Slashdot Mirror
We Risk Programming Inequality into Our DNA (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes:Imagine having a chip in your brain to boost your concentration, or pumping artificial blood into your veins to improve stamina. With gene editing, this may be possible. Scientists are pioneering the ability to tweak our DNA to wipe out disease and maybe even allow us to choose desirable traits in our unborn children, like height or intelligence. None of these technologies have moved out of the lab, but Americans are already uncomfortable with them. In a survey from Pew Research Center, almost half said they wouldn't want to edit their baby's genes -- whether it were to combat disease or shop for traits. Nearly 70 percent of survey participants also said they were more worried than enthusiastic about the possibility of synthetic-blood and brain-chip implants. They saw these options as "meddling with nature," even though we've been using technology to enhance our lives for thousands of years.
for hundreds of millions of years.
We generally call it "evolution" round these parts.
Huh, the writeup doesn't bring up the "inequality" boogeyman. Wonder how that got inro the title.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
The fact that paranoid, credulous, and superstitious people will avoid genetic therapy is a feature, not a bug.
The only real risk is that their numbers become too large and they become an unsustainable burden on society as the human baseline leaves them far behind. Their own sense of entitlement might very well create the sci-fi dystopia they're currently whining about.
from the ./ summary:
That is a rather stupid take on the issue for at least two reasons:
First, the situation at present is that humans already have unequal genetic gifts. Genetic engineering will enable us to help those who are deficient, to aid those (or the children of those) who suffer from from lousy genetic makeup. Think of it as eugenics done right; We do not exterminate or sterilize the genetically deficient, instead we enhance the genes of their offspring and let them carry on. That would increase, not decrease equality.
Second, we should be concerned with improved well-being of society as a whole, instead of (as appears the poster to be) obsessed with a perverse desire to make everyone equal. Making just only one person in the world better off is always a Pareto improvement but can either increase or decrease equality.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
It's an interesting question; where should we draw the line?
Most people want to "draw the line" just a little past what they are used to, so "the line" slowly creeps forward. Back in 1978, the first test tube baby was born, and people worried that we were playing God, and whether the resulting creatures would even be accepted as "human". Today IVF is mainstream, and no one gives it a second thought.
A decade from now, it will be common to correct genetic disorders in embryos, and it may even be considered child abuse to refrain from doing so. Today's moral handwringing will be long forgotten.