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Genetically Engineered Children
A reader sent us a ABCNews story about the future of genetically engineered children. It's a bit fluffy, but creates some interesting questions, particularly in regards to the ethical questions. The synopsis of some of the people quoted is that most parents will actually do it, because they will want superior children. What do you folks think?
I am of the opinion that we are largely defined by our so-called imperfections. It is our imperfections that add character and flavor to otherwise bland personalities.
Where would I be without my imperfections? I would be another boring person slogging away through this world, not standing out from the herd.
Where would I be if my parents had followed a course of genetically engineering their children? I would NOT be around because I am predisposed to being overweight, under-athletic, and have less-than-perfect vision despite having an excellent mind and capacity for learning and thought.
Where would YOU be under such a system? Probably non-existant.
I'm not arrogant enough to think that I would be perfect enough to slip through their filters, but I am arrogant enough to think that I deserve just as much right to exist as a "perfect" engineered alternative.
Scarey prospects indeed.
Let imperfections reign,
Jason
# Jason A. Dour
# Jason A. Dour
# Founder / Executive Producer - PJ Harvey Online (pjh.org)
GATTAGA
:) The plot of the movie is basically fast forwarded n years to the future where we now control the genes of every person. Right from birth, your destiny is controlled by your genes - you can work some places, but not others.. and the world is basically divided up by "how good your genes are", and by extension - how useful you are. Think if it as the ultimate in racism. There is a very real possiblity of this happening - I don't believe this society (or any society in existance right now) is fully prepared to start meddling with genetics. It's an all-too-real possiblity that we'll create a world up with the "genetically superhuman", and the "normals" who are by definition, inferior.. and then it's only a short step to an all out war. This is something you'll read about over and over again - it's a well-used plot in science fiction. Heed their warnings.
If you've seen the movie, that's all I need to say to get my point across. For those that haven't, go see it right now - it was one of those pivotal sci fi movies you should have seen.
--
I've heard it said that one of the most important jobs someone can ever have is the job of raising a child. It is the responsibility of the parent (in a perfect world) to raise a child who can survive in this world. It is the ultimate accomplishment if the child can do more than survive and actually prosper.
That being the case Parents would be remiss in their duties if they didn't at least consider genetic engineering. Their childs prosperity may depend on his or her advantages relative to their neighbours.
IMHO, of course.
J
Oh well, no point in steering now.
One hundred years hence, race might have disappeared as the primary differentiation among persons. Instead, we may bear much more significant differences as the result of parental design.
Maybe we can selectively breed out ignorance and first poster attitudes ;)
Getting Dolly to be born took 300 failed attempts, each time producing deformed embryos. That was easy: at least you don't have the public ready to jail you if you produce deformed lambs.
No extrapolate that to babies: in order to produce genemod humans you need empirical data which you can't obtain without (for now) ghastly research. In order to break this cycle, first you have to watch Dolly (her telomeres are out of whack), then get a reliable method for making Dolly's (without the telomere problem), then move up to primates, and only when you can reliably produce genemod apes, can you even think about working on humans.
I doubt I'll live to see this. Even if I do, by the time anyone's ready to try it we'll have a good enough understanding of the genome that it won't be done for frivolous reasons. (crosses fingers)
I'm reminded of the scenarios in Player Piano and Brave New World, which do a rather nice job of pointing out the major logistical problem with all this: Someone still has to do the grunt work. As it is, we aren't too far off of Vonnegut's scenario of female PhD's in cutthroat competition for secretarial jobs, and a genetically-engineered meritocracy is only going to aggravate the problem. There will still need to be a "producer" class, which is something that people tend to forget, and in this day and age of cheap mass-market goods made by little kids in China, most people don't want (even if they can afford it) to pay good money for the honest labor of a talented craftsperson. Think of how much less clothing the average person owned when it was usually sewn by someone in the household (by hand even), and how much less than THAT the average person owned when cloth had to be hand-spun and woven as well. Machines DO take care of some of this, but people still must run the machines.
