expected to be the dominant force in the project. Politicians and exultant scientists were quick to sound caveats and talk about the need for safeguards and ethical standards, but the fact is there aren't any. And the recent history both of corporatism and technology suggests there won't be any. Powerful technologies unleashed are never easily controlled. What people can do, they will do.

The project itself was announced Monday like an NFL playoff game -- the U.S. might not have thought much about the evolution of genetic research, but it sure loves a high-stakes contest. Headlines all over the country announced that a cure for cancer, heart disease, aging, depression and aging may well be imminent.

There were the crackpot critics spouting obligatory warnings and alarms, but they were given short shrift amidst all of the gee-whiz hype shrouding the announced that scientists from the non-profit HGP and researchers from Celera, a for-profit genetics company agreed to work together on producing the world's first genetic map.

The U.S., the world capital of technological hubris and arrogance as well as the center of global technological development, may be the most unfortunate repository for so much of this research. The U.S. is also the home of many of the corporations that will attempt to profit from it. In the Corporate Republic, every new bit of science and technology goes into mass-marketing, hype, and product development. That's where the human genetic map is heading, for all this week's chatter about dramatically improving the human condition.

There is absolutely no doubt that great benefit will come from the gene map, or that many of its creators have the best intentions. But there are also grim dangers. Unthinking technology is always dangerous technology, and few great scientific projects have ever been rushed to completion with as little public consideration as this one.

No presidential candidate has ever made technology a serious campaign issue, unless it's to warn about sex online or to urge the distribution of V-chips and blocking software to protect children from techno-driven culture. Only a handful of educational institutions in America teach technology well, or even at all, concentrating mostly on keeping kids away from dirty pictures online. Discussions surrounding the ethics of technology are unheard of outside very few academic circles. Only a handful of Americans even know what the genome project is, let alone what it might unleash. Online, 15-year-olds who master Linux boxes think they understand technology itself, and it's curious, often erratic and ominous history. In America, the best minds in the country are holed up in California think tanks dreaming up wireless phones and hand-held computers that access sports scores 24/7 so that fans won't have to bother to turn on the car radio for results or wait two minutes for their e-mail or stock prices.

Fertility drugs are a perfect metaphor for -- and a warning to the world -- of America's insane approach to complicated issues like this one. Critics are quickly dismissed as Luddites or simpletons. In the U.S., couples are applauded for bringing six, seven, even eight children into the world at once even though medical experts warn that such children face grave physical risks and emotional problems. President Clinton, who called the genome map the "most wondrous map ever produced by humankind" was also one of the first people to call up the parents of Iowa's McCaughey septuplets and congratulate them on bringing seven kids into the world, even though the parents admitted they couldn't afford or care for the children they'd given birth to, and whose lives, said doctors, had been put at extreme risk. Dozens of companies plied the family with gifts and money.

The Genome Project goes far beyond anything fertility doctors have tried to accomplish. The map promises to alter and control the nature of life itself, and hardly any Americans grasp what it might do, how it might work, or what kind of changes might be brought about by its use and misuse. The gene project also has mind-boggling financial and other commercial implications.

If it does, in fact, cure cancer and other diseases (it already has helped identify and treat some afflictions), a promise bio-tech and other medical research have been making for years, might it also eliminate other problems and diseases that aren't clear -cut or horrendous, such as depression and some forms of retardation?

Genetic research, warns medical ethicist Leon Kass, will inevitably lead to syndromes like "the perfect baby." The perfect baby, he warns, is the project not of infertility doctors, but of eugenic and genetic scientists. "For them, the paramount right is not the so-called right to reproduce but what biologist Bentley Glass called, a quarter of a century ago, "the right of every child to be born with a sound physical and mental constitution, based on a sound genotype.." To secure that right and achieve the requisite quality control over new human life, human conception and gestation will need to be brought fully into the bright light of laboratory, beneath which the child-to-be can be fertilized, nourished, pruned, weeded, watched, inspected, prodded, pinched, cajoled, injected, tested, rated, graded, approved, stamped, wrapped, sealed and delivered. There is no other way to create the perfect baby."

This scenario has been raised by visionaries like Arthur C. Clarke -- who reminds us that today's cure is sometimes tomorrow's disease -- and in prescient movies like "Gattaca," which foresee the unpredictable consquences of rushing to shape natural life, and the almost sure discrimination that comes from the inevitable use of gene characteristics to identify "healthy" and "unhealthy" characteristics, usually defined by medical and scientific elites and by their employers, profit-making corporations who invariably co-opt science and scientists.

