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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."
When a beaver builds a dam, it's called nature. When man builds a dam, we're destroying nature. Is the purpose of our life not to better our lives? And if so, why should we not be allowed genetic engineering, cloning, going to different planets.
The world is constantly changing, and we are part of it.
Now I do understand that many people have moral issues with genetic engineering, and I did (and still somewhat do) too, but if done right, what's the problem. For those don't understand, read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It's a scary world that he describes, looking at it from our point of view; however, from the inhabitants point of view, it's a perfect world. Brainwashed, yes, but very few people are unhappy. Furthermore, the few that are too intelligent to live in that world are given their own island, to do as they please.
A perfect society, but it takes a while and a lot of change to get there.
The real problem is the irresponsible way it's being handled. Shortly after the first field tests geneticly enhanced grain is in wide spread use. Now it looks like the insects have become immune to it and the "super weed" senerio has come true. Causually throwing animal genes into plants and plant genes into animals is terrifying. The standards are so lax a generation or two of the plant or animal and it's in the ecosystem. If you look at the effect 200 years of developement has had on the lanscape, what will 200 years of genetic tinkering do to the genetic landscape?
The discoveries by themselves will not harm us, it is the bad use of new technologies that will kill us. Just as the use of nuclear energy to make bombs intead of radiotherapy. The bad use of genetics will certainly have a terrible effect on humanity.
So its all great that smart thinking people are figuring out what is going on technology wise in 50 or 100 years but too bad most people don't think about what they do everyday. Autopilot really sucks when it steers you right into a hillside.
People who are afraid of genetic manipulation are also the same people afraid of cloning. They usually read or have read too many sci-fi books or watched too many sci-fi movies to understand that we could actually make HUGE benefits in health science and medicine.
Of course you can just as easily cut your steak with a knife and fork as you can stab and eat someone to death with the same utensils anyway - does that mean we shouldn't eat with a knife and fork anymore?
Ave Molech Setting
I think that a little bit of this can be very healthy though. Going completely gung-ho on new technologies could be dangerous, and having a little caution is a good thing. Genetic engineering, AI, nanotech, the internet, the hammer, whatever, all of these have the potential to become bad things, but for the most part haven't because people were careful. That said, I'm all for any new technology that comes along, with the understanding that any tool can be used to achieve both positive and negative ends.
- sig? who is this sig of which you speak?
"We might create a group of people much smarter than us, that might want to kill us," said bioethicist George Annas, chair of the Health Law Department of Boston University School of Public Health.
.
Or they might be so much smarter than us that they realize they don't need to kill everyone who differs from them . .
(Comment borrowed from Sladek's "Roderick at Random")
Your points cannot be overemphasized, but your example of AI/robots is a little off. In that realm we are trying to recreate ourselves.
With genetic engineering, we are just trying to make a few improvements to ourselves, modify an existing product. It's a lot easier to tweak an engine than it is to create one from scratch.
However, I do have some fear of where this road leads, because from my experience, one should not go around tweaking a system until he understands it well enough to create it entirely on his own. It often leads to horrible, unanticipated results.
Ethics and common sense always seem to fall behind tech. The kinds of modifications people will find most attractive are bound to be the ones that will also be the most detrimental to the species. Lets just hope that the dangerous period passes quickly and without doing too much damage before we come to our senses. Look at dogs as an example. We have been tinkering with them for many generations. The results are a bunch of "purebreds" that look cute, but often have associated health problems. Meanwhile your standard mutt is among the healthiest of all dogs.
Um, does many thousands of people starving daily due to rampant overpopulation count?
What about the thousands of asthma sufferers plagued by air pollution?
perhaps these only qualify as gloom...
And what about the giant lizard that keeps mutating and attacking Japan...?
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
What truly scares me, is the possibility of only the rich being able to afford genetic "enhancements".
Imagine a world where if you want your child to benefit from genetics, you have to spend a proportional amount of money for said engineering to be done.
The social divisions between the rich and the rest of us, will only widen.
Perhaps genetic enhancements should be regulated as a public benefit or utility, where all have somewhat equal opportunity to get them.
Be kind. There are too many mean people out there already.