There's also the small matter of the likely high correlation between intelligence and insanity. Remember the "Eve" episode of the X-Files? This holds fairly true in my own life
Trying too hard to "fix" a perceived problem tends to lead to backlash of some sort -- disease-resistant bacteria, anyone? There are two ways this could go, and I don't much care for either of them: An "all the children are above average" scenario, with "deviations" such as CP, Down's Syndrome, or perhaps even homosexuality ruthlessly stomped out, and people becoming ridiculously overqualified for even the most basic jobs; or a *deliberate* system of "breeding" a worker class (either human or AI). Gives me the creeps
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
The article is, indeed, fuzzy. The future innovations it talks about can basically be split into two parts: physical intervention (eg artificial wombs for premature babies) and genetic engineering. The point the article is trying to make is that in the end, people won`t see the difference between them.
I disagree.
People are presently making an incredible amount of fuss over genetically modified food. A lot of this is down to ignorance and hyperbole (one woman was quoted as saying "I don`t want my food to have any of that DNA in it"); nevertheless, it shows that people are, to some extent justifiably, chary of new genetic technology, especially insofar as it has anything to do with them. If they`re making this much of a fuss about soya and tomatoes, how much more are they going to reject trying anything that sounds remotely similar on their own children?
IMHO, it would be great to get rid of hereditary diseases, as mentioned in the article, and other such things. Someone posted earlier that we are defined by our 'defects.' However, would someone with one such 'defect' be any less of a person if they did not have the problem? I don't think that would be the case. More likely that person had potential that they had extreme difficulty realizing because of a problem that hindered them.
:) But I mean, seriously. If you are Joe Average, and your kid is Jean Intelligent, can you really relate to him? You want to be playing games with your kid at 5 years, but he/she wants to be studying physics. I mean, if you know physics, you can join in, but speaking as a father, I know I'd want to be playing with my kids.
I don't think creating superior children is a good thing, though. We might end up creating monsters that want to do away with all of those who aren't genetically superior. (At least it happens in that way in the sci-fi books
In fact, he says, it will be so beneficial that governments may require children to be engineered genetically to prevent development of new socioeconomic gaps.
I think this would be very wrong. if this happens here, I'm moving to another planet.
By the time these "smart" babies are born, they could be taught via direct transmission of electrical impulses into chips implanted in their brains.
"You might download French into the 3-year-old's brain directly," Caplan says.
Now, I'm wondering, did this really fit into the article at all? They were talking about genetic engineering, not implanted chips. They've gone from genetic engineering to cyborgs. (Personally, I'd want to be a cyborg, so it wouldn't be fair:) Plus, it's *upload* not download. Download is a transmission to you, upload is a transmission from you. Sigh. Net commercialization has corrupted the terms brought about by the old BBSes. Anyway, I'm finished rambling.
Hey, you took three cents!
Forget about lasic surgery--just make sure your children have perfect vision to begin with. Sure, we can eliminate various genetic disorders, but most of those are rare--that won't have a major effect on society. Fixing the common problems (most notably vision) can have a huge impact.
Now there's a fine line between that and controlling cosmetic features (hair/eye color) and personality features. And sometimes it gets very blury--is the tendency to be alcoholic a disorder that should be fixed or a personality trait?
And I'm sure governments around the world will react with fear and ban all human genetic alterations, dooming us to added generations plagued with poor vision.
I recommend this book to anyone I can. It is a very entertaining read, and addresses the issues of genetic engineering and how society views outcats. What's more, it's funny!
READ IT if you have a few free hours (it's pretty short).
Werd.
