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

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.