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The Rights of GM Humans
An anonymous submitter writes "Some of the powers that be -- not just talking heads -- go on record about our genetically enhanced future in this Village Voice article. The anti-doping watchdogs of the Olympics say they'll ban GM athletes, and even athletes who have a grandparent with an enhanced germ-line. Would Ivy League schools slap a quota on these people to fend off the enraged parents of the "normal majority?" Imagine how a politician would fare if it became known she'd been tweaked in utero. Human history is rife with aristocide and mob attacks on perceived elites. Today lawmakers and regulators are eager to ban the technologies that would be needed to create a new breed of intellectually and physically superior people. But who's willing to stand up for the rights of this future generation? Environmentalists already deride GM crops as "frankenfood," so how far behind could the demonization of GM people be?"
For a recap, pick up X-men number 1 and start reading.
Because when they come to power (as they eventually will), they'll kill people they dislike. Science Fiction is full of stories like this.
find a former olympic swimmer, handicapped through an unfortunate accident...
pay him money, take his identity, go to gattaca.
One word:
Khan
Whats wrong with improving upon our faults? Other than the obvious christian responce. The Human genetic code is not sacred, IMHO. Maybe Humans will be tweeked, sorta like we tweek our computers. Overclocking the Human brain? Interesting.
Lostkandeh Ravernerd.
How will the future consider children who may be cured by simple GM of diseases? My friend's son is a hemophiliac. A genetic modification could save him from an early death and a lifetime of pain. Would this change make him a GM freak? If so, are you saying that he should suffer this disease because God ordained it?
The more you scare people, the more they will pay you
Sounds so much like the X-Men 2 slogans. Mutants, I mean GM'ed people, must stand together...
Red Dwarf covered this issue. After the proliferation of genetic enhancements the world sporting bodies stepped in banning genetic enhancement. The response was the creation of Genetic Alternative sports, the Genetic Alternative sports killed normal sports inside a couple of years, of course even that required a few rules:
Joking aside, I'm unsure what would happen in the real word. Sports. We haven't seen a "Narcotics alternative sports" emerge after drug taking was banned, however the critical difference may be in how socially acceptable genetic enhancement is. Whoever makes the decisions is going to have trouble either way though, I can see the headlines now Little Johnny kept out of school sports record books because of asthma treatment..
...like a promo for the new X-men movie? :-)
-R
X-Men 2! Did the MPAA post this, because this is almost the exact same story that the X-Men comics/cartoons/movies have been "covering" for a long time.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
If genetic modification makes you look anything more like the kids in the picture from that article, then we have nothing to worry about - it won't catch on. On the other hand.. imagine a beowolf cluster of GM-Humans..
Last.fm - join the social music revolution
Well at least we'll be able to use our second set of arms to do our code monkey work at twice the speed.
Checking out my form of escapism.
Isn't this fairly similar to the issues the X-Men have to put up with in the comics and movies? Maybe X-2 will show us that we can all get along.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Find their weakness and destroy them! Wipe them off the face of the earth! Anyone not of pure stock should be eliminated!
You see where I'm going with this...
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
eventually one of them will get magnetic powers and lead a revolt of the GMs.
If you base any of your judgement of someone on whether they, their parents, or their parents' parents were genetically modified... You're crap. Heck let's take the X-Man approach. Don't like us? We'll make you become us. (half jokingly)
Is that they can't compete with a robotic sport playing machine. Really, if you're going to enhance humans, why bother with merely GM'ing them. Vicious cyborgs are the way to go, and you can turn almost anybody into an effective cyborg. Why wait 18 years (less if you're very good at GM) when you can get the same product in a few days.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
I have often thought about that. Perhaps not in a genetic modification, but implanting chips that integrate with the human brain. Linear processors to help with math, RAM to help with memory, etc.
Seriously, GATTACA has an excellent point. "There is no gene for the human spirit." I'd go further, there is no gene for life.
You must admit, if we could genetically protect our immune systems from AIDS, that it would be a good thing really. But who knows...maybe that new immune system wouldn't work against something else...
- Sighuh?
I have enough trouble deciding what type of pizza to order. I'll let nature take care of making the decisions about my children's genetic code...
What happens when one of the granchildren of Steve Ballmer comes dancing out on the stage, and it really IS a monkey?
I retract that. That doesn't require genetic tampering. Tampering is what it takes to STOP IT FROM HAPPENING!
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
As mentioned other threads this has been covered in a number of other Sci-Fi series. GELFS in Red Dwarf etc.. Of course we can't forget Khan, prehaps the best Star Trek villian. Taking how hard it was to beat him down and at a high cost prehaps it might be best that we do outlaw this.
:) *)
(* Must remeber Star Trek isn't real life
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Friday was a great book, wasn't it?
Hey, what if we sent a starship to this star and there was a big ring around it with a buncha humanoid creatures? Wouldn't that be cool?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Somehow I think our understanding of genetics and the way humans develope is too small for any of this to be fruitful in the near future. Thinking ahead, if we could alter our genetic code(ie. create enhanced humans) really we would only be starting back up the process we stopped. The way I see it, through society humans have slowly stopped natural selection from occuring within our own population. The last major occurance of natural selection in humans that I recall was during the Black Plague in Europe. Only people who produced a certain protein on their immune cells(I have forgotten its name) were able to survive the plague. So now the survivors all carried that gene, which helped them and their offspring be immune to similar diseases to the plague. This happens in nature all the time, but in humans it doesn't seem to happen much anymore. Diseases are not always a bad thing, in the long run they are often helpful in preserving a species.
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just don't know if I'm ready to root for Khan Noonien Singh.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
...on how available GM is to all people. If only the rich can get GM for things, then it will lead to violence, because the rest of us will resent an overclass. OTOH, if GM is available for all, or nearly all, then there will be less. It already takes a lot of money to be an Olympic-class athlete, but if $100,000 spent at conception can make Johnny a world-record runner, it becomes doable.
The rights of GM humans might be an issue soon enough, sure. But what I fear most is the fact that we might lose touch with ourselves and create an upper class society of GM humans, with the new lower class being unable to afford the GM in their family. In fact, what might happen if we carry this too far and create a human that can hardly be desribed as a human any longer? Call me a doomsday prophet but this is what I fear most about GM, the division of the human race into several factions. The upper class and lower class, the new humans and the old humans, the superior humans and the lesser humans... Much like what Hitler dreamed of...
The human genes are one of the few things we should not muck around with too much, except perhaps to remove "bugs" in our genetics which allow for horrible diseases like parkinson and thousands of others. Repairing our DNA? Fine with me, if controlled properly. Enhancing our DNA to give us abilities beyond those of normal humans? No way, imho.
Hate me!
Why worry about GM humans when we already have a genetic underclass who are treated unfairly.
People may think that eugenics died out with the Nazis but you couldn`t be more wrong. Ever noticed how smart people marry/breed with other smart people e.g. doctors,lawyers,scientists. They _DON`T_ marry garbage collectors or other people below their social/intellectual status - these types of people and their descendants are doomed by inheritance to have the poorly paid jobs and serve their genetic "superiors". The voluntary "eugenics" we experience today is never talked about but gives a minority of people an unfair advantage in life. The sooner GM humans arrive and everybody has a level playing field the better.
Good grief!Talk about controversial topics....
;)
:) conclusion:
;^)
Welcome to troll-nirvana!
(Please wear troll-proof fire-retardant clothing at all times
Anyhow...
It occurs to me that your little synopsis has a distinct whiff of racism about it.
Like this (probably too simplified but...):
- GM people will be banned and/or excluded.
- This exclusion is based on genetic differences.
- Another form of exclusion, also based on
genetic differences, is racism.
- Racism is illegal (in most parts of the world)
----
Hence my (smiple
You cannot exclude GM people from sports/jobs/whatever.
(BTW, NO, I did not read the article...I'm killing time waiting for that T3 trailer to download
Why don't we allow for the rights of other fictitous entities? Say superheros?
Public policy can't be formulated except on *facts* and *existence*.
Unfortunately, such creatures GM will have to fight for their own rights, because I'm too busy defending my own.
I am hung like a nat, you think they will keep me out of porn if I get that fixed?
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Improve mankind through genetics? Why not?
Oh, and while you are at it, what about cheap, plentiful, non-polluting energy sources (nuclear power does not qualify, sorry), decent food, shelter and health care, clean air & water for everyone on earth?
And could you reduce pollution while you are at it?
And make sure third-world country finally enjoy economic growth instead of destitution?
Oh, and if you have a little time left after all that, try to bring some decency and peace to the world community. Please. Pretty please??
Frankly, how can people dream about improving the human race while all these problems have been the norm for the past centuries?
This is ridiculous. Period.
Not to mention that most geneticists now seem to agree that man cannot even be cloned, let alone improved.
Case closed (as far as I am concerned).
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Didn't Michael Moore make a movie about the rights of GM humans?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
So what. Instead, they can go to a school somewhere in Westchester County, NY. There they can be taught to harness their powers and use them for good. And if they excel in that school, they might just have a chance to join a special team that can save the world from the evil plots of Magneto and... uh... nevermind.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Doesn't the AFL-CIO cover them...OOPS, wrong humans
Just another day in Paradise
create a new breed of intellectually and physically superior people
Once this becomes safe, why not use it to give your children every advantage possible. This would be analogous to not allowing your children to go to an Ivy League school because you think it would give them an unfair advantage, or moving to a lower class neighborhood because you think the public schools in your district are too good!
Indeed. It comes out of the factory with builtin liquid cooling. I wouldn't mind more memory bandwidth, either... damn, where did I put those keys again?!
--
I refuse to use
As usual, this issue is raised in a way that obscures the relationship between the commodification of life and the pure science.
We can't discuss the ethics of GM humans in anything like a civilized manner, since we can't even look accurately at the massive abuses in the patent systems, the regulatory systems, and corporate responsibility.
Let me throw out a few terms and issues that need to be discussed thoroughly before one can begin to consider the ethical rights of GM humans:
- biopiracy
- patented bloodlines
- patenting of life
- consolidation of life sciences capital resources
- the precautionary principle
- breeding |= Genetically Modified Organisms
- Monsanto's campaign of intentional GMO pollution
- emergent properties in DNA
- food sovereignty and regional food security
- the dangerous loss of biodiversity
- the dangerous loss of local knowledge
- the interpenetration of Monsanto execs and the FDA
- the attempt to squash labelling rights
- etc.
Unless you have a grasp of at least some of these issues, you can't just gripe about Foaming-at-the-Mouth Envirodweebs chanting Frankenfoods.
Look at what Monsanto is doing to Percy Schmeiser [google him], then tell me that the future of GM humans has nothing to do with present corporate practices.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I'm not sure people could even agree on what our "faults" are.
Whats wrong with improving upon our faults?
monoculture vulnerability ?
lack of knowledge ?
and, most importantly, the ethics of performing experiments in humans ? (after all, there can be no more extreme experiment than tayloring an organism)
Remember, in order ot improve, you need to learn, and make a lot of mistakes. These poor mistakes will breath, live, love, laugh and hurt. Do you not, as the originating scientist, have an ethical obligation to these resulting future persons ? What will you do, debug and reboot them ?
I'm not saying this as a christian (I'm not), or as a person who totaly opposes eugenics (I'm not that either) but as a person who believes a measure of ethics is important.
Working for necessity's mother.
I for one, am against GM-ing Humans. Seeing as how so far everything we touch turns to shit when it comes to mother nature, perhaps it is best we heed the warning of Crichton et. al and stop to think "Should we?" before jumping headlong into something with potential drastic humane, political and social effects. Mother Nature has done a fine job on her own so far, lets not tempt the powers that brought us here and can take us out.
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
I am against such experiments or the birth of a single GM human. But, just like abortion, once he's born, I would allow him all human rights rather than try and dehumanize him.
We have quite a lot of variation in our species thankfully. Think of all the races, adaptations and cultures out there. Although the CREATION of such a human should be disallowed, once he's born, he's still one of us.
Being very much against equal opportunity of any kind, I would be fine with not being allowed in an Ivy league college full of GM students. If a GM coder makes far better drivers and apps than me, I would not blame him for my not finding work in the market, just as I wouldnt blame a smart immigrant from India. You gotta be a good sport in any competition including the ones in life.. and dehumanization of any potential GM humans is wrong.
And then, parents really shouldnt want to produce GM kids, for they wont be their kids. They will be science's children. Plus the so many possibilities of mistakes in the engineering process, just not worth trying. And then, we have been evolved and fine tuned beyond any skill and science for survival on this planet, no GM human can exceed in these qualities... outside of a linear match (like using Arnold Schwarzeneggers sperms and Jennifer Lopez's eggs, which isnt quite GManipulation)
Everyone has to remember, we are against the manipulation of the human genes, not of any humans who might have this. Just as we're against chemical weapons being used against civilians, not their deformed kids born later. All men are created equal, whatever the method or creator.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
...I were a super being. I would give a shit about olympics. I would be busy anyways with fuckin' superior women in the ass.
One word: Gattaca
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Both used performance enhancing drugs to win their medals in the Olympics - so GM-modified humans are the next obvious step.
Because what you or your parents consider a fault, I or your children may well consider a merit.
"Overclocking the Human brain", the occasional segfault/psychosis OK for you then eh?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Having just finished Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, I'd have to recommend it to anyone who wants to take a ride down the slippery slope of genetically engineered humans. An interesting idea of human manufacturing and conditioning, among other things.
;).
Personally I'd detest an individual with an unfair advantage over life. Kinda like those bloody cheaters in multiplayer games. We'll eventually need a human punk buster (ie: Blade Runners
-kidlinux.
These might apply to GM people.
4 EA F-2081-1E61-A98A809EC5880105&pageNumber=1&catI D=2
1. A human clone is a human being no less unique in his or her personhood than an identical twin.
2. A human clone has all the rights and privileges that accompany this legal and moral status.
3. A human clone is to be accorded the dignity and respect due any member of our species.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0008
The term Frankenfood is just another useless word by which none of the environmentalists can back up.
You see, I too thought that they spliced animal and plant genes together to make better producing crops.
But not so. This is what they would have you believe.
I'm not Flamebaiting, and I'm not Trolling. I was honestly surprised at what I learned from this episode of this show (which is great, btw), and how the only spliced genes in plants are from other plants.
Yes, really. Regardless of what Greenpeace would have you believe.
The environmentalists have made us think that genetically altered food is as bad as can be, and that we should stay away from it. That it's not regulated in any form or fashion. That the food industry runs amok with itself, feeding the world with whatever they can come up with in their Mad Scentist Labs.
But this is completely false. Any GM food is regulated far more than regular food, and these GM foods can save lives.
Dr. Borlog, the scientist who invented GM food, has saved an estimated billion lives in third world countries by making less land make more food. His research and development since the 1970's, when it began, is groundbreaking to say the least. And yet there are groups who protest this on a consistent basis. And you never see any of these group's members starving, do you?
A true tragedy was when an African country decided not to take an American donation of tons of corn because the environmentalists convinced the government of that nation that the genetically altered food was poison. An estimated 25,000 people die every day of starvation, and thousands of innocent people died in that country because of that misinformation.
Now I'm not for a GATTACA like society, but if we can GM a person so they don't get Downs Syndrome, or Cystic Fibrosis, I'm all for it. Most people are against it for moral reasons, not scientific ones.
These kinds of arguments hurt others whether they mean to or not.
Every angle has been explored endlessly in science fiction, including early classics like Brave New World and XMen comics. Humankind has always had issues with diversity, but seems to adapt. I wouldnt get worried.
" a new breed of intellectually and physically superior people. "
Genes affect the body, but not the other two. The mind affects and is affected by the body and intellect- but mind-trigerred mutation / evolution is gradual and reversible. Intellect is actually external to both mind and body - the mind tunes to intellect. (Richard Bach: Learning is finding out what you already know)
To sum up, it is not possible to create intellectually superior people by manipulating gene sequences. It can even be argued that physically superior people generally have inferior intellect - but don't tell them so!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It does seem like a good idea to cure stuff, to enhance intelligence and all that good stuff. But i'm afraid all that we'll get is genetically engineered soccer players who excel at soccer but are crap at stuff that matters.
Because open source software writers cannot afford a multimilion dollar project to get a USB6.1 port in your left ear, while silly sports event sponsors can...
Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
For thousands of years, the whole point of human existence was to perpetuate and improve both quality and quantity of life. Every hospital, every ultrasound, every drug and every anti-smoking poster exists solely to increase our lifespans and improve our quality of life. So why all of a sudden are people saying "No" to taking this quest to the gene level?
My sister-in-law has her masters in biology and is persuing another masters in genetic counselling. Curiously, she feels differently than I do about this. I believe that if we have the knowledge and the power to identify a Parkinson's, cancer, MS, Autistic, Down's, Lou Gehrig's, or a thousand other markers in our zygote's genetic code, and to eliminate that threat, then who in their right mind *wouldn't* do it? Why *wouldn't* you want your child to not have to go through the agony of being deaf or suffering through their twilight years consumed in the sad cloud of Alzheimer's?
She, on the other hand, believes that we shouldn't meddle, because if we do as I just described, it's a small step to handing prospective parents a form, letting them choose their baby's sex, hair colour, height, etc. I say, "so what?" Once again, why *wouldn't* you want to let people choose what their children will look like? The child has to have SOME eye colour, it's going to be either brown or blue or green or something ANYWAY, so what's the harm in letting the parents pick?
"We shouldn't be playing God," they say. But aren't we already? Haven't we been playing God since we started artificially extending peoples' lives through drugs and machines? Aren't contraceptive drugs "Playing God?" Aren't C-section births "Playing God?" Why do people accept all of those unnatural interventions, but draw the line at the next logical improvement of life?
I believe that if society can eliminate those horrible genetic diseases from our gene pool, along with reducing obesity and the violent tendencies that produce dangerous criminals (yes, physiological links have been shown), then the sooner society will improve. Yes, it might suck for those of us who are already here and can't re-write our genetic code, but this is not without precedent. Do we deny cancer treatment to everyone, just because there are people who are beyond treatment? Since they won't survive cancer, then no one should? It's ridiculous.
Science, medicine, and arguably society as a whole exist for the sole purpose of improving life. Evolving. I believe if we're at the threshold of these discoveries, that bring such amazing promises to our children and grandchildren, then it'd be counter to all the progress we've made so far in the last few centuries to stop now. We owe it to our children to use our knowledge to improve their lives. That's WHY technology exists.
You can't say in-vitro fertilization and abortion are OK, but genetic manipulation is not. It's hypocritical.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
While I think it would be great if I could reprogram myself to be resistant to the common cold and other maladies, on the other hand I would be worried about the untold effects. What if when you change one bit it flips others by design? Noone knows if you alter one gene sequence in the HUMAN DNA it would not alter some obscure Gene that affects speech or maybe your skin color or eye color. Oh we'd still be animals, but we may loose our humanity so to speak. While mutations happen in nature, it's semi natural. Doing it on purpose seems wrong to me. I would not deride any GM Human or anyone who makes one, but I don't know if I would be willing to do it myself.
On the other hand, with food like corn and the like, if there's nothing poisonous as a result of the change and it's still vegetable matter, why does anyone think it would hurt you? What is wrong with modifying corn so that it grows faster? As long as it tests ok, I would be willing to try some. We have been eating genetically modified stuff for centries really. If they had not discovered how to crossbreed things, then our corn and other things may not be doing as well today as they are. Is crossbred corn truely GM'd corn? I would say in theory it is.
Gorkman
On the outset, it does seem like a really, really cool idea to be able to OC the human brain, but stop and think about the social repercussions. Remember how there were always those guy in high school that did amazingly well in their classes, were stars of the basketball team, and never got a pimple? Remember how much you hated them?