You seem to miss an important point - when a child is engineered, it is not entirely his parents' genes that are being propagated! Rather, it is the genes of those who donated the reference samples for ``big'', ``small'', ``red hair'', ``high intelligence'', etcetera. While it does not seem probable (well, to me this morning) that a large fraction of a person's genome would be selected by his parents (why mess with all the liver genes if they will work?), the few chosen traits that make him successful and healthy will not come from his parents at all. In the future, the most important determinants of who you are might not be your parents' genes at all!
Of course, once we start engineering genes rather than just copying them from other humans, then no one would be increasing their Darwinian fitness; engineered humans would be the Darwinian offspring of no one, but rather products of technology and mind working directly upon biological material.
The =last= thing most parents want is for their kids to be smarter, faster, stronger, more dexterous than they are. Even the best of parents don't want kids who have the mental or physical ability to run circles around them. The =average= parent =WANTS= to be superior to their kids, though. Look around you, and you'll see that that is where most of their self-esteem comes from.
Now, kids born in military bases are another matter. There, there is a strong incentive to produce "ultimate" warriors - brainless thugs. Again, though, the better they engineer them, the less control the "non-engineered" parents and military have, by definition.
I think what we'll see is less a dangerous swing towards creating dangerous superhumans, but more the destruction of intelligence and creativity. THESE are the traits most teachers and parents hate, and make someone "abnormal" or a "freak". THESE are what will go first. THEN we'll see the wholesale destruction of evolutionary shifts. If nature finds trait X to give someone an advantage, then the surrounding people will decide it makes the person "different" - a characteristic that will be stomped on, at all costs.
Eugenic Wars are a very real possibility, with each culture "purifying" it's new generation, making them gray, moronic, inferior clones of their "perfect" parents or the "perfect" society.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Man playing God have always been a bit of a touchy subject and I think with good reason.
DNA, Genetics and Cloning are issues that challenges our ideas of what make us human or what we really want humans to be. It seems sad that human values are derived from "success", namely status & wealth, in the rat race not merely for the sake of living. This attitude seems to be adopted by the bioethicist in the article. "In a competitive market society, people are going to want to give their kids an edge" So the point of life then is to have "an edge" over your competitors? So these children's lives are nothing more than beating and competing with the other robots that's going to come out of this? Maybe I'm a backward romantic on life but it would seem that it would be a wrong ideal to enforce on children.
Another problem I can see is the inevitable division of societies into the haves and the have nots. It will create an elitist society, differentiated by some pre-determined conditioning and genetic engineering, much like in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". The gaps in the wealthy and the poor will not only be entrenched by material wealth but physical superiority as well.
And not that pleasure in "doing" something isn't already hard enough to find. People used to be able to just enjoy the simple things in life, like fixing things that are broken, building that shed in the backyard. Now, the pressures of the rat-race would force most people to just hire in someone to do it for them. It would seem that in the future, no longer will you be able to enjoy the challenges of learning new things by yourself but you'll be able to download and know everything by the click of the button. But what bloody good is that? Sure no one likes exams and you always want to know more, but half the enjoyment is the sense of satisfaction that you have endured and achieved a particular thing. If all you ever wanted to know about everything can be downloaded in minutes- like downloading French as mentioned in the article- then what is there left for you to do?
Happiness is hard enough to find without all these distractions
I'm up for using genetic science to remove certain diseases like Cystic Fibrosis (sp?), or MSD, etc.. from the child before it is born. But treating the unborn like it was a car and choosing it's features (i.e. choosing eye color, hair color, weight, height, etc...) isn't right. It should all be left up to the chaotic randomness of the Universe so that you don't know what your getting. Its exciting to expect the unexpected..
:P
Arthur Caplan quotes: "Absolutely, somewhere in the next millennium, making babies sexually will be rare..." -- If you ask me, he's nuts. Genetic engineering may be an alternative, but it'll never replace the "natural" way.
And the concept of microchips in the brain is really dumb...Sure it may provide the ability to imbue the entire UNIX manual into a 4 year old's brain, but there's no fun in that...tis better to spend time to learn by trial & error. Eh well, I won't be around when all this happens prolly anyways, cause it's still a good century down the road I think...*coughtechnologicaldarkagecough*
A penny for your thoughts, and I gave my two cents, now where is my change?