- Nanotechnology: Microscopic robots will be built. These robots, about the size of a blood cell, will be capable of combining into the shape of anything, and of changing color individually to give the appearance of the thing the shape of which they take.
- Quantum computing: Microscopic computers will be build with more computing power and more capacity to learn than a thousand human brains. They will be able to combine into vast networks with nearly infinite numbers of nodes through wireless communication.
- Biotechnology will allow scientists to make entire creatures, life supporting organs, or individuals cells to suit whatever purpose is at hand.
These three technologies will ultimately converge to create microscopic robots the size of a single blood cell with more ability to reason than an entire university of the world's greatest geniuses and with all of the advantages of both biologically based organisms and those of robotic origin. These cells will combine on-the-fly to form creatures, machines or any device, of any shape and size and of any appearance, for whatever purpose deemed necessary by the network of trillions upon trillions of cells that make up the object. There will be nearly infinite numbers of these cells in existance and they will convert the entirety of Earth's resources, down to the last blade of grass and the last grain of sand, into more such cells, thus reproducing until no matter on this planet remains that does not join in the vast network of sheer processing power and knowledge that this thing will become. At this point, there will be a monster the size of an entire planet, or billions upon billions of smaller monsters, perhaps the size of a human, that can shape-shift at any moment to whatever shape and purpose its vast mind desires. This will travel around the solar system, assimilating the matter of all space-dust, rocks, satellites, planets and moons into its vastness. Once complete, this process will extend into the farther reaches of nearby star clusters, further reaching into the farthest reaches of the galaxy and eventually taking over the entire universe. The sole purpose of this device would be to gain more power, not for use as a means to obtain a further goal but as an end. And it means that we will all die in the process.Excellent observation, I agree.
But you are missing the intention of this alarmism. The intent is to sell. It's a sales event for books, seminars, etc.
There are three things that get peoples attention: sex; novelty; and fear. The market for sex is pretty much cornered. That novelty thing takes thought, and can die quickly. But that whole fear thing... Man that stuff can be sold, mixed and resold time and again.
By the way, is that Stupid Gene a double recessive?
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
How is modern genetic engineering different then selective breeding? When farmers bred the two best cows or sheep, and then bred THOSE offspring, wasn't that genetic engineering of the breed? What about when you marry someone who looks a certain way? Are your children "genetically engineered" ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Currently the human race is on the path to extinction (or at least significant degredation). The fact is that large numbers of people with genetic mutations and just plain bag genes that would of been eliminated from the gene pool are now living and reproducing. When it comes to the longterm survival of the species we really only have a few alternatives.
1. Eugenics. Not a choice we want to take forced sterilization has been tried in the past (the Canadian government for a while in the 40s or 50s (i think) had the forced sterilization of people with mental disabilities) and this would constitute quite a serious breach of a persons rights and could start us down a slippery slope. Another option is screening of fetus' while this may work for serious disabilites i don't really see it pratical trying to work out whether the fetus is productive enough to keep, this is also difficult to execute while avoiding the species degrading as you would have to reject fetus' who are just a little stupid or destined to have other minor problems otherwise you're just avoiding the inevitable.
2. No more medicine or at least careful application of it. Only treat those ill by accident, not by genetic weaknesses, not a nice alternative either.
3. Selective breeding. Been doing this for a few thousand years (with livestock). Not sure to what extent it was practiced with ancient slaves but selective breeding is certainly a reason why the US has so many great black athlete's currently. This would be hard to enforce and again would constitute major violations of human rights. Again not an option I'd choose.
4. Do nothing. Simple enough we keep improving health care and ignore the genes. Eventually either the situation gets so bad we have to take an alternative or the race is degraded to a point where it can't sustain its society and we either collapse destroying ourselves entirely or fal back to a point where evolution takes over again until we get to that point again. Rinse and repeat. Not fun either.
5. Genetic therapy. Start with fixing obvious defects but slowly build up to actual improvements. Depending on implementation we quickly reach a point where the rich form a true nobility, in other words if your parents are rich you actually are faster, smarter, stronger, and more stable (as long as you don't get too arrogant). One solution to this is strict controls on the amount of genetic engineering like with a public health care system. Everybody gets free access to the same treatment regardless of wealth or status and everybody wins. Social stability remains and the race keeps improving. Sounds like the best option to me.
p.s. can anybody think of any options I missed?