Imagine if their parents were just rich enough to buy that. Instead of nature deciding who's going to be smart, athletic, top of the class (I know environmental factors are just as important, but bare with me) parents just buy the features they want. Think about how you felt towards the kids that were gifted in school. Now thing about know they were made that way, not just lucky.
GM'ed people, while interesting, would have a really, really hard time. Most of us would probably be very bitter towards them and the people that could afford to have GM work done on their children.
As an American (not that I am particularly happy with this country right now), I have always believed that anyone can become president, a CEO, whatever they want. However, I think this is the final divider between the haves and have-nots. OCing the human brain seems harmless, but the social repercussions are endless.
How strange, a theme that is really being discussed in the real world instead of in the realm of "A Brave New World or Gattaca. The science fiction of yesterday is today's (tomorrow's?) real world.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
But who's willing to stand up for the rights of this future generation?
The same people who stand up for computer nerds and other intellectual achievers of high school age.
Uhhh... wait a minute...
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Well, there's two ways to look at this issue. In the first case, the Human genetic code is sacred, and those that believe so will continue to run a pure line in the human race. They will come up with the people who look at it in the second case, where it's ok to modify, and have been modified.
:)
Now to talk about genetically superior people, begs the question of exactly what superior means. Because the reaction of the first, unmodified group when it has to deal with the second, modified group will depend largely on this.
If the second, modified group consists of people with large sexual organs that have responses on demand, and turn out to be the envy of every member of the opposite sex, and with no obvious negative side effect, group number one, might actually start thinking that group number two isn't so bad. The same could happen in the case of some modification that effectively prevents some kind of disease from happening (or corrects a defect found in the womb). If we continue along these lines, we could eventually get a sort of homogenous population of typical genetic modifications, that are all sort of modified in one form or another. The stigma having been removed.
However if the second group, comes along (like the AC that submitted the post), and, maybe because he/she is unable to get a date due to their absolute lack of desire or ability to develop social skills or intimacy with another human being, or because they have delusions of being a Hussain, decide that they CAN be superior, and this is what they will push...then naturally things won't go over well with the unmodified humans.
In this case we'll have a new kind of racism, where unmodified humans, fearing a threat from the Moddies, will take progressively stronger and stronger measures against them (ala X-Men, maybe), and then who knows where it will end.
IMHO: Alot transhumanists all take a very bad line with this regard, aggressively pushing some kind of new humanity on everyone. The new humanity being superior, or more evolved, or whatever. I've noticed that most of the (few)transhumanists I've met, all have qualities that prevent them from forming social relationships they would like (and lets face it -- with girls), and somehow think that tweaking their bods are going to solve their problem. But it wont. Nothing can replace relating with another human being. Eric Erickson -- Intimacy vs Isolation. And it's sad, because there's alot of work these people can do on themself to correct this, without having to go to the extreem of some imaginary fantastic gene mod. But if they don't want to see it...
Anyways, for me personally, I'm just going to wait it out, so that I can place my order for a genetically engineer, custom build sex slave to have around the house. This will absolve all the annoying tedium of having to "relate" to my girlfriend. Now that's what I call progress
Remember that show that was on Fox a couple of years ago. If GM's turn out to look like her, I'm all for it!!
Lewis reportedly failed drugs test before Seoul Games
The power output from chips in the brain would have to be extremely minimal. The brain is highly sensitive to temperature changes. At first you might just get a head ache from the new heat source in your head, but eventually you would probably suffer heat stroke and die. Thats not something I am looking forward to.
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
What about the possible side effects? Wouldn't it make sense to preserve, and protect the rights of, an unmodified human race too? And since genetically modifying humans is taking control of evolution, who has the right to decide the direction of evolution for everyone? Why should there be only one single human species in the future anyway?
Who defines these "faults"? Someone so short minded as to call them faults? Perhaps they have a real purpose.
To get to a point where we have a genuine grasp of the impact of genetic manipulation of humans (and we have only the smallest inkling of a clue right now), we have to test by trial and error. That means many, many ugly mistakes. How about you start coming up with some accepted ethical policies for dealing with live human "mistakes". Imagine the possibilities for what you could screw up in a person.
What happens when our genetic engineering has impacts that show up over multiple generations? What happens when we have completely ruined our genome? I guess the aborigines will get to repopulate the planet.
This is going to be like a deviated septum operation. You know, the one where someone goes in because they have a deviated septum, and tells the doc "Hey, while you're in there, I've always thought my nose was a bit too wide, could you fix that for me? Thanks."
:)
Only with GM, you'll be in to get your Alzheimers gene swapped, and you'll be like "Hey, while you're in there, could you make me a super-genius, ultra good-looking, and hung like a horse? Thanks."
Reading one of the Red Dwarf books (I think it is "Better than Life") this situation arises. 'Genetically Altered Species' are banned from competition with humans.
;)
Within a few years no one wants to watch human sports so it dies out, everyone watches the GAS sports. Heh, IIRC the book goes on to say that Scotland breed a Football Goalkeeper who is bigger than the goal. He was later banned
Even if we outlaw GMs, countries like China and North Korea will not. That is what we will have to really deal with in the future.
Please refer to the past 25 years of X-Men comics for similar issues.
meh
People always go on about how genetic engineering will result in a elite group consisting of only those rich enough to afford the treatment. Can someone explain why the treatment will be so expensive that only the rich can afford it? Surely a retro virus that enhances one person will work on everybody? And since when were virii hard to mass produce? Sure, a group of rich people could try and keep it away from the general public, but in the long term this would be practically impossible, given the potential profit for anyone sneaky enough to leak it to the black market. I just don't get the maths. Economies of scale would result in much higher profits by selling cheap to everybody than by selling at a high price to a select group.
IANAG but this seems like luddite nonsense to me.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Genetic manipulation from a capitalistic world must support other capitalistic ventures. That's a sad fact we sometimes forget when we're thinking about advancements in science. If we lived in socialist world, then there would be a fair chance we'll get physically and mentally superior GM'd people.
But the first task of GM is not to create more intelligent people, no. The first task they'll have to undertake is to enable people to eat more unhealthy food without getting fat. Yes, beauty comes before brains in alphabet.
Besides, altering intelligence might not be so good an idea: it would generate more resistance to stupid laws, stupid politics, and stupid corporations. The people in charge of GM-corporations do not generally fall into the category of free-thinking liberalists. They're after money, not freedom.
Which would be a pity.
I also wonder about the problem with prosthetic limbs - having an artificial arm doesn't make someone a monster. But they might need a separate category for competition. Like the wheelchair athletes in Marathons, can beat the pants off the ones that have to leg it. Not that the leggy ones would want to swap.
Right now it is ok to take a painkiller like panadol for competition (but last I heard it was banned in Greece so maybe not in the next Olympics), and definitely making headache go away usually improves performance. But you are not allowed to take a steroid to help heal an injury like a broken leg. Where as non-competitive people would be prescribed steriods for this.
And what does it mean if people are breeding for genetic improvements like athletes who meet at the olympics...
And what if some poor unfortunate gets gene spliced by a wild virus or natural mutation. How will they be able to tell for sure.
Even now they aren't too sure with the naturally occuring performance enhancers. Eg what happens if you have a naturally high EPO. You get banned, but if you don't then everyone else gets to artificially elevate their EPO to the same as yours (because it is impossible to tell what really is natural and people metabolise differently).
Maybe you could have the open category, the non-gm category, the gm category, and the mechanically supported category (excluding those russian piston legs), and the wheeled category.
It's all about as stuffed as the mentally handicapped basketball. But I guess we gotta try. Ie trying to get it right probably reduces the cheats to a manageable number. But some talented innocents are going to get caught in the cross fire too. They will just have to start their own competition, and categorise it or not as they see fit.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I know a number of cancer survivors, and would likely know other humans if I hadn't met them. Why must 'survival of the fit' be circumvented? Those with shorter lifespans will not reproduce (at least in theory) as many times as those with longer lives. Are we so socially desperate that we cannot *bear* the thought of losing someone, regardless of the role we've given them in our personal social structure?
Of course you could probably accomplish the same thing by sterilizing everybody who goes to football games
Female-only procreation is still unimplemented.
Working for necessity's mother.
Now all you have to do is define "normal" and we're all set! This moral framework stuff is easy, isn't it?
Do GM people TASTE better ?
I really hate to bring up such a touchy topic, but it's this exactly what Hitler was doing / trying to do?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
I'll stand up for them. You mark my words.
Of course, then there was also the Polymorph:
And there were the Psirens...
But the big furry ones weren't so bad...well, they insisted that Lister marry the chief's daughter, but that was about it. (the books also made references to a GELF revolution of some sort...something about they were making furniture that was really GELFs, or something like that)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I'm sure that GM Superhumans will be welcomed by all. After all, Kirk said it best:
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
When I was in college, 'GM' meant gay male.
How would we react if the rules of basketball were changed to equalize abilities between reds, blacks, whites, yellows, etc.? Pretty stupid, huh? What if we just tried to equalize the game so that short people weren't disadvantaged when playing against tall people? Or maybe had a separate league for people under 6' 0"?
Look. All advantages are, by definition, unfair. Tall people play basketball because they win more than short people. Gymnasts tend to be shorter because of balance and weight. Poor eyesight used to drive people afflicted with it from all sorts of games and careers -- we've corrected for that, and no would listen to a complaint by "naturally-sighted" people that eyeglasses are an unfair "enhancement".
Let people manipulate genes if they want to. So what? This type of "artificial" advantage is not any more unfair or unholy than any other. It's just new.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
First, the first few generations of GM technology are/will be devoted to curing what are currently perceived as "genetic defects" (Downs etc.). Just like medicine puts a lot more effort/time/money into researching organ transplants, which potentially benefit a fraction of the population, compared to cosmetic surgery, which potentially applies to all.
Second, more importantly, I don't care how much you tweak your kid's genes, heck, import him from Krypton if you want, the "Nurture" part of "Nature vs. Nurture" will always win. If you have a kid GMd to be "smarter", it won't matter if you ignore her and don't provide stimulation, affection etc. If you GM your kid to be stronger, he won't become an Olympic Champion unless he enjoys average or better nutrition, and encouragement to succeed (even when he fails).
Would I "buy" GM for my next kid (on the way already, too late!). Sure, why not; but that wouldn't give me an excuse to slack off and be a poor parent.
Finally, people are right to fear the creation of a caste system, and economic divisions. However, the rich seem to ignore their kids at the same rate (if not greater) as the poor, so I think it will even out. Rich people who are vain enough to pay $zillions for superbaby will probably also hire an endless string of nannies, ignore little Jarel, and raise a right bastard of a brat with no self-confidence. (George Bush?)
I take the long view toward human behavior: It all seems to work itself out in the end (give or take a global war or pandemic once in a while, but those are just reboots) ;)
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
Read Vonnegut's story Harrison Bergeron. While it isn't about GM, it is about restoring "fairness" to society. Stuff like loading ballerinas down with sand bags. Great story.
History tells us that tech comes in two basic flavours:
1. Tech that can be propagated at low cost (either financial or knowledge cost), generally tends to have a beneficial effect on mankind. Sometimes, this kind of tech is perceived as a threat by the powers that be and they "try" to suppress it. Examples, the loom, printing press, penicilin, the internet.
2. Tech that involves a high cost often is exploited (or at least an attempt is made to exploit it) by those who can afford it, in order to maintain their positions in society relative to those that can't. Examples: fossil fuel tech, nuclear tech, and GM tech.
Sure, within 20 years, most people will have access to basic GM via whatever "universal healthcare" operates in your country. But this will only be for those GM mods like resistance to various diseases etc that are huge drains of money on everyone. The really interesting GM tech (brain mods etc) will be "boutique" mods that only the wealthy will be able to afford. Free market. Yay.
The real question is how will the non-GM'ed (eg, the poor, the third-world etc) folk be discriminated against.
Answer: same as they are now.
The means to achieve GM babies are spreading, and if the practice ever catches on, it'll be because parents are trying to keep up with the Joneses.
This is exactly the problem. Their already exists among many "elites" an incredible competitive attitude in regards to their offspring. It is a well known fact that these people will compete furiously about which kindergarten their child will attend!
Does anyone here really think that people of this mindset and means will not be standing in line for a procedure that could guarantee a 30 point IQ boast??? And, of course, once one "parent" does it, all others in the same social circles will feel absolutely compelled to do the same in order to "keep up" with the perceived competition.
I really don't think legislation (or anything else of that matter) can keep this genie in the bottle; the idea of enhancing your offspring is just too seductive to be abandoned. I mean, how many of us here really would NOT want our daughter to look like Pamela Anderson and have the brains of Jane Goddard?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
One thing is whether the modified genes could be passed to future generations. The other is whether the new genes are such that already exist among humans naturally. If you add genes that don't naturally exist in humans, you might have a "playing God" issue. Otherwise you're probably just restoring the patient to the state of "healthy human".
THis is either
A: SO expensive that only the very rich will do it, creating a very few people like this.
B: It will be cheap enough for everyone to afford an einstein J-lo designer baby, and it will settle itslef out in a generation.
In reality, all that will happen is the bell curve of human intelegence/ability will begin slowly creeping to the right. THere will always be that einstein on one end, and forrest gump at the other, although this may make the differences neglegible for all practical purposes.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Number 17 looks just like you!!!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
I don't even want to think about the ethics dicussions a view like this would start (and already has started).
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
...what about the Ford humans, the Dodge humans, and we can't forget about thos "import" humans from Honda, Nissan, etc. What about them?
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
I think it should be obvious to any reasonable person that genetic modification has the potential to be a great boon to society, but it must be evaluated carefully to minimize negative effects.
We've now got some amazing food crops that, due to GM, are more resistant to insects, deseases and poor growing conditions, all of which are good things. On the other hand, most of those modified seeds (perhaps all of them) are patented, and have the added feature of having been further modified to prevent the plants they produce from producing any more seeds. This presents a social and environmental issue because while poorer nations now have crops that are more likely to survive, they also have to pay for more seeds every year, and can't create a self sustaining crop.
That's just one example, of course, but i think it's important to address how society at large will benefit most from GM and do everything possible to steer policy in that direction. Seems like GM for humans would have the potential to further divide rich from poor as the rich spend their money on designer kids that are smarter, stronger, and healthier. It's naive in the extreme to assume that GM will create some kind of utopia where there's no more disease and everyone's happy and healthy and has a 180 IQ. It could work out that way, but only if we give due diligence to developments in the technology, policy and law behind GM.
But it's hot to watch them try...
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
They are not like us humans! They want to get rid of us because they think they're superior! We need to put an end to this before it's too late!
Kill them all!
terribly hurt by drunken horny sailors.
The sailors were dreadfully embarassed by the whole thing, so they made up a horror story so they would never have to talk about what really happened...
Oh yeah, we can't forget Gatica either, where percieved differences of GM were enough to screw the life of non GM people.
The answer, as usual, is to press on. We already know there are genitic differences between the races and that those make for differences in capabilities. The difference between potential and actual capabilities of individuals thwarts reasonable discrimination. The same reasonining will apply as our ability to measure that potential increases. I imagine that scientists who would "improve" humans beings will be faced with all the trade-offs and problems that bind nature itself. Laws discriminating against GM people will quickly fade away as the techniques become more common. So long as we proceed rationally, we have little to fear. As with any technology, the danger is not in the capability it's in how it's used. Banning the technology is as impossible and harmful as banning knowledge.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
How about a gene for women that would have them
automatically back down on an argument! I could
go for that! Just say the word "Enough" and the
argument is over with me as the victor! Now that's
what I want to see./// maybe I should hypnotize my wife! hmm.....
I've never really figured out if the Special Olympics is really for all handicapped people or only mentally handicapped people. If the former, then that would be the place for people with prosthetics.
As far as GM people, I'd have to say that you could easily have 'sanctioned' genetic therapies. People with such therapies would then be able to compete in the Olympics. Folks with modifications that have not been sanctioned as theraputic rather than enhancing would then have to compete in another competition, wether a new category in the Special Olympics or in a GM Olympics.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
It all boils down to a one key point: The better you look the better your life is.
Many people were interviewed for this article and the majority (not your average unthinking, unwashed masses) pretty much said, "If it's happening I'm gonna do it, becasue I don't want MY kid falling behind."
And it makes sense...we all ultimately don't want our children to go through the shit we went through as kids. I'm probably what you would consider the average geek. A bit overwieght, a bit too anti-motivated to achive grerat and wondrous things. But I have always known that I would want my kids to have a better life than I did. So, I married the sexiest girl I could find. Now I have two of the best looking kids at the playground. And I know their lives will benefit from it. They've gotten the best of both worlds. They're smart and they're good looking. But like the woman from MENSA (supposedly filled with smarties, and this I think proves that) said, "Sure, I'd want my child to have at least an average IQ, but if I had the opportunity to pick one thing to enhance for a child I would probably pick physical attractiveness," Becker says. "It opens doors to you. People like physically attractive people. It's one thing that has been linked to higher wages and an easier emotional life, and I don't know of any research like that in terms of intelligence. I'm sorry to say that and ashamed that in our culture it's true."
---
If I can't control your body I shall control your mind
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Ultimately, they'll have to pick and choose, just as they do with drugs, excluding only "performance-enhancing" modifications.
Even then it will be difficult, because most mods will probably be alleles already present in some people. So if you have an allele that, say, increases red cell production, you might have to prove that you came by it "naturally."
We should re-open Aushwitz to exterminate every future GM human on this planet!
is more with the economics of the US health system than with GM humans?
If GM therapies had to be totally free to be legal, would that change your opposition?
Seriously. I'm short, I have asthma and allergies, and a few other unpleasant problems. I'm waiting for someone to come along willing to accept money to modify me so I dont have these problems anymore. Maybe while they're at it I'll have them make me a little more predisposed to bulking up (I'm fairly underweight).
What's wrong with that? And please, dont give me any god crap, I'm an athiest.
Forget modifying your children, I want to modify ME
Recombinant (recombining fragments of DNA back into a cell) DNA techniques are presently flawed and very inaccurate.
/. reposting this shouldn't be much of a problem). This is nothing more than fantasy and an emotive title.
1) It is very difficult to find and be certain of where the coding regions begin and end. Introns (placing where the coding region begins) can be predicted with about 75% accuracy, but even with the knowledge of where the splice site (where the bits of DNA are stuck together) should be, transcription is too complex and not yet fully understood to perform a perfect splice.
2) Inadvertantly altering some crucial part of a metabolic pathway, for example, by placing the new DNA in the wrong spot, and preventing the normal transcription of a gene encoding for a certain required protein, would prove fatal or cause serious defects.
3) Even working with fungi and bacteria of which we know the complete genome requires multiple experiments and splices. Yet with regards to humans, which are the ones with civil rights, we know large fragments of the genome but we neither currently have the complete form from start to finish, nor a knowledge of where the coding regions begin and end, not do we have a knowledge of what all the coding regions (genes) do.
You must remember that if any "cloned" or otherwise "genetically altered" human has even the slightest medical problem later in life, the size of the lawsuits would put even Microsoft and McDonalds to shame! Or what about the "failed" experiments (of course I'm referring to humans here). Remember the scene in that Alien movie where she was going through the lab and finding a whole heap of dud clones, picture that but 100 times worse, with the whole legal system watching.
Anyone who says they can perfectly clone a human or even any reasonably complex animal is a fraud. I wonder how many Dolly's they needed before they got one more or less right.