At one time, elm trees dominated cities in the Northeast usa. Then, an organism came along with a special affinity for elms, Dutch Elm Disease, and nearly wiped out every elm tree. They had such little genetic diversity that Dutch Elm Tree nearly removed them from the gene pool.
Researchers today are still looking for elm's that have a resistance to this disease (though I think they have a few likely trees).
How about getting breeding children without the gene for sickle cell anemia. Sounds like a marvelous idea, sickle cell being very destructive in Africa.
Except being a carrier apparently gives you some protection against malaria (iirc), which is why such a disease with a negative reproductive impact is still around.
Something that may be closer to many slashdot readers, myopia. Who wouldn't want to free theur children from the need to wear glasses? However, correlations have been found between myopia and intelligence. Is it because four-eyes like to read, or is there a genetic link between brain size and the size of the eyeball? If it comes down to an either or, do you pick between a brainy kid who may need glasses, or a less smart kid who doesn't?
My point, anything that reduces genetic diversity in a species puts that species that much closer to a catastrophic pandemic.
That said, I don't think this will be an issue by the time I procreate again, though I fear my daughter may have to make this choice.
George
I want my children to have the best genes possible. Why should they suffer for my own genetic deficits? Or suffer diseases that are easily avoided? Or be more stupid, weak or ugly than they have to, just because of my own angst for change?
This has nothing to do with "staying competitive". I certainly hope other parents will do the same, or better if they can afford it, as I do. My children will be better off if their contemporaries are better off. This is no different than education, I want my children to have the best possible education, but I also want them to live in a society where every child is offered good education.
Please note that most of technofobic sci-fi also predicts totalitarian states to keep their vision sufficiently dark. They are usually written by humanists, who feel the humans have reached perfection. Well, reading the newspaper I desperately hope that is not the case.
On the other hand, how can you refuse parents the right to prevent passing on myopia, asthma and other hereditary ailments to their offspring, if the technology is there?
On the other hand, what if myopia and intelligence have a genetic link?
Mr 20-400 myself
George
It's not a question of wether or not it will happen. Only of when.
The rich will then get richer, and better looking, and faster, and smarter, and anything they can afford.
When confronted with the fact that 'everybody is doing it', and the 'keeping up with the Joneses' mentality of the affluent sectors, there's not a question of if. With their considerable resources brought to bear on politicians (law makers), lobbyists (big-time funds), Universities (researchers), the rich will make certain that their children are better designed to run the world when their turn comes.
There is no doubt that there will be some stratification among these 'people'. There will be children specialising in sports, intelligence, comeliness, artistic talent... I'm sure mother nature will be vengeful, but nature is a whore and can be bought, or at least rented for a few generations.
There is no doubt about another thing either. This will be the playground of the rich. They will do what they can to keep it that way. After all, what right has a poor kid to measure up to out perfect little Johnny? Right?
Families will save for a gene-tweak as they now save for homes. They will not manage to do anything other than guarantee a kid free from birth defects. A kid who can earn a living.
The normal person will be the working stiff, while the enhanced homo neogeneticus will live a life of leisure and pleasure.
What do you think, fellow Morlocks?
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Have you ever read 'The Time Machine',by H.G. Wells?
In this 19th century short story, a scientist travels to the future, and finds that the human species have split into two species: one evolved from the upper class, the other from the working class.
For a long time, this view seemed like an overly pessimistic extrapolation of the situation during the industrial revolution, but if the rich get the means to engineer their children, this might well happen.
On the other hand, how can you refuse parents the right to prevent passing on myopia, asthma and other hereditary ailments to their offspring, if the technology is there?
Aaahhhh, here's an interesting point for you though, do you know which race was which?
