Could Colorblindness Cure Be Morally Wrong?

destinyland writes "One in 12 men suffers from colorblindness, though '[t]he good news here is that these folks are simply missing a patch of DNA ... which is just the kind of challenge this Millennium is made for. Enter science.' But NPR's Moira Gunn (from Biotech Nation) now asks a provocative question. Is it wrong to cure colorblindness? She reports on an experiment that used a virus to introduce corrective DNA into colorblind monkeys. ('It took 20 weeks, but eventually the monkeys started distinguishing between red and green.') Then she asks, could it be viewed differently? 'Are we trying to 'normalize' humans to a threshold of experience?'"

Comments

Re:The Qualia beast raises its head again

[h4rr4r]

No, it is not a problem at all. Stop drinking the bong water.

Re:The rich become a different species

[Frenchman113]

You seem like a very inferior person, especially judging from your pretentious and self-important manner of speech. How about I come and kill you?

Some replies

[davidwr]

Before the euro, my country had two bank notes of similar color.

Until recently, all of my country's bank notes had a similar color. I and my then-250-million fellow Americans somehow managed to cope.

I can't open an atlas and use it like you normally would.

There are enough colors that printers and online-map-makers should be able to use color combinations that don't impact the color-blind.

I am also a physicist and I couldn't do the spectra analysis practicum during my first year of study.

Yeah, this hurts. Photographers have similar issues. With technology, there should be a way of having a computer tell you and other color-blind scientists and photographers what color most people see when they look at the image, but that's not necessarily cheap or easy to do.

Some data are multicolored 2D contour plots.

Again, software that generates these plots should have a "color-blind-safe" option, and journals should require their use OR require that the authors include enough additional information to make it clear what the data is to color-blind people. This is not an unreasonable accommodation. On a similar vein, web-site design- and accessibility-auditing tools should point out color combinations that won't work for the color-blind.

I can never be a chemist for example.

Yea, this is a drag. You can't make a rule ordering Mother Nature to change the colors of chemicals to accommodate color-blindness. Well, you could make a rule, but good luck enforcing it. Sorry.

I also feel I am missing out on some of the beauty in the world.

None of us can see all of the beauty in this wonderful world.