I won't delve into the article much; my reactions would be constant in content - but I will say that the article is highy misleading:
>> With this new knowledge comes new power, the
>> ability to shape our fundamental form--and, one
>> day, to better it
Sure, we have the genome more or less, but we know only what a fragment or it does, and not very well at that. Perhaps publishing this article in 100 years would be better. (At the rate of
I very much doubt that failed human genetic experiments by ethically challenged corporations or governments would be much of a threat as athletes anyway. Because no matter how many billions they invest, with todays open technology they'll get little more than that.
Perhaps the ideas of super-humans (e.g. in X^2) should be left to Hollywood and not to The Village Idiots Voice.
just my $0.02
-m
Ignoring the multitude of people who are jumping on the bandwagon to say this isn't an interesting topic, I beg to differ. I think this issue is fascinating because, by and large, the people who will be doing the genetic modification will not be the people who are receiving it. Unless you are undergoing gene therapy to cure a disease, your genetic modification will be performed by your parents or guardians for their own benefit, essentially without your permission. In a lot of cases, it can be argued that this benefit is what the child would have wanted anyway (would you deny someone with a genetic disease the right to see their children live and prosper?), but it can never be possible to know for sure because the effects won't become obvious until the child is full-grown. Considering that modifying the human genome is a bit like tweaking a million-line program without knowing the language, I think people need to be cautious about what rights they accord to parents and which to children. Social discrimination can be just as bad as physical harm caused by GM, and there's no need to make GM humans suffer for the "sins of the father".
as the originating scientist, have an ethical obligation to these resulting future persons ?
Careful there, you live in a world of single mothers and laws allowing people to drop their children off at the local fire station. To claim that some scientist has some vague obligation to the child when even parents don't, is a little skewed.
Now, if you're saying that the scientist should be responsible for medical bills for the child should something go wrong, that would be understandable.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'm afraid only we old wizards recognize that joke. We have to be old enough to have watched the original Star Trek when first shown.
We already have a process for creating better people. It's been at work all along. Anyone who thinks he knows how to engineer people to be better is just fooling himself. They can even eliminate 1 single disease. Of course that is changing, but it will be a long time before anyone can say a NEW change will not have bad side effects.
Push back puberty about 5 years... or at least stretch it out.
One of the problems with curing diseases is... more people. Eliminate the diseases that collectively knock off a few percent of the population before they reproduce (lots RE fetuses and newborns)... and you've got a whole new population that will reproduce, thereby giving the overall worldwide population an exponential boost.
If that effect was countered by requiring that people are older before having children, then two things would happen:
1. Stupid kids wouldn't be making the mistakes that lead to lots of babies with teenage mothers and fathers, and
2. People would be more likely to die before having children, thereby countering the effect of more babies living and growing up to have children.
People dying of something short of old age isn't fun for the families. But, if nobody died before 75 years of age, this planet might fill up awfully quickly. Slow down the reproduction cycle, and you've slowed that growth.
The flipside is that OxyClean would dominate kids lives for 15 years instead of 10, and college football/basketball would be much more like little league.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I believe that genetic engineering of ourselves and our children is inevitable, because of the huge positive gains it can give us. Who wouldn't want to give themselves or their children the kinds of advantages genetic engineering might bring?
That said, there is a social problem having to do with equality - equal availability of the treatments, equal treatment of people who have them, etc. This problem has always been here (think racism, sexism, etc), it gets more intense as we move into an era where people are potentially not even BORN equal. These social problems cannot be solved with technology - and they cannot be prevented by banning said technology either.
I found this interesting article yesterday, well worth a read if you want to see a more detailed exposition of the above argument. It's titled: Embracing Change with All Four Arms: A Post-Humanist Defense of Genetic Engineering
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
"...who may be cured..."
Yes, we might be able to cure hemophilia, leukemia, any number of nasty genetic diseases - but those people will still die, eventually.
Should we consider our finite genetic clock a 'defect'? If we consider that clock not a defect for whatever reason, then how should we consider all these other defects that just stop the clock earlier? I don't pretend to have the answer - and anyone who says they do is full of it - but I would certainly suggest that altering the code of life may affect the meaning of life...
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
I think scientists grossly overexaggerate the usefulness of the Human genome sequencing project. So you know the sequence of the genome.
We still have to find all of the coding portions of the genome and separate them from non-coding portions.
We still have to find a way to infer the structure and function of a protein from its sequence.
We still have to find a method to engineer proteins systematically and by design. (No guess and check..)
We still have to find a method to model and simulate how multiple proteins and genes interact in order to give us the behavior of the entire system. There are no genes that do one thing or provide one attribute. They all contribute to the behavior of the system, but not linearly and usually unpredictably.
We still have to find a way to alter human DNA successfully, without triggering the immune response too much, and without causing cancer.
We still have a LONG way to go before we see genetically modified humans.
I'd say we'll see many more GM foods and animals long before some guy feels he can get it right on the first try. But that's what engineering is all about...knowing exactly what is going to happen when you create something so that it _will_ work on the first try. (How many buildings collapse spontaneously?)
Not until we understand the complex interactions (and there's a LOT of them) in the body will we be able to engineer biological systems with a supremely high degree of aforeknowledge.
Salis
Favorite
Ok, what about homosexuality, or multiple personality disorder? Both of these are considered 'diseases' by many people, though most 'sufferers' would certainly beg to differ.
Alternately, where do you draw the line between someone who is "learning disabled" or "mentally handicapped", and someone who is just plain dumb? More to the point, is it just to deny someone something which would clearly improve their quality of life a great deal because others' lives may seem a little less grand in comparison?
If we do eventually modify ourselves to the point where we are barely recognizable as human - why should we care?
Questions that I don't have any answers to.
Barring any freakish diseases, evolution (as a force) no longer holds any sway over the modernized world. Without willful intervention, the human race now is essentially the final product. There are certainly risks associated with genetic modification - loss of diversity is a big one - but what if those risks could be mitigated? We would have the opportunity to guide the future of our species in an almost unimaginable way. A focused, directed, and wholly intentional evolution...this could be the biggest deal since Homo Erectus. I'm not sure we can rightly pass an opportunity like this up.
Of course, that's probably an awfully utopian way of looking at things. I think it's going to take much smarter people than myself to get this figured out.
seems to be at the root of most GM human concerns: most folks in opposition base their argument on teh Gattaca scenario: an advanced GM class ruling over the un-modified hordes.
If GM therapies had to be free/equally accessible to all, would that change folk's opposition?
As Biomed advances, this will become a more and more important question: we might soon have a wealthy class that lives for hundreds of years lording over the short lived poor, etc.
If a life saving treatment for a disease exists, if you don't give a sick person access to that treatment you have killed them, right? So if access to cures depends on the size of your bank account, doesn't that violate the principle of the right to life ?
I mean, what if your retro-viral loaded gene-altering smart pill contained a trojan. Can you imagine seeing your body get root owned by something that wants to turn you into a yoghurt factory? or a bomb?
Personally I want the biological equivalent of a packet sniffer to go with my Version 1.0 firewall and virus scanner that we call my immune system and the tripwire that we call apoptosis inducing agent p53.
Now if only I could figure out how to install snapshot or some other decent backup system.
I want cat type night vision and gills so no more bulky scuba equipment. I think I'm also going to need a new liver in a few years.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
and things that they don't understand. Genetically modifying organisms is not inherently evil as so many people would claim. The important thing is to properly manage that change. Some people would call it "playing God." And it is, if you believe in God. However, I like to look at it as fixing the mistakes that God is too busy to notice. There is no reason we should allow be people to be born with debilitating diseases like muscular dystrophy or hemophilia when we can do something about it. For too long we have only been concerned with the quantity of life. In my opinion it's time we started worrying more about the quality of life. Obviously, this is is a bigger argument than three sentences, but I don't want to overwhelm the average ./er's attention span.
H
>>create a new breed of intellectually and physically superior people
A nerd who is captain of the school football team? This would destroy Americain society as we know it...
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
How about improving on ourselves?
Sure, it's questionable to experiment on children not yet born, but what if we could modify adults with new genes? Would that be ok?
Personally, I'm all for it. I *want* to modify myself, especially since any modifications to me as an adult could be undone if I changed my mind later.
i've often thought about how societal acceptance of the levels of modification could take place. what seems a likely initial vector would be quality of life issues. from there it could/would snowball. why not rewire some of your bodies reactions, capabilities, etc. or even sprout wings
other works in science fiction have touched upon future worlds/societies where those with unmodified genes were considered inferior and or puritans. some kind of singularity would probably occur. isn't this one of the things post-humanity is all about?
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
It Depends on how available GM is to all people.
... OTOH, if GM is available for all
Absolutely.
If only the rich can get GM
For the rich, there's Cadillac. For the less well-to-do, there is Chevrolet. For those in between, there is Pontiac & Buick. No more Oldsmobiles. Sorry.
Every time I see the word "frankenfood", I can't help but crack up. Have any of these people even read the story Frankenstein, or even heard about it?
Because if you're gonna stretch that analogy to its obvious conclusion, then the anti-GM folks are the villagers with pitchforks and torches, so overwhelmed by their terror of progress and change that they can do nothing but blindly assault it.
No. "Begs the question" means "the answer to the implied question is assumed". So "talk about genetically superior people" begs the questions "genes can make people superior", "superior people can exist", and "superior is defined".
Instead of "begs the question" you should have said "omits the question" or "leaves undefined".
Hint: before using an acronym, spell it out. Example: General Motors (GM) today said blah blah blah. Just last year, GM blah blah blah.
Must-not-watch TV!
"Please choose the form of your destructor"....turns out its a 7 foot muscular brad Pitt look-a-like who plays the acoustic guitar and sings like Dave Matthews...he charms all our woman away into the desert and we never see them again...we should have seen this coming
We had tons of bioethic forums in the high school I went to, so this is a topic I've been interested in for a little while...
What I'm most concerned about is what this is going to do to the rest of society. What are we going to do when all men are not created equal? Will we as a society develop an inherent inferiority complex (as opposed to the small personal ones that we develop through time)?
I think these are more important questions to ask rather than the hypothetical rights of GM humans. Its highly doubtful that there will be any legislature against such people to classify them as "non-humans"(i.e. deprived of the rights given to them by the law). If a person more attractive, smarter, and more athletic than you is "non-human" than what does that make you?
A lot of people have been commenting here about similarities between the GM issues described in the article and the good old X-Men. How about a Slashdot interview with the guy who has probably thought more about these issues than anybody else outside academia over the last 25 or so years ... veteran X-Men writer Chris Claremont? Or if not Claremont, maybe Grant Morrison. I think either would have some real insights here.
I mean sure, a big chunk of the comic stories are standard superhero fare, but especially in Claremont's original run on X-Men these themes were returned to again and again. And again. And again....
The current state of affairs is exactly that, a situation where genetic modification technology is so crude that animals like Dolly, when they are viable at all, largely have various genetic defects associated with them.
Still we have scientists filled with hubris rushing to produce almost certainly defective clones. We can't even get Democrat/Republican mainstream agreement that birthing so many defective humans in experiments is just wrong. They're bickering over the lost economic opportunity of therapeutic cloning.
There may come a day when we can quickly and without error make clones or gene modifications. At that point we can get into whether human souls need to be carried around in a stock, biological chassis assembled the old fashioned way. We're just not there yet and we need to stop our current crop of frankensteins from creating armies of humans doomed to painful genetic diseases and early death.
I was thinking about this once - consider:
1) The body modification crowd - the carbon units running around with bolts/pins/rings through every body part they can pierce. In the extreme, there are folks like the snake man and the cat man, who are getting surgery to look like, well, a snake-man and a cat-man (dude)!
2) The furry crowd - folks who fantasize about being anthropomorphic animals.
Now enter GM. Given a sufficent level of understanding of genetics, what is to prevent somebody from modifying themselves to be an antropomorphic wolf or whatnot?
Now consider the other side of the coin - there will be folks who tweak their pets - at first to cure things like hip displascia, but also to make the animal a better companion (we've been doing this for millenia - consider recent studies that show that dogs are better at reading human body language than wolves, even when the wolf was raised from a puppy by humans).
Now consider some of the ludicrous laws that used to exist in places like South Africa - determining who is "white" and who is "black" by ancestry.
We might very well end up with a situation in which two individuals, indistinguishable by inspection, are accorded different rights, because one is a anthropomorphic wolf (a wolf made to look human) and one is a lupopomorphic man (a man made to look like a wolf).
Imagine the legal mess that will be!
www.eFax.com are spammers
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Hey, genes are inherited. Some of the GM people will fail and become poor. Some of the children of GM people will become or marry poor and unsuccessful people. So some of the poor people will be GM. And being GM for athletics doesn't mean one will be any more successful in that nor in school -- particularly if other GM are your competitors.
Okay, maybe if we start playing around with GM we'll have some successes and some failures. Nature has been doing this, slowly, for thousands of generations. The successes flourish and the failures don't. I think we all agree that this scheme has worked well in the past and we are better, overall, than our ancestors. We are at the highest point on the graph - the highest point so far, that is.
So if we start with GM, maybe the graph will take a little dip. Has the human species ever done anything right the first time? No. We probably will make some mistakes at first, but in time we'll figure it out and the graph will go much higher, much faster than if we let nature take its course.Supposedly, the Sun will explode in a few billion years and anyone still living on this planet will be toast. We as a species owe it to ourselves and our descendents to use whatever means necessary to figure out how to be elsewhere when the big day arrives. If that means GM-ing humans to withstand space travel, so be it. If it requires some GM assisted IQ to figure out propulsion systems, I'm all for it.
Is a few billion years enough time for nature to save us? I doubt it. Would we be able to fly if we waited for nature to give us wings?If we never take risks, we forfeit the rewards.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
I dont think GM is bad. But, there are some questions that would need to be answered.
Will it be freely available to all? I think this is the biggest issue right here. Might as well "uplift" (sorry Mr. Brin) society as a whole, not just those that can afford to pay for it. Otherwise you have a "norm" underclass which, well, wouldn't be a good thing.
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Admittedly I'm not an expert on the whole genetic modification/engineering thing. But I do know that much of the promist of these technologies is in the treating of diseases we haven't had the ability to tackle before. It doesn't seem right to me to discriminate against a person, or a persons grandchild because they have undergone genetic therapy to treat themselves for a very observable medical condition. Does this open a can of worms? Certainly. Now you have to decide some clear criteria for disease. Who's to say that cancer is a disease but stupidity isn't? Who's to say that we should genetically treat schizophrenia but not ADD? But whatever decisions are made should we discriminate against those who were modified for whatever reason? I think only if you also concede that nature is more important than nurture...
Remember the case where a farmer planted genetically alter crops and they cross pollunated with another farmers crops? Well the company sued the second farmer for growing their genetically altered crops without buying them even though he didnt really have control of that situation.
Now, can the same thing happen to a human being? You pay a company to genetically modify your child, can they make him pay every time he/she has a child? Makes you think...
-Foxxz
One of the things I love is how people always just assume that a GM line of humans is going to band together and conquer the world. People are people, regardless of their genes -- sure, if homo superior comes along, some of them will advocate wiping out all us homo sapiens, but like any emotional/political issue, there will be at least one other side to it -- the group that believes in peaceful co-existence.
Of course, their belief structures are going to be influenced by how we treat them, so maybe it would be best for us to just be nice and stop being dickheads.
Of course, how can you tell for certain that a human is GM'ed? You can't. If I were to go out and get gene therapy that gave me Lance Armstrong's lactate threshhold, VO2 Max, etc., no one would be able to tell the difference, because those genes already exist in the human baseline.
This is a lot of hand-wringing and pointless worrying. Yes, the applecart is going to be upset, but in the end, life will keep going the way it's been going for the last 2000 years. Nothing much changes except lines on the map and the faces of the people in power.
blog |
Okay, so I don't know any, but gosh darnit, I'll fight to the death for their rights! But don't you think it's going a little too far to classify these people as superhuman? I mean, if they were, would I have just had to pay $500 to get my car fixed this weekend? Honestly!
(Hooray acronym clash!)
At least one form of GM food was formed by splicing bacterial genes into corn (bacteria, despite what you may have been taught in high school, are NOT considered plants). The corn had genes from Bacillus thueringensis spliced into it, to make it toxic to insect larvae such as corn borers. A later study showed that pollen from such corn, when dusted on milkweed leaves, was toxic to monarch butterfly larvae (note that it is not known whether corn pollen would migrate to milkweed plants in sufficient quantities in a natural setting to harm butterfly larvae).
Does this mean that all GM food is bad? No. But it does mean that caution is warranted. And don't believe everything you see on Showtime.
Sean
Yes, and War is the world's only hygiene. That's fascism. cfr: Marinetti
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
Gattaca was actually pretty close. First of all, the first so called genetic alterations from the natural reproductive process is going to be genetic selection. Genetic selection is undetectable, and simply involves choosing the a fertilized egg with the best 'fitness' from a group fertilized eggs. We have the technology to do this now, and do it some limited cases. We could, however, do it on a large scale in the near future using genetic testing, maximizing probabilities for height, weight, susceptability to many diseases, even personality, etc.
The first GM of humans has already begun. It isn't going to be so easy for the olympic committee to tell what has happened and why. Somatic genetic modification is undergoing trials (with some great successes and great failures) where a gene is added to the somatic genome of the host/individual. This is generally referred to as gene therapy. Genetic therapy has the potential to treat a wide variety of diseases both inherited, somatic (cancer), and environmental.
-Sean
Male only procreation is much hotter.
a little off topic, but the other day i heard that 4 times more "Organic" produce is consumed in France than is reportedly grown - lol
Imagine how a politician would fare if it became known she'd been tweaked in utero.
GM Humans would be easy to spot...just look for people with four asses.
1) farmer in rich land makes more food than he can eat, wastes rest of food. Farmer in poor country grows tobacco to pay off big debt. GM food not free - GM food sold under licence. licence means pay big money to grow GM food. GM food not grown by troubled farmer. GM Food grown by rich western farmer. troubled farmer chews tobcacco, eats coffee beans and shoots himself.
2) if nation which used to pay off debt with "organic" crops accepts gm food it can not sell "organic" crops anymore, due to stupid people who have silly rules on what is "organic". grind up GM grains so they cannot be put in soil and grow. this takes time and people starve. if food aid was "organic" then there would be no delay. who says what is organic? rich western people with too much food.
It's not about GM. It's about politics. ugly politics at that. Rich western nations could refuse to eat food that has been handled by bare human hands tomorrow due to "health reasons" and force the third world to divert cotton away from needed clothes and into stupid little white gloves to handle the food. They'll do that to live.
The poster you were arguing with is not upset that someone said that gm food is better because it grows faster and better when it doesn't. the poster is upset because the inventor is reported to have claimed that GM food is in some way humanitarian, when the "organic" food lobby, the IMF and the other pressure groups have instead used it as a weapon against the third world.
Come to africa and find out what it's like. I promise you won't regret it.
Well, we will just have to get externally mounted copper heatsinks with a thermostat controlled fan. Just watch what happens when we mix the insanity of fashion with the insanity of overclocking/cooling fetishists.
The first arguement is circular reasoning. First, you are assuming improving our faults will result in a monoculture. This will not happen. If I am having a boy, I may not want something changed on him entirely different than someone else. Making my child's hair a different color will not result in a monoculture whatsoever.
Lack of knowledge? The very improvements we make may allow for better reasoning, thinking, and memorization.
Ethics? Too much empahasis is put on poor judgements regarding ethics. Why is GM'ing unethical? Is getting rid of cancer in people through GM unethical? I would say it would be unethical to NOT use this technology.
This whole post is a troll...