Quality control is the perfect term for some aspects of genetic research. As of this week, quality control is truly possible for humans. Parents invevitably, even understandably, will seek perfect children.

On the national political or civic level, outside of rarified technological or academic elites, we haven't even even begun to discuss the social, cultural and ethical consequences of eliminating certain diseases, traits, addictions and affictions. The most coverage the Humane Genome Project has received in the media was the announcement that it was done, followed by the inevitable mega-hype.

In a nation that has already surrendered many privacy rights to invasive new software technologies, it's reasonable to assume that the genetic characteristics of most citizens won't stay a secret for long once they're screened. As a society, we may soon be able to get rid of obnoxious, anger and dissent along with cancer and heart disease.

Individualism and "wierdness" could show up in the new human map, along with tendencies towards anger, dissent, and bad skin.

Along with innumerable medical benefits the genetic map may also create staggering social divisions between people who can afford to use it to manipulate the birth and process -- the child-obsessed, highly competitive Boomers come to mind -- and the vast majority of the world who won't have access to it for years, if ever.

In the U.S., parents spent small fortunes on tutoring and other programs that get their kids into elite schools. What might they do to get their hands on the doctor who has access to the genetic map of the "perfect" kid? Parents with resources will inevitably seek to breed children who conform to particular notions of beauty, intelligence and desirability.

From the perspective of the rest of the planet, it's hard to see why the United States would use this profound new technology wisely and equitably when anyone who picks up any Ivy League school newspaper can find ads offering tens of thousands of dollars for the eggs of brainy blonde preppies.

Much of this genetic information and bio-technology will fall into the hands of new corporatist genetic conglomerates, who already promote conformity and homogeneity and who already wage war against individualism and diversity of expression. Just imagine what will they do with the Human Genome Project, which now gives them the tools to market health, happiness and longevity. What parts of the map will they sell, and to who, and for how much? Who will get access to these research and who won't? And more importantly, how can this information be unleashed in a society which hasn't even seriously considered these issues?

Frankenstein was right when he told his doctor-creator that it was a sin to create things one doesn't take any responsibility for. He was right then, and he's right now, and a lot more timely. The hubris described in Mary Shelley's brilliant novel published in 1818 is a hallmark characteristic of 21st century America.

For all that this research is being hailed as the greatest boon to mankind, it could just as easily become humanity's greatest nightmare. "How dare you sport thus with life?" asks Frankenstein of his creator, who loved technology but was impatient when it came to thinking much about how he was going to use it. The monster never got an answer. Now we're all waiting.

Comments

Here's the right way:

[gavinhall]

Posted by 11223:

Ok, since nobody seems to understand what this announcement is actually about, here's what it says:

We've managed to successfully disassemble Microsoft Windows. We now have the assembly that makes up the whole of Microsoft Windows in our hands. (Parts of it are missing, and other parts are junk assembly, like the parts that used to control DOS devices but are now almost dormant except for causing the occasional bug).

What can we do with this? Well, we might eventually be able to make Windows into a stable operating system, or even clone Windows from it. Except there's one problem - we don't know enough about the instruction set for the processor it was written for. See, we've been dealing with Z80 assembler all this time and are still having trouble understanding the modern Pentium (I*). So it'll take a while before we can do anything with it.

Translation table: assembler - genome, Windows - human, Z80 - fruit fly, Pentium (I*) - Human genetic process/protiens.

Re:s/human genome project/nuclear energy/g

[Jon Peterson]

Hmmmm. I agree wholeheartedly with Jon on this, and I have not taken the luddite position on any other technologies to date.

The problem is two fold:

1. Genetics involves systems orders of magnitude more complex than the systems involved in nuclear power, space flight or anything else.

2. The problems are not technical ("We're fucked if this power station melts down") but social ("We don't the ability to do this because we will abuse it").

People are greedy. There is good evidence to support the notion that people will knowingly do immense and certain long-term harm to themselves and others in return for fairly slight short term gain. See drug addiction. See smoking. See cheating on you wife with that student. See buying a new dress when you know you can't afford it.

