Will Genetic Engineering Kill Us?

Kaz Riprock writes "Mark Baard, author of this Wired article was a recent attendee at The Future of Human Nature symposium (that I helped organize). The talks were held at Boston University through the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. A high profile assemblage of well-known thinkers, such as Steven Pinker, Lee Silver, and Marvin Minsky, were invited to speak at the 3 day conference to examine what 'Human Nature' would be like in 50-200 years. While the article describes a good amount of the 'doom and gloom' which was presented and discussed, it does not quite capture the upside to our potential future aims. One example from the conference was the talk by Christine Peterson, head of The Foresight Institute, on the future use of nanotechnology to better the human condition."

Comments

Re:Alarmist prediction are the enemy of progress

[SocialWorm]

Maybe with Genetic Engineering we'll be able to eliminate the stupid gene. (That statement may set off a firestorm.)

It already did -- James Watson, one of the orgininal discoverers of DNA, said what basically boils down to exactly that earlier this year, and it was quite controversial. See http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 93451

The Last and First Men

[Avumede]

In the 1920's (if memory serves me correctly), Olaf Stapledon took a look at the issues of the future of humanity in his classic sci-fi novel The Last and First Men, which is certainly one of the most unique books in science fiction. Genetic engineering plays an important part of the book. I highly recommend it to anyone that wishes to ponder the relationship of science and exploration to the fate of mankind.

good analysis

[ih8apple]

Here's a good analysis on eugenics from salon.com from 3+ years ago.

Good information, but also important is the fact that things haven't changed much in the last 3 years in spite of everyone's fear of things moving too fast for the ethical consequences to be considered.

Re:A kid playing with a handgun

[GlassHeart]

That goes for all current crops, and farm animals as well.

That's the problem. Humans have interfered with natural selection by adding our preferences (sweet apples, meaty potatoes, etc) into the mix. This is not a problem if you plant a favorite apple tree in your backyard, but becomes a problem when we systematically remove space for all other kinds of apples (ugly ones, sour ones, etc) to make room for our apples. These monocultures are highly susceptible to pests, as you can imagine, and therefore require large amounts of pesticide. The lack of biodiversity is its single point of failure, if you will. Potatoes are in a similar situation. Because Russet potatoes are big and white (perfect for french fries), they've squeezed out other species, and the land they're planted on are heavily poisoned with pesticide.

Want another example? Americans prefer "marbled" beef, where fat and lean meat are interleaved. The best way to achieve that is to have the cows feed on corn (most beef you can buy in the US come from cows that have never tasted grass). Unfortunately, cows can't digest corn, so they are also fed antibiotics to keep them alive. They are also fed hormones to accelerate their growth to slaughter weight, from about five years down to just 18 months.

Do you really think all of this comes for free (I'm not talking about dollar cost) to the one who eats it?