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
How is unnatural selection different from direct genetic manipulation? We have been selectively breeding ourselves and our livestock for thousands of years to produce results we deem desirable. How is this not considered genetic engineering? How is it better to leave human evolution to chance? It seems that it is a few thousand years too late to put this cat back in the bag.
If people are concerned that smarter, healthier and stronger people will have an advantage, then they should get smarter, healthier and stronger.
And they should pay more attention to civil rights, so that legal restraints are not watered down with every election. So, someday when inevitably someone is better than you in some tangible way, that you have no less potential to improve your own life.
Human potential must not be limited by the fear of others, Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness includes changing my genome for my betterment and the betterment of my children. I have no right, no right to prevent you from living your life to it's potential either, genetically enhanced or not.
The last thing that we need are standards of mediocrity to establish norms by which we can not exceed.
C'mon, this is obviously just a publicity stunt for the upcoming release of X2...
Wow. Check out the polls on www.humans.com - interesting..
Not for much longer, if you believe Cloneaid's 2 employees and the Raelians Cult: "Boisselier said the group's next endeavor is to construct the ''Babytron,'' an artificial womb."Suckers Lining Up For The "New Religion" Reading the article, I am amazed that people still put superstition over science.
DNA based encryption with software developed
Kaaahhhhnnn!! :o: braedan51 :o:
No, that is not at all what was stating. Perhaps if you had actually taken time to think about the comments you would have seen that the posting merely pointed out that some of our so called good social practices are more likely to be detrimental to our species in the long run.
War is not good. In fact war is a blind persuit of power. Power is a bad thing when placed in the hands of any one or group, even the well intentioned.
This reminded me of the Androsynth from Star Control.
In the manual for Star Control II (which fleshes out the history from the first game), some car salesman made himself as a televangelist and fought to declare clones sub-human, call them "Androsynth."
I don't mind the clones making those weird-ass transforming ships - the Chmmr ships kick butt in the melee mode.
What if what you think is a bad gene is really a good gene?
"Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so." -Shakespeare
As far as making genetic changes to the human body, what and to what degree we alter our DNA is not a matter of "good" or "evil," or "good" or "bad," but rather, are we as intelligent as we think we are? The case you gave creates two mutually exclusive outcomes; the first is to cure sickle cell anemia, but at the risk of becoming more susceptible to malaria; the second vice-versa.
Good? Bad? It's neither; just a choice of whether or not we choose to intervene in nature's course.
I'll probably still be having a splitting headache over the fact that I "engineered" humans. Sigh....
Reality is what we taste, smell, see, hear and touch yet we cannot comprehend it...only approximate it.
Remember that gene therapy is somatic genetic modification. It is, in fact, a method to alter someones genetic code to improve them. Are you against that?
/. had a story on the 'curing' of a 'bubble boy' using gene therapy. Unfortunately, two of the patients developed leukemia.
For the record
-Sean
Only if they first discover and activate the gene responsible for 'good' (versus evil) behavior can such 'human engineering' be allowed. Otherwise, the consequences to me are quite obvious and horrid. In our world, we are struggling to narrow the gap between those in poverty to those that are prodigiously wealthy. By offering something that will almost exclusively be catered to the already wealthy and powerful, we would ensure that the gap only widens faster.
Let's suppose the following. You are given a new computer that runs an OS that doesn't resemble anything you've ever seen. But it's OS, so it comes with the source code, but it's all written in machine code. BTW, there is no documentation. Assuming that after many years of intense study, you are able to decipher a few hundred lines (out of millions) of code.
Now, let me ask you, how smart would it be to tinker with the source code under these circumstances? While you might eventually figure out a way to add a customization or 2, would you know if or exactly how these changes would affect the operation of every other function? Of course not.
We're doing the same thing with genetic "improvements". Truth be told, by taking out the gene in tomatoes that cause them to ripen naturally, we have substituted a gene from another species to keep them firmer longer. Are we 100% positive that the gene we removed ONLY affected ripening speed? Do we know what other effects the newly-introduced gene will have on tomatoes? What about the animals (humans included) that eat the tomatoes? Did that gene cause certain nutrients to be present that will now be absent? If so, how will that affect us in the long run? What do we really know about the source code we're modifying?
Seriously, folks, to think that we know enough to "improve" what we barely understand is the epitome of arrogance and the height of stupidity. Shoot, we can hardly make software that is bug-free and totally secure. And computers aren't nearly as complicated as human beings, or even tomatoes for that matter. Genitically modifying life forms to give them "desirable" traits is just begging to cause an environmental kernel panic.
Instead of taking our time and using EXTREME caution, we have companies cranking out modification after modification, solely for money. They, like Micro$oft, don't care if what they produce is buggy and vulnerable. It's all about the Benjamins...
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Just because you wouldn't be able to participate, doesn't mean that the rest of us wouldn't get busier to make up for you!
Rights? Look here Coppertop, you got no rights, get back in the tube.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Now to talk about genetically superior people, begs the question of exactly what superior means. Because the reaction of the first, unmodified group when it has to deal with the second, modified group will depend largely on this.
...
(Transhumanists? WTF? You (and others) gotta lay off the sci-fi) Anyways as I mentioned before, not all genetic modification is inheritable. Gene therapy is one example in clinical trials, right now. I think people in practice have no problem differentiating 'good' changes from 'bad' changes. I don't think anyone has a problem with curing terminal diseases with GM. I'm willing to bet that people will be much more supportive of GM for themselves and others when it cures/treats some problem they have or will have. Like aging
-Sean
Case modding? Head modding? Skull modding? Imagine the little plexiglass windows in peoples heads. Cold cathode wrapped around a throbbing brain. Mmmmmmmmmmmm!
A molecular biologist friend of mine asked me for help about 2 years ago for help in building a "mouse dynamometer". They wanted to measure the effects of manipulating the genetic makeup of adult mice hearts, in effect turning regular couch potato mice into Olympic grade athlete mice.
He indicated that, currently, they were using mechanical means to insert DNA into the adult mice heart muscles, but his work was exploring viral means of delivery for such genes. He and his lab mates are trying to develop therapeutic treatments for cardiac disease, not super athletes, but we did discuss some of the implications for the future of their work and human athletics.
The heart and other muscles are actually made up of various similar forms of proteins that do the actual work. Athletes often refer to fast or slow-twitch muscles and work hard to build the optimal ratios for competition. Each muscle has different capabilities based on the ratios; fast and powerful, or slow and efficient. The reality of muscle is a bit more complex than two types, but to make the point, we humans have all the forms, but the differing ratios in our muscles are principally determined by our genetic makeup. This ultimately determines who really has the capacity to win at the elite levels, where athletes train to their physical limits.
In the not so distant future, even if you were not born with the "best" genes, you might be able to purchase them as an adult!
Their lab was able to successfully manipulate adult mice, increasing their hearts capacity for work. Note that only specific organs were modified. The rest of their DNA remains intact. In addition, their genetic manipulation only modifies the expression of existing genes. It may be impossible to tell in the future if someone had his organs genetically modified to perform above the levels his inherited genes allowed, without having before and after tissue samples of all organs and muscles.
The first thing that popped into my mind was that "Talking heads cannot be trusted to comment on Genetic Engineering. I mean, the lack of a torso is a dead giveaway...right?"
I mean...they shouldn't even try to participate in this discussion...right? After all, you should quit while you're a-head...
(ugh)
Then I browsed through the comments and got really depressed.
Oh, well...It's just Slashdot.
Question: What if the "pre-humans" in 2001: A Space Odyssey" watched their comrade pick up the bone, looked at each other, nodded, then tore the poor bastard to shreds...? The movie would have been quite a bit shorter...
if we just killed all the tards and cripples at birth... natrual selection is a bitch
If any of these GM traits are dominant, eventually the whole population will get the mods for free from their parents, meaning that (a) the companies doing them need to make all the money they want up front, and (b) eventually NO ONE will be eligible to compete in the Olympics.
Think about it.
First, at this point, it's at least debatable whether GM organisms are actually superior to natural organisms, at least in the long run. Second, maybe I've just seen movies like Blade Runner too often (granted, not really GM) so I'm jaded...but would the large effect of GM actually be to enhance the elite? Of course you have the millionaires who want to raise their children's SATs, but if cheap enough, wouldn't GM be used on a broader scale to create more drudges--e.g. people who will work 18 hours a day for a corp and not complain, soldiers who never experience panic, etc? There is more power to any country which raises the capacity of the lower brackets, than raises the capacity of the higher. (Not a Socialist commentary at all...just that productivity is better achieved at larger scales...having a GM Kennedy clan wouldn't really do crap in the long run.)
SARS/AIDS/WAR
Here's an article that talks about the unintended negative effects of modern conveniences that have caused/are causing/could cause some serious problems. Can we assume that GMO-ing won't similarly cause unintended major problems?
f lon-usat_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2003-04-23-te
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
nt
For thousands of years, the whole point of human existence was to perpetuate and improve both quality and quantity of life. Says who? I am serious. Your basic assumption is flawed. There is no real evidence of this. Regardless of that, many MANY MANY people would disagree with your asssumption, for many different reasons. I myself would take issue with the idea that boosting quantity of life is even remotely positively connected to improving quality. It seems to me that history has shown it to be the opposite, that an increase in population generally leads to a decrease in quality of life. We can't have both. Not everyone is a Progress Junkie like you, and many of us don't trust people that are to make ethical decisions for everyone else. You obviously don't have the perspective or historical background to speak with authority on issues like this. I am not suggesting you can't say what you want to (please do!), but you have to understand that the rest of us are being perfectly sensible in ignoring your advice. (I am also not suggesting that I am the authority on these subjects, but I am not suggesting that everyone should go along with what I believe, either.)
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
How about improving on ourselves? ... what if we could modify adults with new genes? Would that be ok?
I guess that depends on wether the changes are inherited to our children.
If so, it is experimentation on the not-yet-born, and the complications I raised (and others) apply.
If not, than this is like ordinary therapy, and the usual ethics (Helsinki Comitee) should apply.
Personally, I'm all for it. I *want* to modify myself, especially since any modifications to me as an adult could be undone if I changed my mind later.
This is a dangerous assumption to make. There is a reason for conservatism in medicine; there is no "magic undo", yet.
Working for necessity's mother.
What many are saying is that we should be careful about how closely we're pruning our collective genetic tree. How much genetic diversity do we want to give up for health when the oddball mutations may be what "saves" us from the next unknown diseasea. Cystic fibrosis is indeed a horrible disease and way to die, but it may have been selected for a thousand years ago as a way to (temporarily) survive other more rapid ways of dying (i.e. cholera). The same can be said for malaria and sickle cell anemia.
I say we make it illegal to have two people that are gifted in the same area procreate. Say a Pro-Football player and a female track star. Nope, sorry, their kids would be too advantaged in athletics. So in that same line, I should find a beautiful swimsuit model, as of course we need just "average looking" people. I'm willing to do this for the equality of our society.
This would all change it greatly. Think about it, we would be modifying humans to be Smarter, be stronger and perhaps even have different personalities.
This completely questions our whole perspecive on life for humans, it makes you question if we are really all just "things", it makes you question if you have a soul or a spirit. No spirit? Then is there a heaven? Is there hell? Is there nirvana? Are there gods?
This might bring about havoc, people will start questioning why they are being "good" people when they start to think that there's no pushment in being "bad" and you'll have people hurting others to help themselves and out of control.
This sort of GM I think should only be used when we've reached a point when we've learnt more about our existence.
Actually, we GM people already. So no, it isn't impossible.
-Sean
Monsanto has admitted, on the record, that they know their GM products have an estimated 30-year life cycle before they're obsolete. In this subject, obsolete means, for example, that pests have developed resistance to the pesticides grown into the New Leaf Potato (TM).*
/. in general of the value of the scientific method. "But you're arguing against progress!" No - I'm arguing that as much work, if not more, should go into studying the effects of these "advances" as went into producing them.
Serving up Monsanto products to third-world farmers is akin to filling our depressed inner cities with paycheck advance loan companies. The farmers become dependent, but their problems have not been solved. If anything, we've just allowed Monsanto to apply a backhoe to a hole that those farmers and their (necessarily) short-term outlook couldn't dig any deeper on their own.
I won't even bother trying to convince
The real world of cause and effect is not limited to 1-to-1 relations... and that is one of the real bases of what used to be the organic movement. "Conventional farming" has only been around within the last few (relative) years. Before that, everyone was organic. In reality, we have very little data on the effects of industrial food production techniques. While some effects are quick and obvious, others take many years for us to notice.
Hope you have enjoyed this note from the field,
-j
* Addressing a post a few branches up: just because it's organic doesn't mean it's not poison. Nearly all pesticides (all that I know of) are neurotoxins. There are a few effective "organic" - meaning considered organic by FDA and others - pesticides. It's organic, ie naturally occurring, but does that make it safe to eat? No more so than arsenic. Just because "the only genes spliced in are other plant genes" does not make those genes and the plant they form safe for you to eat.
[|]
Genetic Engineering:
"GE, we bring good things to life!"
*rimshot*
I hadda do the joke. Don't ban me from Slashdot!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Modifying the germline to "enhance" humanity will engender the destruction of the world. As a citizen of the United States, I can tell you what happens when "wealth" is either inherited or expensive (i.e. you need significant capital/credit to become truly rich). A small upperclass will control the majority of the social goods (money, political influence, power, etc.), leaving a much larger underclass behind.
Since GM will cost $, the usual suspects will become the superhumans. Potential superhumans will argue that they will be "benevolent" and have the "best interests of all humanity" in mind. Potential (sub)humans will argue that we shouldn't discriminate and that we are "all human beings."
The former view, that of the "benevolent superhuman," will be widespread among the upperclass. One or two cases of ultra-malevolence, however, will be enough to make the latter view ("we are all humans") unpopular among the underclass.
Perhaps some of the underclass, quite intelligent but not superhuman, would decide to engage in "preemptive warfare" against the genetically modified. Near-future GM would not make someone a clear threat (i.e. an "X-Man"), but should we trust Fox News to make this clear? Hysteria, pogroms, and witchhunts are far more likely than rational debate.
The GM upperclass would feel the need to defend itself... Given the "war on terrorism," draw your own conclusions. I graduated from Princeton, so you need not respond that I'm being anti-elitist and technophobic. The problem of GM is not the advantage it bestows upon the modified (small advantages like a bit more IQ, a little more height), but the way GM is perceived by those who won't have access to it.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
now that would be sweet!
you first
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
Amen to that!
The previous sig has been removed due to
Being a transhumanist myself I have to object to your characterization of us. For your information, I do have a girlfriend, and I wouldn't say that I have any more trouble with females than average.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
We fear the unknown.
The scope of genetic manipulation is well beyond the common or even uncommon comprehension, we have decades of literature which point to possibility of abominations when man attempts to deal himself a new hand in the natural order poker game. But what do we really know? At this point we can identify pieces much like the engine of a car, we know what something may do but do we understand it's true scope? Imagine that limited knowledge applied to something as simple as an internal combustion engine, many things would seem unnecessary and therefore we would remove them and in the scope of the engine alone perhaps we would be correct in doing so, thus we would remove air conditioning, heating, and other 'niceties'. That is where in the essence we stand, knowing little more than a mechanic with some amount of theory.
Genetic engineering is the future, and perhaps it will be a dark future. Turning the gulf between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' into a chasm akin to the Grand Canyon. This is always a possibility however other possibilities exist, the elimination of diseases which are encoded into our very existance. Arguments will abound in all arenas, but science must and should go forward. It is important now more than ever that science go forward, in a responsible manner. The creation of law which restricts scientific progress is an abomination in and of itself.
Bastion
Remember that gene therapy is somatic genetic modification. It is, in fact, a method to alter someones genetic code to improve them. Are you against that?
Asking "are you against GM ?" is like asking "are you always for or against medical treatments?", it is too wide a question.
This depends on the medical situation, other ethical situations, etc.
These bubble-boys had a severe, life threatening situation. Of course, the ethical considerations in their case are different than for normal people.
I am not alway pro or con GM, but I am pro-ethics, and against running away from decisions because they are tough on one side, or running towards decisions, neglecting consequences to self and society, because they are sexy to researchers on the other side.
Working for necessity's mother.
I don't know about GM people, but an obvious solution to doping in the Olympics is to hold a parallel competition where contestants are allowed to use any drugs they like without censure.
It's already happening (although not always), smart chicks dig smart guys, no smart guy could maintain a succesful relationship with a dumb chick, smart people breed with smart people, same applies to fit athletic people, and to a limited extent a mix also happens, it's socio-intellectuallly induced evolution..... And sadly class does sometimes come into this, but the people who have 2 smart parents and luck out as good looking (even if the parents aren't wealthy) will most probably wind up wealthy...... The dumb unattractive kid will probably not succeed in life, it's unfair but it's just life
Tayloring? You are going to do a binomial expansion and take the first order terms of a human?
DJ
I'm in the middle of reading Francis Fukuyama's Our PostHuman Future which I bought a week ago. It deals with exactly this subject, how biotechnology will affect our fundamental human nature and what the implications of this might be for politics. (Politics seems a lesser issue in some ways to me than the possible changes to human nature. Imagine "humans" bred and conditioned specifically to serve perfectly a dictator.)
The obvious "solution" to the problem of regular people feeling jealous or betrayed about a wealthy class that breeds itself into a position of superiority is to breed the regular people (or to drug them) into not feeling so jealous or betrayed.
As our understanding of human behavior improves, this may be introduced gradually.
IMHO, it has already started in some ways. I see most of my fellow citizens letting their minds be sotted with various drugs (alcohol, chief among them) and watching television constantly to become indoctrinated into some kind of culture based on raw emotions, sex, violence, and whatever other levers and buttons their minds expose to the world.
Our society's experience up to this point with self medication and with setting up hierarchies to govern society has been fraught with all kinds of problems. If we haven't been able to deal with those problems effectively, then it's probable we won't deal very well with the power of self-modification on the scale that future biotechnology permits.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I don't think that it is very logical to fight for the rights of someone who does not exist yet.
It sounds to me like your horror future is very much like the world seen in the future of Wells' The Time Machine.
So, are you eloi or morlock? Personally, I agree with you, and would never want to see a world in which such a question has even the possiblity of existing.
The previous sig has been removed due to
The problem with GM people is cost. It's going to cost a lot of money to do it, so who'll get the benefits and become the best scientists, workers and athletes? The wealthy. Then the poorer people will just get poorer and you get people that are only suited for janitorial type jobs. IT's not good.
If GM people becomes envogue, it must be funded in a way that it becomes free from everyone, and equal across the board!
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
Lets take a step back a do a reality check.
First, some basic genetics. It rare for a single gene (protein) to have a single function, and its rare for a given trait, say height or intelligence, to be governed by a single gene.
Also consider that we all know there are trade-offs and optimizations that have to take place in engineering, including genetic engineering.
So let's say you find a gene where one form predisposes the person to have a higher intelligence (say a more sensitive neurotransmitter receptor). So you put that form into a bunch of test babies and see what happens.
Maybe nothing happens.
Maybe they have an IQ that's 20 points higher on average than the general population.
Maybe the also show an increased incidence of manic depression, or epilepsy, or....
Back to the drawing board, lets try again. We found a gene we can modify to give a child super-strength.
Cool!
Funny how so many of them are completely debilitated by pulled or torn ligaments and tendons, and the occasional broken bone that couldn't handle the extra stess imposed by the super-muscles.
So much for super strength, they end up super cripples.
I'm trying to make a couple points here. First, it will take several generations just to test any given genetic manipulation, more to figure out how the requisite panel of genes will have to be modified to give an overall superior human.