So, we can be fairly sure that if you give someone the ability to have children who are genetically modified to be good at sports, everyone will want to have children like that. No one is too worried about the process going wrong and producing wierd freak psycho killer mutants. Everyone is worried about the process going bang to plan and producing loads of children genetically modified to be good at sport.

It scares the shit out me, anyway.

Now, there are areas where people worry about tech disaster - in particular GM food, where some people think we'll cause some kind of genetic melt down. I tend to agree that there is an element of the doomsayer situation you mention above. However, I also say that we know even less about what we are doing with the genetics that we do with the nuclear power.

However, the real area of concern is not this tech disaster area. It's the social area. This is not a tech problem, it's a social one - but until now it's merely been a hypothetical social problem of interest to philosophers and sci fi writers. But most of all, it's been of interest to almost no-one, and no-one has been thinking about it hard enough. And here we are in a position to start acting on it.

I'm scared, so should you be.

Yesterday, they patented Bismati rice. Idle fuckers.

Re:thoughts on Katz, Eugenics, and such

[Otter]

This was a notch above recent Katz posts. Again, I wish Jon would turn his considerable talents towards the introduction of original thought, however, rather than simply lacing the obvious with witticisms and passing it off as news.

I agree with both ends of that. I have Katz turned off in my prefernces, but when a labmate told me he had written a genome piece, I felt compelled to read it and provide some informed feedback on his thoughts on sexbots or whatever.

My first reaction was surprise that there was nothing obviously stupid on anything he wrote. The second was that there is no real insight or thought, either. He obviously has some preconceived notions (Frankenstein, eugenics, privacy, corporations) and spun it out for a few pages.

Some more comments:

• When Katz writes, "Politicians and exultant scientists were quick to sound caveats and talk about the need for safeguards and ethical standards, but the fact is there aren't any." what he really means is "I'm going to write a warning about the potential misuse of genetics. I don't know if anyone else has thought of any such concerns and I'm not going to do any research to find out, so I'll just write that no one cares." The fact is that Human Genome Project has had an Ethical, Legal and Social Implications division since almost the beginning. (It's only a huge link at the top of the HGP site!) I can tell you, as a genome center scientist, that nothing happens without consideration of ethical issues.
• When recombinant DNA technology was first developed, scientists declared a voluntary moratorium on it until safety procedures had been fully discussed and established. Molecular biology has a unique place in science for displaying that level of caution.
• Despite the hype, there's nothing fundamentally new today that wasn't an issue years ago -- it's just more complete. As usual, it seems clear that Katz doesn't really begin to understand the technology he's insisting is going to bring us to paradise or destruction.
• It took me a while to figure out why the USA topic was used here before coming to lines like "The U.S., the world capital of technological hubris and arrogance.." It's funny -- there's the stereotype that Americans assume that anything here is automatically superior to everyplace else. There are Americans like that, but there are also Americans who assume that the US necessarily outdoes everyplace else in all negatives, that sexism, racism, pollution, greed here are all the worst in the world. What's funny is that both those mindsets come out of the same parochialism and ignorance.

Re:genuine questions

[Otter]

Katz said there are no guidelines or rules on the books. Are there actual rules and guidlines within the project dealing with the issues we are concerned about, or just the questions raised?

Well, first I want to make it clear that I'm not saying, "There's nothing to worry about. Go back to Ally McBeal." There are major concerns that need to be addressed philosophically and legally. My objection is to Jon Katz's assertions that no one is taking these concerns seriously except him and a handful of others. Essentially, he's pushing the stereotype of the scientist as a soulless mercenary nerd with no thought to the consequences of his research. It's particularly galling coming from The Protector Of The Geeks, and particularly galling to see it applied to my friends and coworkers who have just busted their asses for two years to get the genome data into the hands of the public and out of the grasp of Celera.