I stole this Sig
I have an overactive immune system that attacks my own kidneys. It could kill me in about 10 years. (I am in my 30's).
Kidney transplants from family/etc. might help, but the real problem is that my immune system attacks my OWN kidneys, so you see the problem. Immunosupressant drugs are dangerous, leave me open to disease, and are not 100% effective. I end up with a weak immune system that still damages my kidneys a little bit.
The best hope for saving my life is genetic research into cloning kidneys from my own body, and then implanting healthier, younger kidneys into me. This is barely within our technological grasp, if we make it a priority. Dolly made you wonder, but it gave me hope.
That said, I do not consider Genetic manipulation of Human beings to be changing the species.
First of all, evolution is VERY effective. Any changes we make will be relatively minor. Our only real advantage over Evolution is speed.
Instead of NEW species, we will be making new "races" as in black vs. white, etc. etc.
It will take hundreds of years of actual evolution (living on seperate planets) to differentiate us enough to declare the new races new species.s
But we will end with a more vaired set of intelligent human races.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
stupidity does not see race or sex or sexual orientation. it happens to whites, blacks, men, women, gay, or straight. it is not any thing like the nazi's idea of the perfect blonde, blue eyed man. heck, eliminating the stupid gene might help us all get integrated a little better, cause it seems to me that stupid people are often times the most racist/sexist.
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
Your second point assumes that we will only use genetic engineering to select genes out of the gene pool. Contrary to the beliefs of early eugenicists, this is both undesirable and unlikely, as modern genetics realizes the inherent benefits from having a diverse gene pool(such as the ability to resist killer diseases), and genetic engineering will allow us to further diversify our gene pool by extending it with genes from other species(I wouldn't mind a cow's ability to digest cellulose), and even with artificial genes.
However if companyA patents a gene for example that makes kids smarter and some parents use it, the child then is owned by companyA. We already see this in drug companies patenting genes. Why the fuck should I be charged for using drugs to treat my ADHD because I am owned by someone? ITs my fucking genes and they should not patent me. Its scary and in my opinion is slavery. These media sponsered RIAA/MPAA companies look ethical compared to some bio-engineering companies. I remember an old slashdot article which stated that a Candadian farmer was charged royalities for his crops because some pollen drifted from another farmer into his crops. These same companies will charge people they own for drugs and maybe even income someday as well as their children. After all there children also contain there (tm) genes developed by companyA.
Next comes permanent underclass. How many here are having trouble finding work because of no degree? Well a degree will not help you if you are not known to be a so called super-engineered child. No opportunities for any white collar job. Only people with +160 IQ's can have them. After all the shareholders want top notch people and its there right. McDonalds wants you. Please apply.
After this situation comes true then rich parents will only have children who are engineered. If they do not then they condemmn there children to a life of poverty where they earn less then 10k a year. This in return will skyrocket demand and make BIO-engineering CEO's cream in there pants. They will sell parts of people's genes to the highest possible bidder. DMCA like laws will continue to protect these shitty companies so they can rake in hundreds of billions a year from scared parents willing to do anything to make sure their children are not left behind.
This is scary as hell and wrong. In computing things are going in reverse like a circle. First there were plain old computers with single users, then computers with terminals and wan's, then pc's , now networked pc's with thin clients. Same thing could happen in our society with old world upper class vs poor class mentallity. New money has taken over old money in the 20th century and educational oppurtunities changed this. Now with genetic engineering it will turn around. Its " who are your parents" all over again. And no way to get around the barriers that seperate the 2 classes. The middle class might be the next upper class. We are already seeing former middle class jobs being shipped oversea's.
http://saveie6.com/
But as the article points out - our genetic structure isn't a clear roadmap to these kind of traits.
There isn't a "smarts" gene in the same way there isn't a "grandmother" neuron.
You are correct: given the option to remove, without fear of mishap, genetic dispositions towards certain undesirable traits, most people would choose to do so.
But we are a very long way of being able to promise that. If instead you asked a parent
"Would you like a small chance your child might be more intelligent and healthier, but with a large risk that it may be paralyzed from the waist down from birth?"