Second, you can't just modify one gene and make an overall better human. There are trade-offs and unexpected consequences. Just because you have the parts manual doesn't mean you know how things work.
The one area where genetic manipulation can pretty much be guaranteed to be productive is in curing genetic diseases, where we know the gene, and we can change it back to "normal".
As for "Frankenbabies", any of you want to volunteer your kids for testing?
"There Is No Gene For The Human Spirit." - Gattaca
Are they banning all people who drive Chevrolets, Buicks, Fords and Cadillacs, or just the people who build them?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
If you want to read a good SF treatment of the subject, check out "The Octagonal Raven" (title could be wrong?) by L. E. Modesitte.
In my opinion, this is one of his best works.
You'll notice the lack of bioengineered animals running around the lab.
A super smart/strong mouse isn't something the microbiology scene can whip up just yet, and they fry mice like popcorn.
Doing the same thing with humans is a ways off and immeasurably more difficult as you can't flip baby humans over and chop out their spinal cord on a whim to check out your handiwork.
To be accurate/pedantic, that's the name given to it by the International Paralympic Committee, who run it. It's now linked to the Olympic games, so you can't have one without the other. And the origins are as a sports competition for WWII veterans with spinal injuries, so physical disability/prosthetics have always been included, and the other categories were added later. However, the intellectually disabled athletic categories have been thrown into some doubt by the Spanish cheating cheating (ten of the 12 strong basketball team weren't actually disabled in any way), so they won't be included unless there is some way to make sure the athletes are genuine.
First, you are assuming improving our faults will result in a monoculture
...) to interact with society in a positive manner.
...
I am not assuming, but projecting: If a certain gene-combination improves inteligence (of whatever metric used at the time...) then I find it highly unlikely that most (responsible, caring) parents will not wish for their child to have that combination; the result, genetically wize, will be a monoculture in terms of that gene combination.
Lack of knowledge? The very improvements we make may allow for better reasoning, thinking, and memorization.
At a potential horrible price for the "failed experiments". It is an unwize investor who looks only at the projected return, neglecting the costs and ethics.
Again, as I said in other posts, I am not all pro or con GM, but I am pro ethics. It is a system which enables the decision-makers (Doctors, Scientists, Engineers
Ethics? Too much empahasis is put on poor judgements regarding ethics.
Being pro ethics does not necessitate being pro poor judgements
Why is GM'ing unethical? Is getting rid of cancer in people through GM unethical? I would say it would be unethical to NOT use this technology.
Read my other posts regarding this and regular medical treatments. The world, alas, is not black and white.
This whole post is a troll...
My post held a subset of my opinions, in response to a parent-post's chalenge. I do believe it was neither OT, nor exceptionally inflamatory, considering the volatile subject of the discussion. Let every reader make his own opinion.
Working for necessity's mother.
Of course, there will be the cheaper versions.
"Stapling machine, Mrs. Zambesi!"
I may be wrong, but I'm never uncertain.
Ivy League schools already have quotas for certain groups of people who happen to be genetically disadvantaged... There's a case before the Supreme Court right now.
The whole entire motivation behind genetic modification of humans is self-improvement (eternal youth first and foremost). The drive behind modern medicine is exactly the same, which is why they will eventually be part of the same basic disipline- notice how much more acceptable medical justifications are in this argument. The perversion of the idea of making oneself immortal is a form of compromise in that we acknowledge that the technology is not there today, nor will it be possible all at once (at our current rate of progress), so we want the incremental benefits bestowed upon our offspring (the partial genetic remnants of ouselves). Once we settled on the idea that we will not directly benefit from genetic modification our focus changed from merely fix what is broken (heal disease and stop aging) to something more creative, enhancements to the potential offspring (uber-humans) and making the offspring more genetically like ourselves (cloning). The reason we are all upset about this topic is that we can not reap the benefits ourselves. If we could, we would; I dare you to see through the illusions we feed ourselves and accept the fact that we are just jealous and fearful of those who will benefit from this technology. Then, you could stop whining and crying and work to advance this technology to the level that it will be applicable to us. Or you can use your creative juices to pretty lie to deceive yourself with.
It's bizarre that it would be the most educated people would be making the first effort to outcast GM people in our 21st century world.
Well, let me see. We're using up all the resources, we've wiped out most of the fisheries, we're refusing to do anything about global warming until it is conclusively proven to be our fault, in which case it would be too late, we're racking up huge debts they'll have to pay for... Are ethical obligations only something scientists have to consider?
Hygiene implies a judgment about cleanliness and value. He made no such judgment, he simply stated that we mitigate the effects of the environment on ourselves and thus we retard evolution. Whether this is good, bad, or neither is an entirely seperate issue.
Even if it were bad, you would have to show that wars have an effect on selection. Calling that "hygiene" would be fascist because it implies it's okay to commit genocide as a means of increasing your selection advantage, I think we can all agree.
If this were 20 years ago nerds would be sitting in their tower asking, "Would I be killing the LISP-programmed artificial entity walking around the virtual world if I power cycled?"
Thinking ahead, if we could alter our genetic code(ie. create enhanced humans) really we would only be starting back up the process we stopped. The way I see it, through society humans have slowly stopped natural selection from occuring within our own population. Of course natural selection still goes on. Some of us humans are more successful at getting offspring. They are the ones natural selection is "selecting" as individuals. On population level it's more complex, as there aren't any really isolated human populations left (I mean isolated for several generatons). But IANAB.
Which means we don't have to worry about GE turning humans into a monoculture.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
and, most importantly, the ethics of performing experiments in humans ? (after all, there can be no more extreme experiment than tayloring an organism)
On whom else could we perform these experiments? Our fellow Animals, Plants, and Bacteria cannot give consent. We can only perform them ethically on ourselves.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
In Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon", in addition to the typical gun-toting libertarian utopia, there was a rather interesting approach to Eugenics.
Basically, instead of creating new genes, couples would go to the genetic engineer when they wanted a child, and their child would be created from the best possible combination of their genes. If the father had one gene for diabetes, and another non-diabetic gene, the non-diabetic gene would be choosen for his offspring. If the mother had one gene for flat feet, and another gene for a normal arched foot, only the arched gene would be choosen for her offspring.
Now, this is an interesting approach, and one that has several benefits going for it. First of all, you aren't introducing new genes to the germ line - you are only maximizing the genes that are there. Second, its a harder policy to criticize - Its easy to pass a law against giving people new genes, its harder to pass a law preventing a mother from giving her son Tay-Sachs disease.
Some of us humans are more successful at getting offspring
Does that mean Slashdotters will be extinct soon?
Perhaps you should sign up for a brain "enhancement". The guy who gets the most electoral college (not popular) votes gets to be the president.
till we have scientists filled with hubris rushing to produce almost certainly defective clones.
Taken as a whole, I'd say its the scientists who are the most conservative when it comes to genetic manipulation. They're the ones who understand its an experimental field and understand that experiments, even the best though-out ones, don't always work as planned -that's why we call them experiments.
I think we should concentrate on trying to maintain equal rights and stuff for non-GM people living today. I doubt the discrimination faced by GM people would be any worse then discrimination based on race and other factors in most of the world today.
And the olympics are just an orgy of crass comercialism, anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As for the Olympics, eventually that has to become an obsolete relic. History will eventually write it off as a thermometor of natural selection's greatest muscular, muscular-coordinative, and muscular-coordinative-motivational synthesis. Once robots, GMs, etc.. are marching around, the Olympics will be an improper gauge of world progress as A) nobody will care about that specific arena B) the physical achievents of the unmodified will look like a wading pool compared to what the modified will be able to do.
Philosophistry
Example 1:
Other than the obvious christian [sic] responce [sic]. The Human [sic] genetic code is not sacred, IMHO. Maybe Humans [sic] will be tweeked[sic], sorta like we tweek[sic] our computers
Example 2:
(after all, there can be no more extreme experiment than tayloring [sic] an organism)
Example 3:
As it is now, there isn't even close to enough oversite[sic].
I stopped counting after #3.
Careful there, you live in a world of single mothers and laws allowing people to drop their children off at the local fire station.
I do not support any law which allows "droping children off" anywhere.
I definately do belive parents should have obligations towards their children.
To claim that some scientist has some vague obligation to the child when even parents don't, is a little skewed.
Again, I belive one should have responsibility for one's _human_ creations.
Now, if you're saying that the scientist should be responsible for medical bills for the child should something go wrong, that would be understandable.
I think even the current ethics regarding experiments in humans go way beyond medical bills.
I value creating children as something much more binding than a medical experiment.
Working for necessity's mother.
Seems like some shrewd publicity for X2 to me. Get people arguing about genetic differences, and poof! a movie comes out about people that are genetically different from other humans. The subject is on your mind, you say, "hey, that movie might straighten this out for me", and you pay a ridiculous sum to go see it.
Or I could be full of shit.
I agree that medicine and social programs have tampered with the standard notion of natural selection. But humans should also be observed on a higher level of Darwinian selection. Instead of just looking at survival of the fittest WITHIN a species, humans have shown that it is necessary to also look at survival of the fittest OF ALL species. Without this perspective, it is easy to get lost on the question of why humans have succeeded AT ALL. We should therefore look at humans with a point of view of the community rather than the individual. Without the community, humans would never have come to dominate.
One may argue that humans are successful because they are intelligent. Intelligence goes only so far - it's the knowledge that is passed on that is more important. Otherwise, we'd have people reinventing the wheel every generation, and never get to the point of building upon that to even make a cart.
Getting back on topic: Your conclusion on the result of the Black Plague is problematic. If the survivors passed on the gene in question, then why were there so many occurrances of the Plague in the same location over the centuries? Paris just kept getting hit with it into the turn of the 20th century.
I would instead prefer to look at WHY plagues occur and what stops them from re-occurring.
Given the necessity of humans to depend on each other, the tendency is toward denser populations. Conditions within any population produces an environment conducive to any other species willing to adapt. The Black Plague is an example of a special case. It took a while for humans, in general, to adapt to this threat.
One of the 'faults' of humans was to develop cities in identical ways. In particular, I'm thinking of waste disposal - just dump your trash in the trench in the middle of the street and let the rain carry it to the river. Since so many cities had this environment, a single species of parasite can easily infect multiple cities. (NOTE: since this is a geek forum - extend this to computer viruses with everyone using one OS).
You could attack this problem in one of two ways: (a) let individual natural selection take its course or (b) adapt the cities. Until just recently, the approach was (a). Once humans began to adapt as a whole (mandate washing hands before surgery, better waste disposal, water treatment, use of quarantine, etc) then there was less of a strain on the population density of the city. Each of these activities create their own problems, but such is the game of adapting.
Diseases are not always a bad thing, in the long run they are often helpful in preserving a species.
The species would be preserved WITHOUT disease, so I fail to see how having disease helps in preserving the species. Perhaps you could argue that disease acts as a "necessary evil" to produce a "greater good", but since the disease species are inclined to adapt to immunity it's a never-ending battle.
On the topic of GM-humans, I can see using this IF AND ONLY IF human existence would cease without it, including the loss of human interdependence (without which humans could not succeed). I don't see this happening anytime soon, but this would be another way that humanity would adapt to a threat. The oddity is that the result would no longer be "human" - what is being saved is civilization.
This is not my sig.
Of course, one of the best things to have going for a species, when the Darwinian shit hits the fan, is a diverse gene pool to draw from. And, by keeping more people alive, through minor disasters, we are promoting a very diverse gene pool. So, while I agree that we have affected natural selection to some extent, really, I think, that all we have done is put ourselves in a good position, genetically, for the next disater to hit.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
No further comment needed.
Agreed.
So the question is, what can we do to advance our understanding?
Experiments. Lots of them. Some will fail, others will not. ("Many will play, few will win?" Hear that (yet again) on the radio yesterday.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Here it comes, the luddite hand-wringing and moaning over the 'ethical' issues of modifying the human genetic code. What this really boils down to is something quite simple: your neighbor, being the cowardly asshole that he is, is utterly unwilling to allow you any opportunity whatsoever to gain an advantage over him in any way shape or form, or allow your children such an advantage.
The argument against change is always one based on a malicious desire to fuck up your neighbor so that he doesn't gain a competitive edge, especially if you currently benefit in some fashion from the status quo.
Here's a thought on what to do about the whole issue: mind your own fucking business. Yep, that's right, shut the fuck up and tend to your own house. If I want to modify myself or my body that's my business and mine alone; you don't have any right at all to butt into my life and tell me that I can't do unto my body as I please. If this bothers you, well then, please just fuck off and die, eh?
It's amazing how quick people are to jump up and tell others that they can't do thing x or y, for trumped up reasons a and b. They'll spend endless hours justifying their arguments, but it really all comes down to screwing over the Jones so they can't 'one-up' you in the game of life.
Ultimately it doesn't matter what the luddites think. They're nothing more than chaff in the wind, and their pathetic whining and insane legal antics won't mean a thing in the end. Those of us who want modification will get it; those of us who want our children to be faster, stronger, and smarter will have them.
Nothing you say or do can stop that. The best you can hope for is to insulate yourself in a 21st century version of an Amish state, forever stuck in a status quo the rest of the world has no interest in emulating. If it isn't done here in America, or done in Europe, there are plenty of other nations who think the status quo just plain sucks and will be willing to try alternatives in order to destroy it. These states will be the leaders in the new century, not the whining majority of fat First World nations who wish for nothing more than to keep everything exactly as it is.
Those of us who have any brains at all will emigrate to these states, and leave the rest of you to wallow in your stagnation until you become nothing more than amusing backwaters, fit only as a tourist attraction for 'how things used to be'.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Kill 'em all, they'll have no soul anyway! :) do-wop do-wop
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
Sounds like the future has a theme feel of X-Men - 'Mutants are bad' (said in South Park tone) -
I can see a sub race of modified humans clanning together, providing their own education facility, using their advantages over the base human race for promoting good, or pomoting evil...
I wonder how much a retracting claws modification would cost me...
PG.. Law of probable dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
I am not so naive to think that GM people would not face a glass ceiling in the workforce, where it is easy to justify not promoting or not hiring someone with other reasons. However, I think if given the choice of having childhood diabetes but no glass ceiling (if I make it to adulthood) or being healthy and having to live with a glass ceiling, I'd take the latter.
However, that would be a personal choice and I would respect the rights of others to reach their own conclusions about their own situations.
Agreed.
-Sean
The current state of affairs is exactly that, a situation where genetic modification technology is so crude that animals like Dolly, when they are viable at all, largely have various genetic defects associated with them.
Still we have scientists filled with hubris rushing to produce almost certainly defective clones.
1) Which scientists, exactly, are "rushing" to produce clones? I have seen no indication of this.
2) We can't possibly perfect cloning without practicing it a lot. Unless you're advocating a clone-free world, the fact that our current cloning technology is imperfect is largely irrelevant -- of course it's imperfect, we're just learning how to do it. Our first computers sucked, too, but I didn't see anyone complaining about "scientists, filled with hubris, rushing to produce vacuum-tube-based monstrosities". You gotta start somewhere.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Okay, we develop the technology to "improve" people in utero by eliminating "genetic defects." Some of these defects are obvious but others are a matter of opinion. For example, is a short stature a genetic defect? What about red hair? Regarding intelligence, most probably think that more is better. But...there are different kinds of intelligence and we have yet to find a way to measure or quantify reliably what intelligence is, though we all recognize its absence. :) A pulitzer prize-winning author may be mathematically inept while a brilliant mathematician may be unable to chain three sentences together in a conversation.
Among all species in the natural world, evolutionary success derives from a diverse gene pool that gives the species increased ability to adapt quickly to changed circumstances. Developing GM people is likely to reduce diversity by catering to our very human tendency to want to eliminate traits that we find undesirable now but which may be essential for our very survival in the future.
They remind me of the Bene Tlielax from Dune. The babytron being the same as the tanks they used, the idea of downloading minds. This guy's read the series a few times too many I think.
You must be living in a different America then I. Anyone can become president? Unless you're black, or asian, or latino, or poor. CEO? I like your style, but your not paying attention if you believe that crap.
just coincidentally, just read last night a wonderful novellete from Nancy Kress on this very subject: a sleepless GM is "marketed" and the resulting people are far more intelligent and achievers than regular people. Very well written and with all the possible fear, hatred, support scenarios from the populace.
For those interested, you can find it in Garner Dozois' "The year's best science fiction, Ninth annual collection" 1992.
If a certain gene-combination improves inteligence (of whatever metric used at the time...) then I find it highly unlikely that most (responsible, caring) parents will not wish for their child to have that combination; the result, genetically wize, will be a monoculture in terms of that gene combination.
...) to interact with society in a positive manner.
I don't think this is a necessary conclusion at all. What parents see as desirable traits in a child will vary greatly. If I may use a couple of sterotypes for a moment to illustrate my point, while they are over-gerenerlizations, I think there is enough truth behind them to make this point.
Consider a child from Texas, what would the parents view as most desierable? What would they want little Billy to grow up to be? Probably a football quarterback, so they are going to get him traits that are benificial to that, he'll be tall, a bit broader in the sholders, athletic and have good eyesight. They probably would not care as much about logic and math skills, so may not worry about that.
Contrast this with parents from, say San Francisco. They are not going to care about a football carrer for their kid. They will probably be more interested in a kid who is capable in fine arts. So will get genes that promote artistic ability, hand eye coordination. They might not care a whole lot about math and logic skills, though possibly more than the football player's parents.
My point is, people have different ideas of what an ideal person is. This will be reflected in the choices made about their children's genetic code. Will there be some loss in diversity? Sure, I wouldn't argue that, but I don't think we would end up with a monoculture, people just don't have that much of a concensus on what a "perfect" human being is. Add to that the fact that you will never eliminate natural births (sex is just too much fun), and we should still have a good bit of diversity running around.
Again, as I said in other posts, I am not all pro or con GM, but I am pro ethics. It is a system which enables the decision-makers (Doctors, Scientists, Engineers
The problem with ethics, is that they are not very concrete. Consider for a moment what you base your ethics upon. For most people it comes down to something akin to religion, in the broadest sense. Its a set of belifs, which have no factual or logical basis, but we hold on to them, because without them, society would degenerate into a quagmire of hedonism. Thus arguing that something is unethical is really just an emotional plea, but has no logical basis. To base an argument on them, is silly, as what one person sees as ethical might not be so for another person. You can argue ethics till you are blue in the face, but it will get you nowhere, there is nothing which can prove or disprove any argument. The closest thing we can have to ethics is a stong concensus between people as to what is "right" or "wrong". In the case of GM people, there is not enough of a consensus as to what is "right" and "wrong" for it be very clear cut. For you to claim to be pro-ethics is really just a fallacious ploy to try and argue from the moral high-ground. Its an old trick, though I grant, one that still fools a lot of people.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Besides, by that time all /.ers will have 'net implants in their brains, and can actually read slashdot and, er... try to get offspring started, all at the same time!
hey. as long as I can breed w/ the GM women, I'll still consider them homo sapiens!
While not small, and not organic, at least Percy Schmeiser is an actual farmer. Unlike the professional activists -- such as convicted terrorist Jose Bove -- who masquerade as farmers, Percy does own and operate a farm. A corporate farm by definition (like most farmers today he's incorporated), and a large farm (over a thousand acres), and a farm on which he freely and happily uses synthetic chemicals and other technology. Unfortunately for Percy, according to his own neighbors and a Canadian court, he chose to steal these farming tools rather than pay for them.
... Monsanto Co. thousands of dollars because the company's genetically engineered canola plants were found growing on his field, apparently after pollen from modified plants had blown onto his property from nearby farms."