Anyway, here are the issues I know of:

• Environmental safety - The use of genetically modified organisms and DNA has been regulated since 1973, IIRC. There's a huge looseleaf on my bookshelf with the NIH guidelines. In retrospect, these have turned out to be overly strict by far, but were sensible when they were established. Of course, there's a huge debate about new legislation, especially for agricultural products. I think most of the anti-GMO views are outrageous FUD (and I'm a long-time Sierra Club member) but it's good that people are watching.
• Patents - A favorite Slashdot concern. The situation is a lot less dire than most /. posters think (no, no one will charge you a license to have green eyes) but it definitely needs to be cleared up.
• Privacy/Insurance issues - These are biggies. There is plenty of legislation on these matters already and established activists and lobbies to push new legislation. It's also the major focus of HGP ethical discussion. Remember, though, that there's nothing new here. If all knowledge of DNA evaporated today, we'd still have these same issues.
• Gene therapy and modification - Now we're in Frankenstein territory. It's true that there isn't a huge amount of regulation here (there are federal anti-cloning laws that are relevant). Fortunately we're at least a few years away from it being a practical issue. There are NIH guidelines, a tremendous amount of debate and lengthy reviews for any gene therapy proposals. My impression is that among the policy setters there is an absolute belief that germ-line modification (changing the DNA of sperm or eggs; not just body cells) is entirely unacceptable. I personally don't agree. I don't see why if a particular amino acid is invariant from yeast to 99.999% of humans, it's so out of line to change it for good. But at least that indicates how far off Katz's spectre of real-life Dr. Frinks is.
• 
  
  Seriously, what would/could stop(besides cost & complexity) the next generation of spammers from releasing a gene changing virus (or nanites for that matter) that change your DNA
  
  I've got to think that's illegal under existing US law.
  
  Man, 748 comments so far! No wonder Slashdot keeps running his rants!

Oh no.

[Signal 11]

Oh no, we've created a monster - a self-referential loop.

Malda: Hemos, bring me the brains!
Hemos: Yeees maaaster.
Malda: *squish* Gosh, there wasn't that much there, you sure you got the right brain?
Hemos: Yeah, bird brains.. right?
Malda: Fool! We'll use it anyway, though.
* Malda casts feign life.
Katz: *groan*
Malda: It's alive! IT'S ALLLIIIVVVEEE!
Katz: .. socio-economic effects by the post-columbine third-wave era in ecopolitical dogmatic...
Malda: Uh oh. Ego^H^H^HHemos, quick, activate the lameness filter!
Hemos: Yeeesss maaaster.... *gurgle*
Katz: SEXBOTS new paradigm shift think outside the box...
Malda: HURRY!
* CLiCK! *
Slashdot Audience: Hey, when are you gonna fix Katz?
Malda: Ask me about it again and I'll delay fixing him by 24 hours!

And there you have it.. now we have a frankenkatz on slashdot writing about frankenstein. Wonderful.. slashdot creates infinite katzian loop, film at 11.

Re:Poorly equipped, huh?

[UncleRoger]

I read that bit about "it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society" and immediately thought of my grandparents who died in a concentration camp in Germany. What was the name of the Nazi "scientist" who did all the experiments on the Jews? Mengele? I guess Katz thinks he would have been a better choice for having control of this information.

Of course, Nazi Germany is not the only such example, just the first that springs to my mind.

I do agree that our (US) culture is hardly ready to handle such technology -- it will be abused and perverted and so on for financial gain. In fact, it already has, by the media.

What dismays me most about Katz's inane comment, however, is how easily he dismisses other eras and cultures that were so much more repressive. Nazi Germany, certainly, should never be forgotten -- would my father be in a nursing home, the victim of multiple strokes, if he had grown up in a normal household with his parents and two sisters instead of an orphanage in a foreign land?

There are others as well, though. I'm sure that the southern whites would have loved to be able to breed the fight out of their slaves a couple hundred years ago. Even today, I'm willing to bet there are a lot of folks in China who would love to be able to make sure they only have male children -- but I guess that's better than abandoning or even killing female offspring.

Jon Katz seems to be no better than the popular media he mocks -- he takes a superficial look at something and makes his pronouncement and sits back to congratulate himself on a job well done.

In this instance, however, I have to speak up. I have personal experience with the results of a culture that would have been far worse at dealing with the Human Genome Project. And, I'd like Jon Katz, and others, not to forget it so blithely.

Re:And in further news...

[bughunter]

Well, it really is a shame that the Third Reich is still associated with human artificial selection, and that anything that even faintly smells of Eugenics will be demonized, especially in W. Europe, I'm guessing.

Readers of Heinlein and other authors, and fans of RPGs like Traveller, Robotech, etc., know better -- that it's just another tool. But try arguing that to Bible-waving Fundamentalists, or to already paranoid oppressed minorities like homosexuals, Sufis, or Jon Katz.

