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Scientists: It's Time To Resolve the Ethics of Editing Human Genome
An anonymous reader writes: We've previously discussed a system called CRISPR-cas9, which is dramatically reducing the cost and effort required to do gene editing. In fact, the barrier to entry is now so low that a group of biologists is calling for a moratorium on using the method to modify the human genome. Writing in the journal Science (abstract), the scientists warn that we've reached the point where the ethical questions surrounding DNA alteration can be put off no longer. David Baltimore, one of the group's members, said, "You could exert control over human heredity with this technique, and that is why we are raising the issue. ... I personally think we are just not smart enough — and won't be for a very long time — to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual." Another group of scientists called for a similar halt to human germline modification, and the International Society for Stem Cell Research says it agrees.
My ethical problem would be that in the short-medium term, we don't understand what we're doing and will hurt more than we heal.
So need a few more decades with animal testing.
After that? Open the floodgates. Not everyone will want the 6'2" white blonde blueeyed children. I can see a market for catpeople, dogpeople, merpeople (colonise the oceans!); I'm sure there'll be one or two who want to incarnate Cthulu; wings capable of unaided flight might be difficult.
Never worry about being the wrong skin colour as everyone will be any colour of the rainbow - or even rainbow coloured!
Nightvision - eyeshine a reality!
Solar powered - get a lot of your daily calories just by standing naked in the sun.
Turn hair-growth on and off. Never have to shave again.
People who worry about eugenics are just lacking in imagination.
Most of the "ethicsists" are fundamental christian types or outright clergy
The people writing the letter referred to in TFA are not professional ethicists at all - they are practicing scientists, including one of the people who figured out how the system in question works. (Disclaimer: I know one of them personally and I've had a handful of interactions with another.) If any one of them is at all religious, it's news to me. I'd guess they're totally in favor of genome editing in general, especially since several of them are involved in companies that have this goal. The ethical issue is whether to leap right into modifying embryos with an unproven and potentially unsafe technology, which amounts to experimentation on unwilling human test subjects.