Most people would say no.
That's not to say that the day may not approach when we can sequence ourselves a better life, but until then, some forethought is required.
Using ethical means of consideration is only good sense.
... because it is in the poorest areas of the earth that cannot afford genetic engineering that good old fashioned darwinian evolution and selection will ensure that the species always has a failsafe in the case that the rest of us engineer ourselves in some way that has some unforseen critical flaw (vulernability to a new class of infections, loss of ability to perform unassisted reprodutcion or childbirth, new genetic diseases resutling from mutations of engineered genes, etc.).
your dogs example is true, but dog breeds were never "un-naturally" genetically modified. Existing mutations were selectively bred into the "breeds". This is would be equivalent to a human breeding program to select for say athletics or intelligence. i don't think it is quiet the same as genetic engineering as it is currently being worked.
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
I see your point but this will most likely be the sole domain of first world countries. Will the population bump up? Very minimally if at all. First world countries are on the verge of ZPG (zero population growth) as it is right now. Saving one child out of 100 or 1000 is not going to make any kind of population spike. The over population is happening in third world or low end second world countries where this technology will propbably not make it to and if it does make it there the cost is going to be out of range of the people there. This is all very sad but the truth is sad. I really don't see overpopulation being the major problem with the technology.
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
The idea of the ability to increase ones child's IQ is like putting someone on sterioids.
With steriods, they get larger muscles and are generally stronger, but everything else doesn't become stronger to compensate. That is, your joints don't grow stronger and neither does all of the other types of tissue to balance out the growth. This is why a lot of people with sterioids get into lifting accidents, their muscles are strong enough, but not the rest of their body.
So, back to my point, you can't just increase someone's IQ. That person would also need to grow emotionally. Essentially, this would probably result in someone being emotionally unstable. The only true way to improve ourselves that I can think of is good ol' natural evolution, which is slow, but works!
For those don't understand, read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World...Furthermore, the few that are too intelligent to live in that world are given their own island, to do as they please.
If i do recall correctly, Alphas were smartest. Betas were best, since they werent too smart or too dumb, but they envied the Alphas. Deltas were pretty dumb, and Epsilons were handicapped mentally.
So, what you are saying is we should go to Huxley's world and (poorly worded in parent) put the smartest few on their own island.
This is the worst interpretation I have ever saw from someone concerning Huxley's book.
First: Huxley was making a satirical statement about the conditions which his generation faced, when he wrote the book. I would get into more detail, but nobody will read it.
Second: Huxley never meant he wanted the world to end up that way, he was just exaggerating how things were in order to make a point.
Third: The point is, kind of, that we can not restrict people's freedoms, stratify our population (put people in classes), and brainwash our population
Huxley wrote about how the leader was "Ford" (yes, like the car manufacturer), and there was also "Model T" (yes, like the first mass produced car). He was implying that if things continue going the way they are, this society could develop.
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
No, that's not counter to evolution. If a species as a whole develops methods to compensate for particular weaknesses in individual organsims, they have engaged in a sort of evolution. The problem doens't necessarily have to go away, you just have to be able to deal with it.
However, your point about allergies is valid. Genes are constantly changing; while really big gentic changes happen over huge spans of time, relatively minor changes happen from generation to generation. In this case, the prevalence of anit-allergy medication may have resulted in a higher succeptability to allergies, since the body no longer has to develop a mechanism to compensate for allergies. This is the same reason that steroids can make you impotent; once you have an outside source of testosterone, your body produces less of it.
"It never got weird enough for me." - HST (RIP)
You're only seeing one side of the die here though, as many of the more technophilic (is that a word? :)) posters here seem to do. Technology, even that which seems to improve things, isn't always a good thing.
Let's say I invent a really good robot that automatically plays football. It means we get to watch better football on TV, and you don't need to pay them huge salaries, so everyone's a winner! Unfortunately, kids stop kicking balls around, and everyone who plays football loses both a pasttime and a healthy form of exercise and socialisation.