Fortunately we have a new name for the practice of designing our offspring: "germline engineering." Hopefully it doesn't immediately scare the average Celica-driving Joe. First impressions count.

Really, it's probably too early to begin actively trying to engineer human evolution - for example, they just discovered recently that the mutation causing sickle-cell anemia also provides resistance against malaria. Eventually we will learn enough to engineer better children, or even tailor them for futures as lunar colonists or subterranean arcology dwellers. (Lord knows I have a few specifications for an engineered mistress lying around somewhere.) But if we tinker too soon, too ignorantly, we run the risk of winning the ultimate Darwin Award -- extinction.

In other words, the rule against self-modifying code still applies!

Man's audacity

[Dissenter]

How dare you sport thus with life?" asks Frankenstein of his creator, who loved technology but was impatient when it came to thinking much about how he was going to use it.

So here we finally arrive at the pinnacle of man's audacty.

"Today we are learning the language in which God created life."

So we really think that we have caught up to God? Are we so small minded that we think that there is nothing more to learn here? Before I'm flamed right off the face of the earth let me say that there is no way that I'm trying to speak against medical and genetic research. The advancements that we have made here are amazing and I wouldn't want to be without them, but when leaders come forward and compare our understanding with diety I have to question it. At least God has something to show for his knowledge. We have nothing to show for it. What is understanding if there is no tangable result? Can we prove that our "Road map to the future" isn't just taking us down a path to destruction? It seems that we've given ourselves a bit too much credit this early in the game. Where are the results?
Dissenter

It's what *WE* do with it

[Badgerman]

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it seems that in the current technophilic age we can find a thousand articles with one theme: "we're too dumb to handle technology" which really means "those Other People are too dumb to handle technology." I'm afraid I find this article falls under that category, despite my respect for the "Hellmouth" series.

Life is going to be what we make it and technology is a tool. We can worry about it and wring our hands - and that makes us no different than people working on censoring the internet or banning linking, it makes us busybodies who complain.

Or we can latch onto it and make it work. We can make sure we embrace the technology so that there isn't going to be a division between users and ourselves.

Or we can complain about how dumb/dangerous The Other is.

Me, I'm chosing to take control of my own life. Barbelith.

And in further news...

[Shotgun]

Smarter, faster, stronger animals eat the smaller, weaker and dumb ones.

Computers have changed society, and some people don't like it.

If we create technological artifacts, some people will discover how to use it to their own advantage. And then they might possibly (oh my god) USE IT TO THEIR OWN ADVANTAGE!!

History has shown that the first society to take advantage of advances in technology will dominate those that do not or are slow in the uptake. If the US dives headlong into this, you may not like the result, but if history is the best oracle the US will dominate.

Re:All well and good

[Russ Nelson]

When have parents ever *not* sought perfect children??
-russ

Poorly equipped, huh?

[d-man]

Unfortunately for the world, it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society to deal
with the Human Genome Project than the U.S.

Yeah, too bad that 1940s Germany didn't get a hold of this information.

Try the decaf, Jon.

thoughts on Katz, Eugenics, and such

[MattW]

This was a notch above recent Katz posts. Again, I wish Jon would turn his considerable talents towards the introduction of original thought, however, rather than simply lacing the obvious with witticisms and passing it off as news.

That said something jumps out from reading the article: there's a big difference between eugenics and genetic enhancement. The fact is, there are a lot of significantly disadvantaged people in the world. They lack the intelligence, or possibly even general health and well-being, to compete in and contribute to society. Nothing is so humbling as to step back and realize that no small measure of your own success is due to gifts given you in a grand game of chance, which you did nothing to deserve. Genetics gives us the chance to equalize the luck of birth for all people. This cannot be inherently bad. Or, to romanticize it less than Katz: if you know 1 in 100 babies with be born with genes for a removable genetic defect which will render them retarded, what is the greater ill -- to fix their genetic code, or to birth them and claim, "Everyone is acceptable"?

I'm not preaching unacceptance. I believe everyone's life has an equal inherent value. But what a person derives from their own life is largely contingent upon their blessings, or lack thereof, of genetic chance. To give everyone a chance to start equal should appeal to people on every part of the political spectrum. And this is the best way, of course, by raising up the less fortunate through a "miracle" of science, rather than by handicapping the more capable, which is a popular theme in today's world.