As I recall the ones who lolled about in paradise, as dumb as dirt and frightened out of their minds of the 'other' race were the 'superior' race. While the true rulers were the 'workers' who lived under ground. The 'superior' folk were just parasites, and not even inconvenient parasites, they were just there. If we get much farther along I'm joining the working class, they tend to have the common sense.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
They will fuck as much as now (or more, if we can get rid of sexually transmitted diseases and social sexual stigmas), but there it will not result in pregnency until both the boy and the girl has got a fertility treatment. That ought to be one of the simpler medical and social advances.
Controlling genetics has nothing to do with it. My other half has long argued that intelligence isn't a survival trait. Intelligent people are having less children than stupid people. Is this just an example of Darwinism in action? Is intelligence beneficial for the survival of the human race? Up to a certain point, yes, but you could argue that high intelligence is unnecessary, and in fact undesirable, for the continued existence of the human race. The race will last longer without it, albeit in a slightly more primitive manner. The only point at which this argument breaks down is when space travel becomes necessary for survival. Will the intelligence to do it have been bred out by then? Only time will tell...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
There are whole classes of weapons that have never been used for ethical(and realist) reasons, from hydrogen bombs to uranium in the water supply, but chief among them are the biologicals. Never has a modern biological weapon, such as smallpox, been used against a military or civilian target. Not by a nation, not by a terrorist group, not by an insane but brilliant individual. There are arguments that this is purely out of realist principles, the case being made that once a widespreading biological weapon is employed(and Anthrax, with it's limited infectious capacity, doens't quite count), there's no effective way of preventing your own forces from being infected. But liberal norms apply as well: a basic sanctity of innocents and revilement of weapons without discrimination of their victims has kept biologicals out of warfare in the past, and hopefully will continue to do so.
Sooo.... Lobbing a disease ridden corpse over a castle wall with a catapult is NOT biological warfare? Biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, all have been employed throughout history in various forms. Just because we haven't dropped any out of an airplane doesn't mean people don't use them.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
The thing that a lot of posters in threads like this forget (on purpose?) is that this technology, like any other, is not in the hands of the state here. It is in the hands of parents-to-be. People select their kids' genes all the time. They do it mostly by mate selection and a few by sperm/egg donor, but everyone does it nevertheless. All the gene manipulators will do is expand the pool of choices. The dystopian aspects of GATTACA are due to an entirely separate possibility, and that is genetic discrimination; it's distinct from the ability to engineer genes. If we can outlaw discrimination on the basis of skin color and go as far as we have towards eradicating it, we can almost certainly keep discrimination on the basis of genes from going very far.
So what are we achieving here with gene selection for our kids? I think that what we're buying is health and vigor, and happiness to the extent that healthy and vigorous people are happier than those who are not. How can this be a bad thing?
--
Deja Moo: The feeling that
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
To be blunt, people that have more than two children are selfish bastards. Maybe genetically-engineered children would obviate the "need" to have too many kids in the first place.
In many countries in the Western world, the birth rate is already below the needed replacement rate (which is, I believe, 2.1 children per couple in a first-world country with modern medicine). This is why the average age of the population is increasing, with all the concomitant problems of `Who`s going to pay for all those pensions then?`. If the trends continue this way, there will soon be coming a time when the majority of the population is over 50.
Yet at the same time, today the birth of the 6 billionth member of the current population was announced. Globally, the population is still increasing, although the growth of the acceleration is slowing (Yes, I got that right, it`s growth to the second power). This is because of the population growth in developing countries. And people there aren`t going to get their hands on Do-It-Yourself Genetic Engineering Kits any time soon, even if they were available here. What`s going to help them is simple, cheap things that are already readily available. Contraceptives. Education. Decent, simple healthcare. When people realise that they don`t have to have twelve kids any more in order for one of them to survive to care for them in old age, when people can get hold of, afford, and know how and why to use contraceptives, when prestige depends on your skills and knowledge rather than the number of sons you bear, and when they don`t have to have a dozen kids so they can send them all out to work to earn enough money to live off - that`s when we`ll see the world population going down again.