These days Percy finds little time to farm. He is jetted from various speaking engagements, activist rallies and media interviews by a well-funded, professionally orchestrated campaign designed to promote the black marketing efforts of the multi-billion dollar organic industry. A chemical using farmer, turned-in by his own neighbors and found guilty of stealing, he is now a poster-child for organic agriculture advocates and anti-technology activists.
Here's the real story you won't hear from the professional activists or Mr. Schmeiser:
In late March almost every major media outlet in Europe and North America ran misleading stories about a Canadian court battle between biotech seed company Monsanto and a Canadian farmer.
For example, the Washington Post wrote "A judge yesterday ordered a Canadian farmer to pay
The case involved a farmer who knowingly planted Monsanto's Roundup Ready (RR) canola seed -- genetically engineered to tolerate the herbicide Roundup -- in 1998 without paying for it. Farmers willingly pay a technology fee for this seed because of the crop's increased profitability. But Schmeiser never paid, and his law-abiding neighboring farmers alerted their seed company because they were concerned that he was cheating the system, which would undercut their price at the grain elevator and put them out of business.
Schmeiser claimed a variety of excuses for how this came to pass which evolved as each was proven false:
First Percy claimed that the offending seed bounced off of passing trucks. When challenged as to how these seeds neatly planted themselves in straight rows on his field, Percy's story changed.
He then claimed that pollen from "neighboring" biotech fields (which happened to be over 5 miles away - note, canola pollen rarely travels more than a few hundred feet) contaminated his crops. When confronted with the fact that testing revealed over 95% of his nearly 1,000 acres of canola were identified as containing the technology he claimed to not want - a condition for which random pollen contamination could not possibly account, Percy's story changed, again.
Finally Percy decided what had really happened was that one year he decided to "experiment" on a portion of his fields by spraying them with the weed-killer Round-up. While it's an odd idea for any farmer to spray weed-killer on his valuable crops, let's take Percy's every-changing word that this might have happened. Then he claimed that to his surprise, some of the plants survived. This indicated to him that these were the (his words) "evil" biotechnology crops he detests and never wanted on his property. So what did Percy then do with these "evil" plants which he never wanted? He then chose those, and only those, surviving technology plants from which to collect seed and then re-plant his entire farm for the next growing season. And, even though he detests the technology and the technology company Monsanto, he then purchased large-volumes of their Round-up weed killer (which farmers who want the technology would buy to spray on their technology-planted fields to control weeds).
However, major media outlets continue to mislead readers into believing that Schmeiser was prosecuted bec
Anybody remember the all-drug Olympics SNL skit? here's the American power lifter preparing to dead lift 3 tons. He sets... he lifts... OOOOOHHH!!! that's too bad! He pulled his arms right out of their sockets (blood squirts everywhere).
Like many of the classic SNL skits, this one made an important point about why drugs in sports are regulated. People had actually seriously proposed having "unlimited" Olympics. Of course arms wouldn't come out of sockets and squirt blood--that was just to make people laugh. What would happen, and what does happen when atheletes abuse drugs is that they end up with disorders that shorten their lives.
So, GM atheletes would be a lot like this. At first you'd see mild enhancements, but then when competition heated up you'd start to see poor creatures like men with IQs of 60 and lifespans of 10 years who grow to 7 feet by the age of 8 and then spend 2 years running 7 seconds in the 100 meters before they drop dead.
Now, obviously there has to be a happy medium. Just as there are approved drugs for atheletes, there should be approved GMs too. For example, you shouldn't be barred from play if you had sicle-cell genes repaired in vitro. OTOH, the product of a perfectly healthy embryo that was blended with genes from Carl Lewis should be barred.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That may be true, but it still remains to be seen.
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
regarding your monoculture comment:
I think your perspective on this is to narrow. As an example, consider the question of who is "good looking". Some males might believe that the tall, long legged, blue eyed, blonde haired female is the ultimate in female form. While others might contend that the small framed asian female, with black hair, exotic brown eyes, and flexibility is the best that there is. Neither of these perspectives has lead, or will lead to a monoculture in what the best looking female is. So, I contend that there will be no "best genes" that will ultimately rule out all others. As a matter of fact, I see this as an opportunity for people to explore diversity of unheard of proportions. It seems that there would be so many possibilities that it would be nigh on impossible to end up with a super monoculture.
Just my thoughts though.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
...because my spouse and I are GM and protected by DMCA!
Genetic enhancements can't change who someone is as a person.
:)
They can't improve your soul.
And, in the end, that's all that matters.
Well, in a fucked up society where everyone is judged by how much money they make and how good they look (in that order), it might make a difference....
Wait a second, I live in such a society... ooops...
And that was the end of humanity
If Industry says so, it's good, and if it's good for the industry, it's good for america.
Beside this, I can't wait to see GM people having to pay a licence fee to have childrens... and why not drm on human dna to be sure people don't make illegal copies of copyrighted genes by having unlicenced childrens?
"You have 12 days left to registe your child with a valid serial number"
Oh no, this is ENGINEERING not programming.
They NEVER make mistakes (see galloping gerty)
They would only produce perfect citizens.
Bad karma is still karma
This issue ties to prejudice and segregation, class distinctions, and the Haves vs. the Have-Nots. Presumably anyone who has been modified will be more capable in some way - making them the better choice for jobs, college, sports, whatever areas that improvement affects. This means you, or your children, or your grandchildren, could be denied opportunities because someone who wouldn't have appeared naturally would exist and be better in some way. These are the fears that drive bans of GM humans.
I think groups like the Olympic committee should be more hesitant about banning all GM humans outright. What if the modification was to remove a predisposition for epilepsy? The athletic ability would be completely unchanged, though the individual may not have been able to compete had the GM not taken place.
Also, I can think of less threatening forms of GM: ending male pattern baldness, removing recessive genes for diseases and deformities (like a cleft palate), completely aesthetic modifications (removal of genes for moles or excessive body hair).
So much of sci-fi is an expression of our fears of the worst that could be produced. What we should learn from Star Trek and Gattaca and others is not that we shouldn't try - but that we need to consider all the possible ramifications in advance instead of just hoping it will all work out.
There are valid issues that will come about if GM becomes feasible. First of all, the unknown quantity of side effects. Will we know until a couple generations later whether removing a recessive gene for male pattern baldness worked and whether it had any unexpected side effects - such as hairy feet? Second, the expense of such treatments. Either treatment is only available to those who can afford it (great mix to create civil unrest and revolution) or subsidized clinics would have to exist (raising our taxes). Third, there will be prejudice and irrational reactions in both directions - that is pretty much a given. There are many more issues, but at least we are considering them now rather than later.
(Random, completely OT thought - could GM be used to alter racial characteristics? Carking?)
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Folks,
... they are AhhhhArrgggg[;~>!
All beings recognizable as sentient deserve freedom and equality of civil rights. God bless US All.
I am a mundane/muggle/norm/... human. Maybe in the future there will be Special Olympics for US that will provide me the venue to win a gold meddle (intended) for being handicapped at birth.
Then again, maybe GM can fix me, make me all I can be, and prove that humans can be what they want to be. Unless (of course) a human determines for US that it is "GOD'S WILL!" that I be old, crippled, crazy, and mentally slow to better serve them and the lord-god.
Lets see; a GM Marine and a US Marine what's the difference? About 20-to-1 odds that US Marines will be the first to GM via a USA Congressionally approved covert weapons program. Maybe
Everything above this line is just entertaining BS.
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Children in an orphanges are living breathing human beings with emotions, memories and connections to the rest of the world. Especially in the first trimester, a fetus has none of those. Its just a blob of cells, and if you are comparing the loss of a blob to the loss of a child you need to check into Betty Ford and get a sense of proportion.
I agree that experiments are a good way to advance understanding. Unfortunatly, most people don't have the stomach to deal with the consequences of such research(ie. what to do with a failed GM human). Another thing is how do you determine who or what is a failure and what is not? What looks like a genetic mistake now, could be the key to our survival 100 years from now, contrastingly what looks good now may be harmful to us later. These are murky waters we are wading into.
This story and all the responses are indicative of an attitude so transparent to you guys that I doubt anyone even pays attention to this post.
... what do you think will happen?) BTW, if it isnt obvious to you by now, we cant legislate happiness or fairness into existence.
:)
Humans of industrialized societies--actually, it goes back to the beginning of totalitarian agriculture 10,000 years ago--view themselves as being in direct competition with natural process. It's a logical conclusion: whenever you try and control your food supply and nature f's up your harvest, what are you gonna think?
This is a recent development (oh... 5% of the time humans have been here with our capacity for intelligence) and we are already trying to control the processes that allowed us to even come into existence!
I reject this idea as belonging to a philosophy which tries (and fails) to put humans at the top of the evolutionary pyramid. Comparitively we are more advanced, but for us to try and control these processes is like a branch trying to control a tree... we can't do it to any successful degree. It might work right now, but it isnt sustainable.
And what of these people when we do modify them? What of the discrimination that will ensue? (For chrissake we still have our own people starving in this country... if we cant allow blacks and gays and other minorities equal opportunities...
I can already tell you. The same people who feel they have a right to use this technology will offload the consequences onto "human nature" (whatever the fuck that is). If we want to make any progress that really helps humans we _have_ to stop doing MORE of the same thing. In other words, give up trying to control things here. To attempt to control ensures our death.
I would love to hear thoughts on this
Dismantle globally, renew locally.
Right. By singling out only the GM humans you give competetive advantage to the other manufacturers' humans. I say we put the brakes on this now so that we don't give short shift to the GM humans. We may tire because the work is exhausting but should never give up the fight against those who would steer our thinking in the wrong direction. We need to stand united as one body (by Fisher), a uni-body if you will, against the tyrrany of a political engine that seeks to drive the compression of our thoughts into the mold of what they deem human at the expense of those who have no horn to honk in defiance against the relentless flow of traffic accelerating their marginalization in an effort to achieve bumper-to-bumper conformity.
Who will be the spark plug to step up and give ignition to this movement? What key individual will jump-start this cause by igniting the fuel of controversy under the collective seats of our finely upholstered leaders?
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I don't really see how you can possibly ban genetically modified athletes from the Olympic Games when pretty much every athlete currently competing is probably there due to natural genetic advantages that his counterparts do not posess. What's the difference between a genetic advantage you gained by sheer luck after being born from just the right genepool and the same genetic advantage you gained after your parents paid for it? Maybe they should start sequencing every athlete's DNA and screening out anyone who has the right genes to give them longer legs or more efficient lungs?
nonsense. this is not what we're talking about at all. you're talking about cloning. that's like making a photocopy; the original is superior.
we're talking about incremental changes, most likely introduced through a viral vector. in theory, you'd even be able to modify yourself, not just your offspring.
And whose call is it? To put it lightly, would the Slashdot community like to have Bill Gates or Hillary Rosen decide who is enhanced?
Isn't the open-source community proof that diversity helps more than the selection of specific individuals?
Recently, genetic manipulation have come to involve most of the deepest philosophical issues of human nature. Not simply the morality of "playing God" nor the sociological effect genetic enhancement may have (as alluded to by the original post), but the complete set of issues that affect humanity. As such, it must be handled with care and we need to consider the effects of genetic "enhancement" at several levels.
As biologists know, gene pool variability is essential for the survival of a species as a whole. Individual "fitness" matters relatively little in natural selection. Artificial selection for specific traits, which has been practiced for times immemorial, tends to produce "fragile" individuals because of the random nature of selective pressures. We need to account for the risk of jeopardizing the human species by making it inapt at coping with future pressures.
As a cultural anthropologist, I tend to favor cultural factors over genotype. Call me naive but I personally believe in the equal value of all human beings. Because of this, I tend to disapprove of the mindset behind some people's expectations of genetic enhancement. Especially so when it comes to the selection for desired behavioral traits as opposed to the selection against genuine diseases.
As a side note I must say that this thread is rather impressive by its quality. It does show the powers of Slashdot moderation.
Alexandre http://enkerli.wordpress.com/
'I Want to Be Your Wife'
I do not support any law which allows "droping children off" anywhere.
So, instead of having a law that allows "dropping children off" at a hospital/fire station/wherever, you'd prefer that people who decide that they are unable or unwilling to take care of a child end up "dropping children off" a bridge instead?
Just something to think about.
Krama: Exlnelect (msltoy affteced by rreesceahrs at Elgisnh uetnirisvys)
It turns out there is a good scientific answer why not. Before explaining it, I'd like to state for the record that I am pro-progress; the idea of voluntary eugenics isn't a problem for me -- except for this niggling technical detail.
The reason that allowing each individual set of parents to decide on the genetic disposition of their children is bad is that
The most famous example of Why Monocrops Are Bad is the Great Potato Famine of Ireland. Potatos had become the staple crop (i.e. what everyone ate) of Ireland, but they're not a native species. All the potatos plants of Ireland were decended from fewer than a dozen potato plants imported from Peru. Because the millions of potatos plants descended from those initial imports all shared the same extremely small genetic pool, they shared the same weeknesses. A disease came along (actually a fungus, IIRC) which none of them were resistant too. The plants all died, and then the people relying upon those plants for food started dieing -- millions of them.
And lest you think this is a function of the plants being imported, the genetic diversity of potatos in Peru has recently plunged, as the Peruvian farmers elect to raise only those few varieties which best please northern markets. Each individual farmer chooses the genetic makeup which he knows will be most competitive -- and so all farmers choose genetically similar potatos.
Now imagine that happening with humans...
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
This is coming out just shortly before the new X-Men movie? Suspicious, if you ask me.
Sure, there's a gene for life. There are thousands. They're called lethal genes. And if you don't have them, you die.
These factors have put pressure on human reproduction. Women who put off pregnancy will sometimes find it difficult to conceive. This is a distinct selective pressure - women with genes which maintain health and fertility later in life will definitely have a reproductive advantage, and their descendents will outnumber the others. As a result, the practical limit of a woman's fertil span (both on average, and the absolute limit) is being pressured to extend later in life.
This might have side benefits, such as generally longer life spans for humans in general, and a resistance to certain age-related conditions that can impair reproduction, such as certain cancers. This may or may not have an effect on male health - there is no direct pressure in this case since male effort is minimal, but most genes are common. Women on average already live longer than men on average.
This may be the most direct and pressing modern day evolutionary pressure on humans, but there are many, many more, and they may be very subtle. But they are there, so don't think human evolution has stopped because technology has changed requirements for survival.
So why is it we believe the GM people will be actually "enhanced". If someone becomes a better athlete because of some genetic engineering project there may be some unpredictable tradeoff, some defect. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe not even a quantifiable trait. The "person" may be transgenic the same way that some tomatoes are part North Atlantic Flounder. Key word here unpredictable. So far, the GM movement has been at least as much hype as achevement. Lots of money to be made though!
,with all this new stuff from the last 30 years or so, to take a mature evaluation.
Anyone who has done bioinformatic work knows how digital and cybernetic molecular biology is. Cells are concrete instantiations of metamathematical concepts. What comes to mind in discussions of genetic engineering is how little we can know about the ramifications and results of side effects. Some events are unknowable until they happen. They are absolutely not undoable.
So what is some GM fish released into the Atlantic has some economic advantage because it's so big and meaty. It makes money for the industry! It breeds with other Salmon and you get more big Salmon - good, more money! More food for people, more people needing still more food. This fish has a reather short life span as it turns out. Dies out! Genetic polution to other Salmon as well. They start to die out!
Species become extinct right! So what!
Is it possible for people "wowed" by technology to examine their presuppositions. Is it a little too soon
Why would we give human rights to a technological construct? We don't give human rights to machines, why would we give them to some other technological invention, like GM humans?
Oh never mind, we've already given human rights to corporations. Guess it's all over, then...
Technological progress is often useful but is never inevitable, by the way. I really wish everyone would stop treating all technological innovation like it's some irresistable force. Like, for example, if some invention of ours could kill us all off. We've managed to do a decent job with atomic weapons (hey, only 2 dropped so far!) so why not with other dangerous technology?
Well, I guess we have to make our mistakes first before we can learn from then.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
The last major occurance of natural selection in humans that I recall was during the Black Plague in Europe.
While selection pressures are different now than they were centuries ago, humans are as subject to natural selection as any animal.
Also, I recall reading somewhere that there is a small portion of the population that is naturally resistant to HIV, due to having a different protein on their cells. If true, it wouldn't be suprising to see the populations some of the countries suffering from very high AIDS related death rates become resistant in a few generations.
Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod. At the time, several prominent clergy protested. The thinking at the time was that if your house were struck by lightning and burned down, it was the "will of god" and the lighning rod prevented that will from being carried out. Franklin replied to this by saying: "Hail is also an "act of god" yet we put roofs over our heads to protect ourselves from it" End of argument.
... or quite a bit longer...
"Damn monkeys screwed it up again. Why oh why couldn't I have been given arms to smack them with - 1x4x9 my 1x4x9 ass!"
www.eFax.com are spammers
Oh my God, M$ GM! Friends surely would not recomend closed source license restricted Genetic Modifications. I hope M$ dies before GM becomes practical, the culture M$ would bring to the field chills the blood.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is a dangerous assumption to make. There is a reason for conservatism in medicine; there is no "magic undo", yet.
If he has the ability to alter his genome, it would seem to follow logically that he would have the ability to alter his genome. If he finds that the genotype he's given himself isn't what he wants, he has already demonstrated that he can change it. In fact, he would probably make sure that the modifications were easy to undo, say by putting them on plasmids with some sort of self destruct, since he knows that he wants to be able to revert.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Actually that is the same protein or similar to the Plague resistant protein. I saw where some researchers believe that those people whose ancestors carried immunity to the plague had increased resistance to HIV. So yes, we may soon see populations decimated by HIV only to have survivors who are in turn immune to HIV. And thus another instance of large scale natural selection in humans.
I left HIV out of my original post due to the fact that its final outcome remains to be seen, and I think it hits a little too close to home for some people to think objectively about.
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
But every imporvment will probably have some sort of hidden cost. If there was an easy and pain free way to increase intelligence, evolution would have found it already. Of course, there are some things that are much less of a disadvantage in the modern world than they were in the environment we evolved in. Nearsightedness, needing more sodium, or needing more calories would all be much worse disadvantages for our ancestors than for us.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Children! Do you not remember the classics? Heinlein did this in _Beyond This Horizon_. Nearly everyone had gene screening done to give them the best combo from their parents DNA, but some people were "control naturals"
Imagine when the first GM politician is elected President. He/She will claim superior intellect/morality due to GM. After that, only GM politicians will be able to compete for the ruling class. GM is likely to be only available to the upper class due to its cost. Therefore, at some point in the future, GM technology will create de-facto hereditary rule within the American government. I think after that point there will be a second Revolution.
How will patents affect any of this?
Let's say I am born with severe juvenile diabetes, and I am given at most 4 years to live. However, BigGenCo has a genetic therapy for juvenile diabetes, with which I am treated. I am cured and I go on to live a normal happy life.
Problem: The genetic cure is patented. However, when my cells divide, they are making copies of their genes. The patent controls the fabrication of the patented invention, which in this case is the patched gene.
Am I infringing the patent by living? What if I have children? Will I be bound by a EULA that my parents had to sign?
Unfortunatly, most people don't have the stomach to deal with the consequences of such research(ie. what to do with a failed GM human).
I bet the Chinese won't have any trouble with this. It sucks, but there it is.
What looks like a genetic mistake now, could be the key to our survival 100 years from now, contrastingly what looks good now may be harmful to us later.