We may make the human species far "better", but what would be better? If we were all beautiful and intelligent and suave? There's a place for people who are obsessed with this false ideal of perfection - Hollywood. What makes us special is our character, our spirit, not some superficial traits we can genetically modify, and so going down the road of genetically engineering humans will only serve to make people even more obsessed with essentially meaningless traits. Of course there are more difficult cases, like diseases, but that's altogether different.
There's also a genetic problem with genetic unification, which is neatly illustrated by the way that Monsanto and others are thinning and consolidating their gene pools. There are many hundreds of different type of rice around the world, and the strength of this is that should a disease or pest come along that affects one type, the chances are that others won't be susceptible. If they are all oe or two types taken from the same original parent, they're all doomed. Genetic diversity is extremely important, and any genetic engineering that tries ti consolidate is only asking for nature's troubles.
Come on people, let's be scientific here. Scientists (as opposed to technologists) study things in safe isolation, with a view to discovering the whole truth about the subject, and this simply isn't what is happening with genetic engineering. What we are seeing is science driven with the philosophy of technology (develop until it seems practical enough to sell, then roll out), which is unscientific and dangerous. Don't call critics of technology unscientific, because it's plainly untrue.
Every technogy has both positive and negative uses.
Physics led to artillery. I'm not going to argue with that. Did you know that knowledge of physics lead to things like boats? Balloons? Rockets?
As for chemistry: Nitroglycerin is an explosive, sure, but did you know that it helps prevent full-out heart attacks, if taken when symptoms show up?
What's this Submit thingy do?
Has anyone stopped to think what might happen if we didn't do genetic engineering? Sure, everyone thinks about the moral implications of such topics, but no one ever stops to consider that we have essentially stopped evolution and possibly turned it around. More often, now, people need glasses, have diseases, and other unwanted characteristics because those people don't die like they used to. At the risk of sounding like a flamer, I've also noticed that (typically) it's the dumb people who have more kids. If this process continues, before long, everyone's going to be on medications, need glasses, be allergic to lots of stuff, and so on because we have not replaced the natural selection that we did away with a while ago. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should start a third riche, but I do think that people need to consider that perhaps genetic engineering is just a continuation of what was done naturally before.
I think Humans are reaching a crossroads that every intelligent species in this universe reaches at some point in its history. We are coming to understand the machinery of life and how we ourselves our put together. We now have or will soon posses the knowledge we will need to tweak and adjust human behavior by altering the way our minds form. We will be able to tweak and "improve" our bodies (Or the bodies of subsequent generations). This doesn't mean that our generation or even two or three generations out will be able to do these things, but that in the next 1000 years or so, we will see dramatic self directed changes in our form and function.
Having said that, I don't believe that this will lead to a panacea. There in lies the test, can we survive and thrive under our own evolutionary direction. Our behaviors to date were evolved to help us thrive in somewhat different circumstances. Do we have the foresight to guide our own evolution, can we overcome our shortcomings and make the right decisions. I think the difference will be in how well we temper our aggressive, violent nature. If we can balance aggression with forethought, we might just make it. I'm sure that the universe is littered with failed species that have gotten this far and then imploded. Let us hope we do not become one of them.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
Will genetic engineering kill humans?
Confused Philosopher is not confused about this:
Yes.
It will because we will try to replace one type of bacteria with another "harmless" one, not realizing that the new bacteria doesn't produce an important by-product, and by the time we realize, we will have all been infected and starving/rotting/going-loopy.
Why slashdot? Why not?
> I will be little heretic, but i think genetic enineering is the ONLY thing which can SAVE US.
Maybe so.
> Natural selection does not work anymore (at least in "civilised" world) thanks to progress in medicine.
Natural selection still works on humans.
> If the mankind does not want to give up its humanitarian ideas and make artificial selection
It would still be a natural selection.
Sorry for repeating my self but I really like people to stop believing that "we" are artifical and what we do to be artifical - it's absurd!
And it's also very bad that people often claim natural selection not to work, when it in fact works perfectly, perhaps not in favour to some political ideas, but nevertheless, it still works.