(Warning: spoiler for a crappy movie)
.45 to the temple (o.k. maybe nano-carbon rod reinforced bones....)
Gattaca wasn't all bad, just really cheesy and simplistic. And the acting sucked, but that's a staple of sci-fi. Anyway...
At the end of the movie, remember when they were swimming like when they were kids, and they perfect brother lost to the bad one? Why did that happen?
Ever hear a Nature vs. Nurture debate? IMHO, you can't have one without the other. What does it matter if the you have the best genes if you grow up in a box? Or if you're beaten from a young age? What about if you go the natural process and have a full, loving, supporting environment? Who will come out on top? What happens continually to people who think they are better than others and are lazy, when they meet someone "inferior" who works harder?
Genes are only a starting place. The best genes in the world won't save you from a Mack truck or a
Regardless, whatever you call it the human spirit, the soul, desire, will. There is and always will be an intangible part of a being that is as important as the physical part.
+&x
Think about it. This is done naturally as well. Why do men prefer women that look "healthy" (e.g. thin, young, nice teeth, good complexion)?
Since when is 'Thin' equal to 'Healthy'?! the current Supermodel look is about as healthy as a walking skeleton. Our societal concept of beauty is about 30 pounds under healthy. I weigh 120 lbs, my girlfriend weighs about 200, we're both 5'7, she just barely looks bigger than me. She's healthy. Some 5'10" 105lb model is NOT healthy... she's disgusting.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
You haven't forgotten Huxley and "Brave New World," but like a lot of people, who had only one of the 'surface' themes of the book drilled into them in school, you've thought the book was just about "test tube babies."
There is a hell of a lot more to Huxley's masterpiece: it's about a spiritual void, "everybody belongs to everybody else" social conditioning, and 'the savage' wanting to go back to more primative times in order to find a spiritual center. As a concrete example, the Savage's discovery of Shakespeare was an important part of the book, and it sure ain't about test tube babies.
A ton of English teachers all over the planet need to have their pay docked for misinterpreting Huxley's book. It's not another shallow "Upton Sinclair" type tome about the perils of test tube babies. It's more complex, with more themes, than a lot of Beta-minus English teachers (that's basically the kind of person who gets into the teaching profession, sadly) can even understand.
Go back and re-read it. It isn't that you have forgotten it, you never read it closely enough the first time.
Two examples:
"Absolutely, somewhere in the next millennium, making babies sexually will be rare," Caplan speculates.
Oh yeah, who would want to have sex to make babies, what a silly thought.
"In a competitive market society, people are going to want to give their kids an edge," says the bioethicist.
Bioethicist? Freak-a-zoid is more like it. Hmmm how many people want to roll dice with their children's psyche? How many of those however many million genes do you have to screw up to get a psychopath? Do we have any idea? All of this stuff is still a long way off.
and finally, if you thought the reporter had some sense..
Who knows? Maybe all this technology will make humans so smart they'll be able to predict the future.
That's just silly. We can already predict the future, for a day or two. Beyond that things get ridiculous. Read some Chaos theory or go outside and feel a breeze or count to 6,000,000,000 (the number of people currently co-creating the future)
Silly article, but it makes for good discussion.:-)
hmm, maybe there will be a use for journalists in the future....
+&x
First of all, the movie's hero was a "natural" child that showed he was superior to the "engineered" peers. And it never said that the engineered children were any *worse* than the natural ones. So, I'd say that the message isn't so much "Genetic engineering is bad practice", but "Assuming that genetic engineering solves all problems is bad practice."
Most arguments I've heard about this issue come down to two issues: fear and jealousy.
"People will get jealous because they didn't (get the opportunity to) take advantage of GE, and they'll revolt."