But we can expect that there will be some sort of correlation between what we want now and what we will want in 100 years. At worst, it will be orthoginal, since I can't think of an argument for why they could correlate negitivly, even specific examples of good-now-bad-later might pop up randomly.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Hmmm... It seems like what our brains really need is more cache. I mean, we have lots of RAM, but we can only store 7 or so things in cache at once (the "magic number"). We could do much better even if we just increased that to 10.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
In the book, at first when they invented the life increasing technology (backups of your brain), lots of people were opposed to it and didn't take advantage of it. They tended not to outlive those that did take advantage of it. After a few years, everyone who had moral opposition to the technology was dead, and those who didn't have such moral quandries (and their kids) populated the earth.
I don't see how this situation is any different. Regardless of whether everyone genetically modifies thier children, or only some, the result is the same. In the future, everyone will be genetically modified.
"Human history is rife with aristocide and mob attacks on perceived elites."
European history, perhaps a little bit of Asian, but to my knowledge nothing like that has happened in North America.
Not that i'm arguing with your post, but just imagine for a moment with me.
:)
Tom and Sarah go to their local GM place. They want a baby. So the doctors take a sperm, they take an egg, and give the couple a menu of all the GM enhancements currently available. Now, following the general rules of capitialism, each one of the enhancements would probably be priced different. Sort of like car parts. An engine (the "smart" gene") would probably be priced higher, then say, something cosmetic, like a new paint job (different color hair/eyes/skin).
Or it could come in the form of each enhancement being sold seperately, or perhaps, "package deals". Such as cosmetic changes along with strength enhancements for example.
In any case, I agree with your point that everyone's idea of what is "good" is different, and as a result we're likely to see different kids with different GM enhancements. However, money will probably be the chief limiting factor of not "getting everything on the menu". It'd probably be too expensive. Since everyone's income levels and willingness to spend varies, so will their childrens GM enhancements.
Probably the wealthy will be the only ones who will be able to afford all of of the enhancements at first, until new enhancements come out, which in theory drops the prices of the already existing ones. But GM is more along the lines of pharmaceutical and medical fields, so...that pricing scheme probably won't work really well.
Personally, ordering a "child" like you'd order a Subway Sub just gives me the feeling of "wrong" for some reason. Now, i understand if the parients have a genetic disease that they don't want to pass on to their children, or want to make their child more immune to diseases from the get go. There's nothing wrong with that, it's genetic medicine/vaccinations really.
Some would argue that the human genome is sacred, while others see it as fair game. I see it as a codebase in which scientists can use their GM skills to remove the "bugs" (disease, etc) and make us all more robust as a result.
But to use this kind of technology for the sheer pleasure of picking your child's hair color, or how strong/smart/artistic/etc you want him/her to be is just wrong to me. The kid isn't a customizable product, it's a human being, and as such, he/she should be allowed to make it's own decision of what he/she wants when they are able to.
What's the point of a child having a "smart gene" if the child isn't brought up in a good home? Or if the child has other interests instead of going to college and getting doctorate degree?
Just because that child has the "traits" in his/her genes, doesn't necessarly mean that those traits will be used by the child to their fullest extent or in the ways that you want the child to use them. I mean, for all we know, smart-gene kids could grow up into cunning criminals.
In the end, I personally would use the technology available to make sure that my child is as healthly and as disease-resistent as possible and that's it. Anything more wouldn't really be worth it to me under the circumstances above.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
We will be told to shut up, take our shots, and pay our insurance.
In effect, nothing is going to change unless someone screws up.
If every company that used GM foods in the United States had to label the genetic purity of their food sources on the packages there would be a public outcry that would not be in the interest of big agri-business. ADM, and companies like it have taken large $$$teps to ensure that such a thing will only happen if say, two million people die overnight from a product. Even then they'll deny everything, blame it on some Ergot variant, and business will continue as usual until a loophole shows up and then and only then will doublespeak labelling even hint at what's happening in the DNA/RNA of processed/fresh foods.
Given that kind of mass ignorance/apathy in the face of sweeping public apathy and well-stocked shelves, we should view the current level of declaration and demarcation in the food supply as an example of what to expect once we start dabbling.
Richard Dawkins, an eloquent scientists, has pointed out several times over that genetic mutations almost never produce anything which will survive. This is because nature doesn't subscribe to the goddist fairy-tales and political correctness that humanity does. So, the tests which do occur will be baby-steps. Accidental death, sudden death, immuno-suppresive outbursts and conflagrations of entire communities by super-bugs taking advantage of common-flaws in people with similar genetic modification will be news that will show up in the time of our great-grandchildren (assuming you're of child-bearing age now). If it happens any sooner, then someone probably let something escape.
Society will adapt to the technology if it doesn't wax too many people in a generation. We will accept the problems, and leaders/liars will evoke the fantasies which have always worked for the cattle. While the elites are going to tweak themselves for longevity, virility, and sheer smarts/physical prowess. As long as the elities confine it to themselves and the lab-rats/human trials pugilists, things will be fine.
Over generations those who are successfully modified will bear out the virtues of the changes, and these changes will be adopted en-mass just like we adopted polio and smallpox vaccinations. The changes will be small, but over time we will either thrive or die. Incremental and punctual change is not unprecedented in the evolution of species. That we can jump start the process is just another height-mark on the door-frame of our species' history.
Goddists/purists should feel free to form their communities where they don't accept such changes. Nobody in the general population is going to be left behind...changes in the environment are going to require changes in the majority. As long as nobody is kidnapping young men and women and using viral gene-manipulation to modify all of their reproductive genetics then things should be fine. However, life is the most pervasive technology on the planet. We cannot turn away from it when there are more crunchy humans on this planet than ever. When a hungry alien civilization shows up(thanks you stupid SETI assholes), or if we open the gates of Hell on Mars, we had better be able to either kick things up a notch and start taking trophies, or learn the manners necessary to introduce ourselves as dinner.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
Well, if a person cannot alter his/her genes because it will be inherited, then it follows that adults should not be allowed to do ANYTHING that would cause genetic damage. Such as working in a nuclear power plant, getting x-rayed, and so on...
:D
As for the bit about the "magic undo" I think that if technology advances to the point that specific changes can be made to genes with accuracy (Right now it is pretty much a roll of the dice) then it would be trivial to reverse those changes. Right NOW there is no "undo" but there isn't really a "do" either
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Cheers man. I'm on the side of the asians. I wouldn't touch a white girl. Preferences vary.
Don't take life so seriously; it isn't permanent.
Honestly, if there was genetic manipulation, i feel everyone should have access to it kinda thing.
The biggest problem I had with the movie Gattaca for example (a movie dealing with it) was that not everyone had the ability to get Gene manipulation, you had to pay for it, and pay for it a lot.
The problem is it should be used to benefit EVERYONE , not just a small subset of the human population.
The biggest ethical issue is making a small elite group of people that can afford it, and then they can only afford afterward because they are the only ones that can succeed, basically making anyone without gene manipulation inferior, unable to succeed, and forced to do jobs that are in essence slave labour.
The ideal would be give let everyone have gene manipulation if they desired it at birth, it would be an option to have at conception if you would want your child to have desired traits.
It in itself could only "help" the human race in the long run, the people that did not choose to have such manipulation would be sort of a control group, and laws would have to be enforced (laws we already have) to make sure that they are not precluded from the chance at having a job, and jobs should be done on merit, not genetic choice.
Again I do not feel genetic manipulation is bad, only the use of it increase class differences. I dont think in of itself it is unethical, as long as it is fairly distributed.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
First of all, the mutations that create hemophilicas occur at a rate higher than the rate of hereditary transmission.
Secondly, the disease is hereditarily passed on by female carriers that don't exhibit any signs of the genes they have.
Should we also test carriers for hemophilia gene and forcibly sterilize them?
Sorry for the overacting
...your kids genetically modify YOU!
In an episode of the original series of Star Trek, the Enterprise encountered a ship, adrift, called the "Botany Bay", upon which humans from past history had put genetically modified superpeople that had gotten out of hand and been exiled. Their leader, name Kahn, was played by the actor Ricardo Montalban, who was also in some popular ads from Chrysler at the time, featuring cars with "fine Corinthian leather" seats and appointments. Much hilarity and cross-referencing ensued.
Virg
Every time we save someone's life with new medical treatments, and that person goes on to reproduce, we have just weakened the gene pool.
With all the medicine we have today, natural evolution has stopped. Our bodies don't have to adapt because we stuff them with drugs.
I'd even go so far as to say we are on the verge of de-evolution as genetic weaknesses get propogated throughout the pool.
People object to genetic manipulation because they say it is tampering with nature. News flash, we've been tampering with nature for millenia, ever since we invented agriculture, selective breeding, medicine, etc.
We now have two choices: stop, stagnate, and decay as a species, or continue mankind's eternal quest to better itself. If we've reached the limits of "natural" evolution, what's the next logical step?
Mod parent up-- this is an excellent point= asking "are you always for or against medical treatments?", it is too wide a question.
Certainly in the days when circumcision was believed to prevent various infection it was done by parents to their sons. Few had any moral problem with that. Indeed, given the standard age range, nationality, and gender of the /. audience, I'd bet that fully half the people in this discussion were circumsized. If there were a new set of procedures that were believed to help children, but which could only be done before the child is able to make its own decisions, I have little doubt that we'd overcome our initial reservations.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Well, with the market's resistance to GM food products, we don't have to worry much about them becoming a source of food...
Too bad; I wouldn't mind scoring some 'long pork' at the corner market.
So, lets see, who makes the laws. And who will afford genetic engineering. Oh, the same people?
this sounds more like publicity for X-Men 2. ;p
The boy on a rampage destroying downtown South Park has been identified as Stan Marsh. When asked why he was destroying everything in his path, he replied:
"Ba-chomp Ba-comp Ba-chewy-chewy-chomp"
And now back to our regularly scheduled program.
On one hand, I'm all for freedom. On the other hand, I'm all for saving my skin. What happens when the job market only wants to hire people that can lift 200lbs with ease and solve differential equations in their heads while chewing bubble gum? That means everyone that can't will basically be out of the job. Headed toward being poor. If our genetic superiors take pity on us 'unskilled workers' they might give us odd jobs, or welfare. If they don't, they might ship us all off to some country where we can live in cramped conditions while almost starving to death. So basically, i want jobs in the future for normal people. I don't want any less chance at a job because 70% of the worlds' population is now smarter, stronger, healthier, faster, nicer, etc, etc than me. Not through any work of their own of course, strictly through the money of their parents.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Bah! Ivy schools wouldn't put restrictive quotas on GMers. Think about it...
To have a GM kid, you have to have money. In order to afford Ivy League schools, you have to have money. If you have money, and want the best for your kid, not only will you send them to Ivy, you'll tweak them in utero to give them every advantage possible. It's human nature to mess with nature.
The only possible Ivy backlash would be in eligibility for academic scholarship, and even this is questionable.
After all, consider sports scholarships. Great athletes bring more money into the school then their "scholarship" costs the school. If this were not true, it would not be done, because like it or not, in America, education is Big Business.
So, if Johnny GM can slam-dunk better than Bobby Mundane, Johhny gets the free ride, because Johnny brings in the cash.
Same with Suzie the GM Braniac. She'll get a free ride too, provided that she agrees to take on a research program along side Johnny's athletic commitment.
1. Lure GM kids in with free diplomas
2. Get GM kids to commit to Ivy interests
3. PROFIT!
As for the parents of the mundane kids, well, fuck them. They do not have the evolutionary advantage needed to be a burr for more than one generation as it is.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
"Imagine if you had a genetic disease and it was removed. Later on a plague (like SARS) moves through civilisation and you get it because the gene you had removed confered immunity. Bad luck there."
Natural selection, they call it. Sooner or later, it will start working among humans again - and then Mother Nature will stabilize the situatiion in her own way. Bad luck for us _then_!
eventually the whole population will get the mods for free from their parents, meaning that (a) the companies doing them need to make all the money they want up front
That sounds like theft to me. I'm sure there is a technical fix to ensure that your descendents are forced to keep paying GeneCorp for the enhanced genes they inherited from you. Maybe it's a pill that you must take every month, to which GeneCorp holds the patent. Or it's something else (use your imagination).
Whatever this genetic social control mechanism is, I bet the more authoritarian states will jump at the chance to get into the game. In the future, the "genetic elite" may be those that aren't modified.
Doug Moen
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
One of Heinlein's earliest efforts, and not one of his best "Beyond this Horizon" included genetic engineering, along with Upton Sincalir utopian socialism. The book is so old that, IIRC, it uses 48 as the number of chromosomes in the human genome, which was the textbook number until the late 1950's.
Except that another factor in who got the plague and who didn't was hygiene.
Thank you! Social adapting vs genetic adapting: which one is easier? If you're screwed wrt genes, then you have little choice. But why chance it?
I also remember reading that people who were around horses a lot were much less likely, but I don't remember why, and that could just be either BS or coincidence.
I've never heard of that, but it reminds me of the relationship between cowpox and smallpox and the birth of vaccinations detailed here.
This is not my sig.
"How about improving on ourselves?"
That's what I was thinking, only in a slightly different context.
How about we developed ourselves in the ethical sphere, instead of the physical. Most of the crap that seems to befall humans seems to be due to greed, selfishness, hate etc.
But, oh no, lets all go to Mars, and be complete shits to one another there!
Lets all be crappy to each other, but with the power to leap tall buildings! </sarcasm>
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Said it before, I'll say it again.
You monkeys are gonna die. We Transhumans aren't.
Have a nice day.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Environmentalists already deride GM crops as "frankenfood"
So, I don't know how many of you ever read the book, but the gist is, the "monster" that Frankenstein makes is really sweet and loving, and essentially "good", until the blind hatred and fear of humanity and self-loathing of the Dr. turns him into the terrible, vengeful creature that he is at the end of the book.
Irony?
Genetically modified humans would be no different than humans born in the traditional method. Why can't people understand this?????
Gah.
That makes sense, provided that the change that is done has no side-affects. For example, a genetic change that creates hormones to promote growth, could be reversed, but the growth would already have happened. This isn't even considering other changes that could potential harm or kill the person in the time between the first change was made, and the time it was decided to undo the change. Just food for thought
I am a sig. I wish I were a more creative sig, but I am not. I guess everyone has something to strive for.
The Octagonal Raven is mostly a (attempted) murder mystery revolving around a "pre-select" human who's being hunted down by a vast conspiracy, so if that type of book doesn't appeal, don't bother.
The undercurrent of the book is essentially just this. The people with "pre-selected" genes are simply superior, which leads to more wealth, which leads to more pre-selected genes in the next generation.
This has the predictable result.
ye actualy there is AIDs going around now that will restart the natural selection
becasue (i'm not 100% positive on this) that only 1% of the humans are imune to it
Can't say I'd be too excited to have a GM kid. Even though I could get it for $0 down and 0% interest for 36 months, the maintenance problems and the poor handling would be annoying. I'd much rather get the kid straight from Big Mamma Womb. High quality, german engineered, and a logo on the front that makes the neighbors envious.
I don't like the word progress. To me at least it implies that whatever direction we happen to be headed towards is progress. Most of the time what we're progressing towards isn't defined, and therein lies the problem. I must admit that science discovering things that challenge us is unavoidable.
As far as letting people choose the genes their kids have, I'll give you one example that'd pose a big problem, sex selection. In many parts of the world it's VERY important to have a boy. If sex selection became widespread the male/female ratio would very likely become very skewed toward men. Obviously that means there will be a good percentage of the male population without a female mate. This is already true (for reasons I've never been able to track down) in Saudi Arabia where the m/f ratio for people of ages 15-64 is 1.39/1. Anyone know any really pissed off guys from Saudi Arabia that've caused us some problems lately... perhaps about 15 of them? Yah, I know correlation doesn't show causation and it's obviously more complicated that just sex ratio imbalance, but I find it a disturbing fact.
The general idea is that selecting very important factors like sex, and probbably intelligence and other traits, can create an imbalance in the society. Sex selection hasn't become a problem yet since I think it's still relatively expensive and only people living in developed nations can afford it. In addition prefering one sex over another in developed nations isn't widely considered important. If this became cheap, and widely available I think you'd start seeing sex ratio imbalances in a lot of undeveloped countries, and this would pose big problems.
Parents selecting traits that later become a problem for society isn't necessarily something that's decades away, it really has the potential to become a problem now.
AccountKiller
anything that ensures women are good looking, thin, and have large breasts is ok by me.
Why can't there be a compromise. Use the Genome project to identify genetic flaws, and practice selective breeding to weed them out? Even with todays medical histories dating back about 3 generations, there's enough information to make basic assumptions. With the data most Doctors collect right now there's a good likelyhood of identifying potential mating problems--i.e. two people mating will produce a child with x% chance of defects. That could weed out many of our inherited diseases in a generation or two! That's been practiced on animals for centuries. Our current medical science while with nobel intent, tries to keep every genetic "flaw" alive as long as possible. For humans being sencient, that sets us above the animals, but it is evolutionarily foolish. Many people alive today have not pass the test of natural selection. We've already tampered with nature, we should assume some dicipline to fix ourselves. Why shouldn't smarter, more intellegent people [as a whole race, not individuals. Not being biased here.] at least be aware of it when "choosing" to mate and create children? Why shouldn't we be mating to create the best children we can--that's nature 101.
I'd prefer that approach of studying the genome and then acting thru selective mating much better than trying to "tinker" with the sauce and creating lots of "errors" that suffer horrible fates--that de-humanized all of us!
Also, in the Constitution is a prohibition against punishing children for parents crimes and against creating "titles of nobility" I'd venture that could be extended to "titles of Ignobility" as well [if the govt can't create "prefered" classes, they shouldn't be able to create "pariah" classes either. look at treatment of "felons" and "terrorists" for examples], and such a precedent would fix a lot of legal issue right now too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think we will have AI before we have to worry about a crop of GM humans popping up. I dont care how smart a human is, any AI would beat the hell out of them. That is my personal opinion.
Actually, most common genetic "defects" aren't defects at all! Most genuinely *BAD* genetic mutations quickly die off. While the effects of genetics disease can be quite debilitating (and may be worth preventing), over all most so called defects are protections against specific alliments that have effected humanity over the years (sickle cell anemia is the most well know of these, but the more we understand genetics the more clear it has become that other defects serve the same purpose). In reality responsible genetics would result in very conservative changes.
OTOH the Olympic comitee is doing the right thing, any other choice would lead to "throw away" people who can run fast but do nothing else.
GM Humans have been bred for a specific purpose and that purpose is their destiny.
If I create a great quarterback then that person should be the property of my football team. A great fighter should be owned by their gladiator school or how else can they be made to fight in the coloseums for our amusement.
If I spend millions of dollars to create a line of outrageously attractive and pliant people then I should be able to use them to model my damn line of attire. I should be allowed to make a profit by whoring them out in my frikken brothels!
If I create a superintelligent being, then I should darn well be able to chain them in a cubicle till they come up with something I can patent to make me some CASH!
If they should become obsolete, a company should be able to sell them on, rather than have to keep paying blasted property taxes on them!
Eat at Joe's.
The above post was supposed to be enclosed in
Eat at Joe's.
I just want to add that Zimbabwe had another very good (and at the same time sad, sad) reason to refuse the genetically modified crops: Patent issues.
Yes, genetically modified crops can be, and are, patented. If some of the GM grain accidentially makes its way into the Zimbabwean agriculture, the farmers that produce and sell these "contaminated" crops would be patent infringers according to the World Trade Organization, and hence could possibly be subject to criminal prosecution and be forced to pay damages (a case like this has actually occured in Canada!. Needless to say, this could be disastrous for an economy as weak as the Zimbabwean.