As a final thought on that first observation, society needs to require responsible parents for such children. If you add genetic enhancement to the mix of poor, ill-equipped parents without time to raise their children, society may find itself in the midst of a boom of genius criminals, and one person I respect has observed to me before that it is much easier to destroy than create. For those of the security vein, the observation was it is considerably easier to penetrate a system than to truly secure it. Similarly, it is easier to destroy life than to protect it, and rushing ahead of ourselves by over-enhancement may mean our own destruction. We may end up with the power to create our own mad scientists, as it were, and sadly, as often as they are romanticized to go hand in hand, moral responsibility does not accompany scientific prowess.

In the end, you simply cannot ignore the benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of this ambitious research. You cannot turn back the clock -- you cannot unsplit the atom, make the world flat again, or place the Earth at the center of the universe. And that said, you cannot undiscover our genes. The reason Gattaca was so poignant was not only the warning it gave, but the certainty many felt upon seeing it that society would face that moral dilemna.

It is now up to all of us to see we make the right choices for everyone, take moderation to heart, and use technology responsibly, while guarding against those who would abuse it.

Every technilogical breakthrough is like this

[Nissyen]

Since the discovery of fire and the wheel (both of which have been used to good and evil) every technological breakthrough has had both wonderful and disasterous consequences. Everything we discover can be used for both good and evil. Should we stop making breakthroughs and abandon research all together?

Hell no!

The discoveries are neutral, and we're the ones who make good and bad uses of these discoveries. Unfortunately some people irresponsibly pervert our best intentions, and though unfortunate, I do not see this ending any time soon. However, I believe the benefits of research outweigh the bad consequences derived from it, and far outweigh the consequences of abandoning research on any subject.

Blah blah blah...

[swordgeek]

"...but this is now officially Frankenstein time..."

Cool! What does a time/era/moment in history have to do to get "official" status? Maybe I can get next year officially declared "daemon time."

More generally, it's funny how Jon writes such scary, dramatic, button-pushing stuff about 'media megahype.' Maybe he's not heard that old parable about the pot and the kettle.

Really ?????

[Lowther]

Unfortunately for the world, it's hard to imagine a more poorly equipped society to deal with the Human Genome Project than the U.S.

I am British. And I can imagine a few .....

UK under Margaret Thatcher - she would live on forever

Germany in the mid 30s - the Aryan dream ...

Ceaucescu's Rumania

Any culture who values children of one gender over the other

Mr Katz is being a little harsh on the US. Nowhere in this world is perfect.

Re:The reasons why - please read, Jon.

[jayhawk88]

Consider now that almost 50% of our nation is creationist, and you can expect the majority of them to consider that a sin. Then take the rest of the religious types in the nation. A large portion of them will consider that wrong. Most of the rest will think it wrong to manipulate anything but things that are *obvious* disease.

In the light of this discovery, I can't help but think of works such as Brave New World or Gattaga. The initial danger won't be perfect children: it will start small and grow from there. Initially, parents will be able to screen all types of genetic diseases. Then, perhaps they are allowed to choose cosmetic things (eye/hair color, height, weight, build). Yes, environment plays a big role in things like that, but much of it is genetically determined. Many parents will be opposed to this, but undoutedly some would take advantage of it. If the results were successful, healthy children, more and more parents would try this, until it perhaps became the norm.

Eventually, many parents won't have any trouble building their children like so much object-oriented programs. This was explored in Gattaga: what then happens to those children who are still created naturally? If your an insurer, would you give the lower rate to someone who is guarenteed to not have any genetic disorders (heart disease, diabeties, etc), or the one your not so sure about? What about if your an employer, and one applicant is guarenteed to have no desire to take drugs, while the other applicant is natural born, so who knows?

Do you *honestly* think that the government won't pass laws that say that you can't be discriminated on by basis of genetics, the same way they did with race, sexuality, gender identity, age, etc?

And of course, discrimination based on race, sexuality, gender, identify, or age NEVER happens in America now, does it? Please, wake up. Besides, genetically enhanced people really could have an advantage over others. It might be possible to make a person faster and stronger, with higher IQ's and faster reactions. Discrimination laws have always been based on the idea that someone of a different race/sex/etc is capable of performing equally well as another in a certain job, but what if that isn't true when dealing with natural/engineered people?

I'n not trying to condem the Human Genome project here, but I do agree with Katz: extreme caution is needed when dealing with this subject.