How is this any different than people being jealous that they didn't get higher education, or didn't have the wealth to get into a private school? Or, how is this different than countries being jealous that their histories didn't lead them to opulance and instead led them to poverty? This seems to me to be just like any other rich/poor scenario. And this is all perfectly natural. Agreed, it's best to structure things so that an action is persued in such a fashion to avoid conflict, but that doesn't mean that the action can't take place. This could be better phrased "There is danger that such technology could upset people, so care should be taken to avoid conflict, perhaps by offering it to everyone equally."
"A superhuman race will form, and the normals will be inferior."
Again, how is this bad? Those that have (or are perceived to have) better skills will get hired. Should it be any other way? Would you prefer that this "Superhuman" race would develop, and they wouldn't be treated any differently? Also, do you think that this "Superhuman" race hasn't already developed? If you believe in genetics, don't you believe that smart people usually reproduce with smart people, and that this race is already in existence? Likewise, we are already all judged by our ancestry in at least one area: health insurance. If people were truly as obsessed with genetics as Gattaca seemed to imply, people would request personal histories before hiring.
"From birth your destiny will be controlled by your genes."
The point is getting old, but this is already in effect. Your life is a direct result of how you were developed -- if your environment invested in your education, you became successful. If it didn't, you won't. Both your genes and your envirionment are mainly out of your control, and this will be the case with or without genetic engineering.
"This technology is so poorly understood, they could actually hurt themselves by doing it."
This is a good cautionary note, but again doesn't mean outright avoidance. If it does indeed turn out that GE actually weakens people (ie, causes degenerative damage, shortens lifespans, etc) then they took a risk that failed, so be it.
"This technology is so poorly understood, they could hurt me by doing it."
And this makes perfect sense. We don't know what kind of crap could happen. We could create some sort of bizarre virus that affects millions, or who knows. This is by far the best argument against it in my book, but sadly rarely comes up.
These are all interesting points, but most could be made about private schools, music tutors, and genetically engineered crops as well. Jealousy that you or your offspring won't be one of the "superior" race just doesn't to me seem a valid argument against something that could very well lead to stepping the net intelligence of humanity up a notch. Likewise fear that something Bad would happen with this technology can be offset by slow and cautious progress. Neither fear nor jealousy are objectively convincing arguments for why it shouldn't be done. And without objective arguments, it will be done. Perhaps not tomorrow, but a genetic superrace will develop in the near future. Perhaps it'll be called "genetic vaccinations" or "mental health augmentations" or whatever, but there will always be people that are exploiting risky and experimental medical treatments to attempt to better there lives. If you don't like it, figure out a way to eliminate the demand, and then the supply won't be an issue. If you can't figure out a way to convince people that they shouldn't want it, perhaps it is you that needs convincing.
For instance: Say you're hiring for some position that requires intelligence. One applicant is genetically engineered to have an IQ of 200. The other is not genetically engineered and has an IQ of 150. Which would you hire? Sure, the non-genetically engineered applicant is about as smart as you're going to get naturally. That doesn't mean s/he is going to be able to compete with the genetically engineered applicant. Should the company be required to hire some set amount of non genetically engineered individuals (Affirmative Action in the 21st century...)? Is that really fair to the company?
This is entirely different from not hiring someone based on some genetic factor that doesn't effect performance, and, as people have already pointed out, that already happens.
Getting rid of genetic diseases would be great, yeah. But what qualifies as a genetic disease? Is my bad eyesight a genetic disease? My freckles? My skin color? (After all, these last two combined increase my risk of skin cancer!). How about depression? I'm pretty certain there's a genetic factor there, as my dad has many of the same symptoms. These are all things that could concievably be considered disorders that should be corrected for, but they also help define who I am (well, except the eyesight. Go ahead and fix that :).
Should a low IQ be corrected for? After all, that can severly effect a person's life. What do we do there? Bump them up to exactly average?