I've often wondered if our medicine and technology will harm our evolutionary progress. It's a touchy issue because it deals with relative human "worth" in the context of survival of the species. It's apparently an issue too volatile to address; I've never heard anyone mention it. (Or maybe I'm just nuts for having thought of it.) Think about it though. Thanks to modern medicine, lots of people are alive who by the rights of natural selection ought to be dead. People with weak immune systems. People with congenital defects. People who just aren't as smart or as agile as the rest of us. In short, people who are genetically inferior. And they're reproducing... So I take issue with those who object to genetic engineering on the grounds that we're "playing God." We've been playing God for centuries. You could even argue that we've been playing God since the first farmer planted his crop in a field where it never naturally grew. Here's another thought: Given our piss poor management of agriculture, medicine, and the other technologies we've had for centuries, I don't hold out much hope for genetic engineering to be anything other than an unmitigated disaster for humankind. When will we learn?
What truly scares me, is the possibility of only the rich being able to afford genetic "enhancements".
Imagine a world where if you want your child to benefit from genetics, you have to spend a proportional amount of money for said engineering to be done.
The social divisions between the rich and the rest of us, will only widen.
(flash back a few thousand years)
Imagine a world where only the rich have access to weaponry.
(flash back a few hundred years)
Imagine a world where only the rich will be have access to advanced health care.
(flash back one hundred years)
Imagine a world where only the rich will have access to cars.
Imagine a world where only the rich have access to flight.
etc., etc., etc.
Initial offerings are always expensive. Economies of scale and competition always end up bringing the price down to levels affordable by everyone.
Perhaps genetic enhancements should be regulated as a public benefit or utility, where all have somewhat equal opportunity to get them.
Government control/regulation and "public interest" are anti-thetical. Government always has its own agenda, and you can never entrust it to act in the "public good"; there are infinitely many varying opinions on what constitutes "good", and inevitably, you, and many others, will disagree with what the government decides. Why not let everyone make their own decisions? That's what the free market permits.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
From what threat? Lack of touch with reality is the most pressing threat I see.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Iregardless folks, stupidity is relative. If you actually manage to raise the bottom 10% it just means who makes up that bottom % will be smarter than the bottom 10% in the past. It will not change the fact that there will still be a bottom 10%. Though I wonder here if what is being discussed is mental retardation.. or simply the dense kid that studies hard but always gets D's because they just don't get it. Reducing genetic disorders would be a great and wonderfull thing. But societally there will need to be a replacement for the 'short bus kids'. A new rock bottom intelligence level will be created. Or those that used to be right above will simply be moved into the already existing bottom level. Either way as I said a bottom 10% will always be defined. Thus Stupidity is a fundamental societal existence. All that varies is what defines being stupid. Is it not being able to read/write ?? Or is it not being able to do diferential equations ?
In other words
Go to a Public Highschool and you will find it has a bottom 10%.
Go to a Private Highschool and you find it too has a bottom 10%.
As do Junior Colleges.
Even Harvard has a bottom 10% not to mention Harvard Law.
In any human environment the lower 10% is defined somehow. Sometimes the differences are gross. Sometimes minute. But we by our nature class and measure ourselves against others. We by default define social pecking orders. We are social animals.
If as a society we raise the overall level of intelligence thats a good thing. But I always have to laugh when people say that by doing so we will wipe out stupidity. That simply isn't the case. All that will truly accomplish is to re-define stupidity.
Good needs Bad to be definable.
Up needs Down.
Left needs Right.
Right needs Wrong.
Smart needs Stupid.
If you truly eliminate people of lower intelligence you also eliminate people of higher intelligence by deffinition. Because Smart and Stupid are relative definitions defined by each other. If you don't belive me then look at in this light. Once upon a time in the US a highschool diploma was more than something you wiped your nose with. Today for your average 'good' job you had best come calling with some form of higher education, preferably a 4 year acredited institution and posses a relavent degree. Is this truly because a highschool education has degraded so far.... or because college educations are more common ? Check the percentage of higher education degrees in the work force in 2003 as opposed to say in 1903.
Its the crux of equality really. True equality can never exist so long as people make value judgements of each other because when as a society we judge each others value in any way we move away from equality. Equality is bland, it is ideal. It is Utopia.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Not specifically that case, but I think that is what the Australian farmers do not want to happen. Along with the unanticipated allergy problem.
I think a legal system that allows big money and lawyers to win every time, instead of fairness and justice, will self implode in the long run. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.