This is yet another example where Western patent laws may possibly wreak havoc on third-world countries, or prevent some relief measures (see also: generic AIDS drugs in Africa)
I've read _a_lot_ of comment on this story and seen some thing I had to respond to.
First, the idea that we might introduce horrible disfigurements or conditions when we start tinkering with the human genome is not unlikely. But progress is made in such ways. Like every new risky technology, some people will be willing to take the risk (think Tooms and the artificial heart a year or two ago). Science finds ways to make these things work. What is a risky venture today (say getting into space) will _eventually_ become routine IF there is enough demand. Think about it, if a couple million people really wanted to go into space and were all willing to pony up some bucks, the technology advance much more rapidly. Progress is aided by money, but its risks and sacrifices by individuals that make dangerous technologies benign.
There have been quite a few people questioning the morality of genetic modification. However, I don't think morality will have any impact on the spread of technology over the long term. Religion and morality can't keep people from wanting technology; there aren't enough fanatics. Just look at all the people who dug burried satilite dishes up after the Taliban was defeated. Amongst the majority of people, religion does NOT mandate real morality or ethics; culture does. And there will almost certainly be some groups pursuing the technology that will popularize it after the initial backlash.
New technology is fearsome and dangerous. Thomas Edison used to electrocute rabbits with AC power to show how dangerous Telsa and Westinghouse were. And many people bought into it and were afraid of AC power. But eventually, common sense won out after the technology was proven safe.
Now on the really long term time line, nearly all births will be GM births, at least to some extent. Parents might not want to pick an IQ, but they would want to get rid of deseases, etc. But for the tweakers, eventually we'll reach a peak at which the DNA cannot be improved upon any more. New techniques will be invented to extend (not just modify) our genome.
We are evolving; just admit it. We can create our own Sun here on earth (fusion) but we don't fear our ability to do so. Likewise we will be able to control our own evolution through our technology.
You may not call yourself a Christian, but you demonstrate that you think like one in how you use the word "ethical." There are many valid, consistent ethical systems that put the needs of humanity before the needs of the individual. If applying one of these systems, then is it not the case that we are obligated to experiment, knowing that it will cause short-term pain and suffering to a small percentage of the population?
The common response is to question the "truthfulness" of these ethical systems. However, once you start thinking your opinion is right and other persons' are wrong, you're the same as religious in my book. And if you happen to be siding with the Christians, then maybe you need to re-evaluate just how non-Christian you are.
Social Contract? I don't remember signing any Social Contract!
If you want a really good read following this line, get the book Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear.
The "Beggars in Spain" series by Nancy Kress deals with humans engineered to need no sleep. Thus, they work more, study more and are richer and more powerful.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
and you might have some credibility, except for the fact that the concept of a 'soul' is superstitious nonsense.
the memories and experiences of any human being decay very quickly after about five minutes of no oxygen to the brain, at room temperature. All experiences, feelings, and memories of said person are erased permanently, despite what organized religion says to the contrary.
thus, debating the ethics of cloning and genetic modification is silly, given that any failed experiment will be terminated, and any recording of any pain or suffering they might have experienced will be erased forever. They might as well not have existed at all, for all intents and purposes. Human life is not sacred, we just want to believe it is, because we want life to be fair to us. It isn't, and never will be.
unless you like to sit back and mourn the lost potential trials, pains, and sorrows of the trillions and trillions of possible egg/sperm 'person' combinations that go unborn every year, I'd advise you to lose your grip on artificial morality. The truth of nature is that the survivor is always the winner, and in the case of survival and progress, the ends always justify the means.
we can deny this through the egalitarian PC dogma that pervades western culture nowadays, but the truth is the truth, and it will not be denied forever.
Sorry, if you clone 'digitally' gene by gene, how the hell would the 'clone' be inferior to the original? It wouldn't.
This reminds me of the Norwegian Lebensborn: Reich-sponsored children of German soldiers and Norwegian women. After the war, they were despised in Norway.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
As much as I agree that Gattaca is one of the best movies discussing this topic, one of the best novel series on this issue is Nancy Kress' Beggars in Spain series. Personally, I think not having to sleep would be the coolest...BCNU//jle
An enhanced human being, either that way by natural birth, or engineering(likely with genes borrowed from the best, brightest, and most unkillable who were naturally born)is not necessarilly going to be egomaniacle nut that wants to take over the world.
As an example, look at all the excedingly high IQ geeks you know. How many are working as assistant manager at a pizza shop and smoking down constantly compared to the ones that are movers and shakers, who have made it into upper management at the big company with all the perks.
While typically not all are at the polar opposites, you should be able to get the idea. The best and the brightest are also prone to become total slackers. This happens more often than not. The ones who make it into that power and influence lifestyle are not necessarily the brightest, or have the best health, or best physical stamina.
So what makes the difference ? Upbringing, training, spirit, willpower, character, even a bit of blood thirstyness. Environmental factors to be for sure.
The best DNA in all of creation isn't worth jack if the kid grows up in a trailer park and has a pair of losers raising em up. On the other hand, the asthmatic jewish kid with the 115 IQ, the mediocre pre-calc grades who is overweigh by 40 pounds but has parents constantly working with him, helping to build social skills, connections,
and teaching him how to get ahead will likely be hiring mr. uberman joe dirt from the trailerpark to clean the offices of the corporation he built up from next to nothing.
And of course Mr Uberman will probably be overjoyed pulling down $15 an hour to mop floors, repair broken office furniture, etc for the next 30-40 years, play the market on the side, and when he retires still be physically young enough to have a great time for the next 30-40 years.
The overweight jewish guy will maybe trim down, get insanely rich, be in and out of hospitals for stress related and minor genetic problems, and have to take it easy when he retires at 55. Maybe he'll buy a new liver, a few genetic hacks here and there to cure various ills, and die happy at 80.
Now here comes the big question ? who lived the better life, the mere mortal who was the big shot, retired early, and had a laid back retirement. Or the Uberman who had a lame early life, was never really nurtured, had a simple, average, and laid back job, saved for retirement, and then was still fit enough to have a retirement as long as his working career ?
Now heres the shocker. I've met ubermen who didn't need to be engineered, and who never had the least motivation to do more than be content and have fun, and I've met totally mutated and afflicted people who went amazingly far. As well as everything in between. Improved DNA means you don't get sick, maybe you are naturally fit, and have the ability to do amazing mental feats. AND THATS ALL. It doesn't mean your kid is gonna automatically run off at 15 and start the next megacorp from paper route money he saved up.
And high IQ in a world run by mundanes and lamers becomes effectively a learning disability. You learn to pace yourself at an unnaturally slow rate. Unless you have been identified as a high IQ dweeb. Then you get an education extrapolated by mundanes of what they they think a high IQ kid should know. And it just doesn't work. Its the reason they don't like parents with IQs of 60 raising normal kids. But if you are on the other end of the bell curve, you are totally on your own. This leads more often than not to people who just say screw it, kick back, and fall asleep for the rest of their lives.
Unless you build a means that allows these people to learn to take advantage of their potential, they will just hang back, and be really really bored. Except for when the religious zelots single them out, or other strife occurs. This also end up being a method of training. But now you have a gene modified person hooking up with others like themselves. And then you have worse than an outright war, you have a litig
There are 5 that are currently being tested (some human, some critters) that would be great! Including a potential cure for a certain disease I'm afflicted with! If some bozo wants to ban me, my comment is PROVE IT! People can't pick up GM be sight, or even taste, only extensive/expensive/time consuming lab tests. Even then, they currently can't tell most of the mods from "normal". Is if fair for 'athletes' to use GM to boost their performance? Hell, they already use steroids (preferably the ones not banned or difficult to find), hyper-oxygenated blood, etc. They are gonna do it, and those idiot politicians will have to put up with it, unless they want the minority underperforming athletes to be their superstars. Besides, banning you because your grandparents had mods? Thats gonna be really stupid, if the mod survived one generation, it's gonna be a permanent feature of humanity. We've got lots of those types of features currently, they call them mutations, and inherited traits. Once again, the politicians have there heads in a dark warm methane filled place...
Gene therapy is when they insert genetic material into you (into a localised area, like your liver or something -> with no chance of adding these genes into your children) to replace damaged or otherwise disfunctional DNA.
This is not the same as changing/copying/making the whole person.
Well, if a person cannot alter his/her genes because it will be inherited, then it follows that adults should not be allowed to do ANYTHING that would cause genetic damage. Such as working in a nuclear power plant, getting x-rayed, and so on...
This is not so far fetched. I know that in my country there was a debate as to wether soldiers in combat positions should give sperm for safe-keeping, so that, should something happen to their crown jewels, they would still be able to procreate.
I belive your point should at the very least be applied on a voluntary base: every worker in a potentially mutagenic profession should give sprem/ova (actually, IANAB, but IIRC sperm regenrates, so this is much more of a problem for women) for safe-keeping, so that she would at least have the choice as to using more damage-free DNA.
Should usage of this by parents be compulsory or not ? I'm not sure, perhaps it should, but I would say that in this case, you'll probably catch more flies with honey, i.e., with economic motivations, than with punishments.
Working for necessity's mother.
I think your perspective on this is to narrow. ...
... snipped "diverse outside preference" argument ... Neither of these perspectives has lead, or will lead to a monoculture
probably so, as I live in the present, not the projected future
As an example
No, these probably won't.
But let me rephrase an hypothesis so:
Today's evolutionary transport processes are diffusive. This means that they take a high number of generations and do not retain "purity", in that the beneficial changes are subject to much recombinations (great rejoice) and changes along the way. The system has the time and the means (through sexual procreation) to equilibrate.
In other words, passage of information is both slow and inherently imprecise, which increases population variance.
In a GM population, passage of information would be almost instantaneous, a matter of a generation or two, and would be precise, which means that a truly beneficial gene cobmination will be copied exactly.
To take some statistical physics terms: A world with GM may be a world like a ferromagnet at T=0: constantly on a critical point, the population (like the magnet's spins) reacting in an uniform, abrupt, non diffusive manner.
In terms of variance, such a world, at any given generation, will have a much lower variance than the current product of the slower evolutionary diffusion processes. Thus it will be more vulnerable.
Working for necessity's mother.
The problem with ethics, is that they are not very concrete.
...
...)
The problem with anything hard, is that we don't quite know what we should do
Its a set of beliefs, which have no factual or logical basis, but we hold on to them, because without them, society would degenerate into a quagmire of hedonism. Thus arguing that something is unethical is really just an emotional plea, but has no logical basis.
You have a contradiction there:
1) you claim that ethics has a beneficial affect on society.
This is not just an emotional claim; it is a pragmatic consideration.
2) you say that claiming soemthing is unethical is just emotional, but has no s/logical/practical/ basis.
This means that there are no pragmatic implications to ethical decisions.
As far as I see it, these are contradicting sayings. (and BTW, please lookup "logical", you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means
In the case of GM people, there is not enough of a consensus as to what is "right" and "wrong" for it be very clear cut.
Which is exactly my above point about unknowns; the fact there are currently no guidelines does not mean we shouldn't forge new ones, extending and modifying old ethical principles.
For you to claim to be pro-ethics is really just a fallacious ploy to try and argue from the moral high-ground.
Then perhaps you misunderstood me, being pro-ethics does not mean one shouldn't modify his ethics, or accept someone else's oppinions.
It is just a pragmatic approach to social norms; a society w/o (dynamic) social norms will degenerate. It does not specificly determine what those norms should be.
Working for necessity's mother.
<sarcasm>Oh, those poor aristocrats. They were just so superior that all the inferior humans hated them and did them in. Why didn't those stupid peasants eat cake, fight wars, and otherwise leave the clearly superior aristocracy alone?</sarcasm>
Today lawmakers and regulators are eager to ban the technologies that would be needed to create a new breed of intellectually and physically superior people.
I can't figure out whether you are trolling or just plain stupid. Did the whole "master race" thing that happened in the 20th century pass you by? Do you seriously believe that someone with big muscles or the ability to solve puzzles quickly is "superior"? Has it occurred to you that there is probably a reason why the person you consider a weak-minded weakling made it as far in evolution as you? Why bunny rabbits survive and thrive while saber tooth tigers and mammoths died out?
But who's willing to stand up for the rights of this future generation?
Probably the same people who stand up for the rights of people like Einstein, Hawkins, Woods, or Jordan. I mean, those poor people, everybody is discriminating against them.
Yes, and the way to fix that is to eliminate the "raw meritocracy". The Olympics should be games--a friendly meeting of cultures at which the competition is incidental and for entertainment. Instead, it has become a commercial circus in which a genetic lottery creates a few famous millionaires. The issue of doping and GM humans just exposes the idiocy.
Fortunately, this will take care of itself. When genetically modifying humans allows parents to satisfy the demand of fast runners, big-breasted daughters, and brainy nerds, those attributes will be less valued and less valuable, reducing the incentive for parents to produce them. Also, parents will face some engineering tradeoffs. For example, I suspect that Dolly Parton probably wouldn't have made a good sprinter--at some point, one attribute gets into the way of another.
Yep, just when you think something in sci-fi was not possible, now we are actively talking about it like it was a possibility in reality. I'm sure when the Khan episode of Star Trek, they thought that genetically modified humans were possible, but not in their lifetimes, or hundreds of years from now. Who would have thought that it was possible right around the corner and that we better make some rules about it right now while pandora's box is still closed.
Some thoughts on your proofs of concept:
> I can't point to specific genes, but it's been shown that most of the Kenyan distance runners are from a common area of kenya that is elevated.
The problem here is in citation. Again I ask, "it's been shown" by whom, exactly? Also, a common area of Kenya that's elevated? What evidence can you present that it's genetic (based in Kenyan people) and not environmental (based on, for example, living at altitude)? How do the Kenyan valley dwellers stack up? You claim that there's something intrinsic to Kenyan genetics that you don't back up with anything resembling scientific proof or studies. You must do better than this if you're to convince me that you can rule out other factors.
> Furthermore, any argument of nature vs. nurture is basically undermined by the existence of an athletic development program in Kenya as or more aggressive than the distance running program: soccer. Soccer athletes are identified and pushed as much or more than distance running candidates, yet the Western African nations (and their similarly correlated fast-twitch genetic advantages) crush them every time.
Nice try, but individual athletic ability is very secondary to team strategy and coaching in team sports. There are a number of studies, done by the U.S. National Football League, that point up that while talented athletes can certainly tip the balance, on average it's the coach that wins the game. This comparison is invalid because of this proof.
> Non-equipment events in track and field (100m, mile, marathon) are as or more universally competed in by the world as soccer. And the resulting performances are as close to absolute metrics as you're going to get (so a kid runs a 10.4 on a dirt track and a 10.2 100m on a modern track - his time still shows he's fast as hell). Thus they are as good a basis for drawing athletic predispositions as anything.
You're right that they're valid for drawing athletic predispositions. The breakdown of logic is that you then extend athletic predispositions to genetic predispositions, without offering a shred of evidence that there's any causal relationship. You make no reasonable argument about why the Kenyan advantage is not related to their environment, their culture or anything else but their genetic makeup. Without proof, I don't buy it.
Virg
I was thinking more along the lines of non-genetic changes such as nanobots that increase the neural connectivity of our brains, resulting in a 1000% increase in intelligence. (thinking of the star trek the next generation episode where one engineer is hit with a virus that does that to him)
genome
who we'll build is part ghandi, part hitler
part christ, part satan
and we'll call Him 'perfection'
and seeing as how we won't know what He is--
until He consumes humanity
physically and philosophically
completely and infinitely--
we will worship Him
until He despises us enough to
confirm that this state of consciousness
is highly improbable, mostly miserable
and that the cure for loneliness
is, together, realizing
the blasphemy of His existence.
I can't believe that anyone who doesn't care about the humans that will have to die in experiments having rights, will care at all whether the genetically modified products of said experiments have any rights. When the value of a human life is reduced enough to allow arbitrary choices to determine whether a human being lives or not then it doesn't matter at all whether these GM's are persecuted. They don't even have the right to live according to the scientists that created them. That GM is lucky to even be alive if they make it past the experimental selection process. Why should anyone be bickering about whether these people attain citizenship of the USA, or some other country.
As soon as scientists can create their own life from matter that they produced, then they will have the right to do anything they please with it. Until then, noone has the right to destroy a human life.
I couldn't resist. However, I was tempted to post anonymously in case my (weak) attempt at humor was lost on everyone.
Taken as a whole is not an acceptable standard. Criminals of all stripes are generally a small minority. You don't need a lot of scientists who are willing to crank out frankenstein kids to end up with a lot of genetically defective kids. The small minority who would ignore the ethics committees and peer pressure can do major damage and it's worth passing laws to make that illegal.
When there is an established track record of higher primate genetic manipulation with no irreversible damage, it's worth discussing lifting restrictions.
When Cloneaid came out with their claims, everybody laughed at their particular claims but also they said that there were half a dozen labs doing real work in the field and we're going to get human clones RSN. Those were the scientists (not the cloneaid hoaxers) I was referring to. There's a physician in Italy (don't recall his name) who's a known figure in infertility treatment who I recall is working on this, for example.
As for starting somewhere, I think that sticking to animal models is fine. I'm not against research in animal models at all (and neither is most anyone except the animal rights folk). Until you have several generations of successful higher primate work under your belt, both in modding and in reversing mods if things go wrong, animal mods are pretty much the place where responsible people should stay IMO.
You're right that you have to start somewhere but after so many demonstrated problems in clones, I'd think that we're simply jumping the gun to step up to humans right now.
"Human history is rife with aristocide and mob attacks on perceived elites."
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It's ironic - I would say that in a sense that person would not be very intelligent at all. Yet we have many historical examples of people like that - Kurt Godel, the guy in "A Beautiful Mind", etc. I think it just goes to show that intelligence cannot reasonably be considered a single-dimensional quantity. Someone can be highly intelligent at solving mathematical problems, but very dumb when it comes to dealing with the real world. (I also fall into this category, although not in such an extreme way as Godel.)
Female Prison Rape in NY
> ...you want IRONCLAD statistics. Well, there aren't, and probably won't ever be.
Ironclad statistics? Even I'm not that cruel. What I want is ironclad proof (which is not the same thing). Since you assume a genetic predisposition, I ask that you present evidence of (perhaps I'm out on a limb here) the gene. Show me that those with the gene, regardless of race, predispose toward better athleticism. That said, I'm willing to shelve this discussion pending more work on the mapping of the human genome, so it's moot for the moment. My argument is as much to caution you on using the term "genetic predisposition" as any demand for real evidence. When you state a statistical predisposition, you can use statistics to back it up. But not enough is known about the human genome to point to genetic predispositions in something as nebulous as "athletic talent".
Virg
The depth of your misunderstanding is boggling.
I'd say we see natural selection everywhere. It's so prevailent that we overlook it happening. There is a massive cultural battle going on among humans. You have a war of technology going on, a war of economics, a war of breeding, etc. These are all factors in how we're evolving and who will win is still in question. We in western cultures tend to be capitalist technocrats with fairly low birthrates. We're competing with other cultures that emphasis less education and cash but may breed a lot more than we do (think China). The really interesting things happening are where these cultures are blending to find what I'd call superstrains of human culture. Say capitalist socialists (yes you can be both) with high technology and they breed a lot while keeping natural resource usage to a minimum. We're seeing some spots like that emerging as pre-industrial countries jump head first into technology. With the USA playing god with Afganastan, Iraq, etc we no doubt will see more of this.
Of course cultural evolution isn't 100% genetic but it does have a genetic effect. Sort of a feedback loop. For humans cultural evolution is at least as important to us as genetic evolution anyway. It's the cultural effect that prompts us to modify our own future with genetic engineering and nanotechnology.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.