Yes, it would be great to correct for genetic disorders. Its just not that simple to decide what qualifies as something to be "fixed", and what doesn't. Or exactly what the result of this fix should be.
Couple of quick comments ...
Yes, the sheep will probably go for the genetic engineering. Anything they can get that means they can have better children without having to put any thought into it. Anything they can but to make their children better will go over big. It means the parents can produce better children without having to put any effort into being better parents. Most parents today are pretty sucky when it comes to raising kids (yeah its a generalisation, DWI). Adding genetic engineering of unborn children to the world will not make better people, just better DNA.
Probably the most disturbing thing about this, is how people don't stop to consider that nobody is perfect. The universe doesn't make perfect people, or perfect animals, or perfect viruses or perfect anythings. If we had genetic engineering 125 years ago, would we have had an Albert Einstein? How about Stephen Hawking? Granted, it might have been interesting to see what Hawking could do if he didn't have to live the way he does. But, would he still be the same man? If Einstein hadn't been told he was an idiot as a child, he might have gone on to a nice career as a engineer, or a doctor or lawyer, and might never have been working as a patent clerk.
I guess the point is this : If there are no obstacles to rise over, will anyone care to try harder, to do more?
By the way, there doesn't seem to be much genetics in that article. I was kind of disappointed.
Anyway, sorry, I know this may sound a bit contrived, but given a lot of you are programmers out there, I thought I'd throw out this silly little analogy:
Think of the human genome as the binary code of a program. The human genome project is only going to give us a memory map, not the actual source code. Can you imagine trying to modify code without having the source? Maybe if you were a hard core machine language programmer--but what's worse is that we don't even know entirely how the CPU works (which in this analogy would be the laws of physics.) Add to this the fact that the extreme fragmentation of the code base--everyone of us is running an almost entirely unique version--and the idea that we can just go off and start modifying things easily seems really ludicrous.
Take, for example, the case of cystic fibrosis. On first glance, it may seem that we've figured out where the problem is: a gene in 7q31 that codes for what appears to be a chloride channel. Everyone who has CF has a problem with this gene. But guess what, we don't know what this gene does. We have ideas, after years and years of research, but we're not even sure if the gene product itself is what causes the disease, or if it's something else entirely. Notwithstanding the fact that we have the entire nucleotide sequence of this gene and most of its common polymorphisms. Replacing the gene in some people does work, but not for everyone. And we have no idea what it does to the stability of the genome if it were inserted into germ cells.
Or take Down's syndrome. The problem is very obvious--you have three copies of chromosome 21 instead of two. We don't need to know any sequence information to figure this out. But the thing is, even if you were to detect this in a fetus or even in a zygote, how are you going to get that extra copy out without destroying the zygote? It's not like we can tell which chromosome is which in vivo. I guess you'd have the option to abort--but that's nothing new.
Then there's the problem of passing these modified traits on. Even in really simple cells like yeast, although we can insert all sorts of DNA into it and get the cell to use it, we still can't get it to reliably pass it on to the next generation. While this is OK when you're just interested in making a protein, and a success rate of 1 for every million is actually pretty good, this would be insane in human beings. Sure, you've got a pretty smart and physically fit kid, but hey, you know what, he can't have any kids himself. Except you probably won't even get that far most of the time, since the zygote will probably fail to divide into viable progeny. I guess we'll have to try the next test tube. Genetic engineering in the fetus has the possibility of sterilizing us all. Even cloning is inexact--look at Dolly the Sheep.
While bacteria, plants, and fungi can stand all sorts of mangling of their DNA, that isn't the case for human beings. Even one slight change to the genome is likely to cause a miscarriage, often for reasons we don't understand--in a lot of them, there are no gross problems with the genome. Add to this the fact that most of the major conditions we'd be interested in are polygenic and multifactorial (meaning the environment has a big part in what happens)--like cancer and heart disease--and it's easy to see that the utility of genetic engineering is likely to be limited. I'm not saying it's useless-far from it, but it is hardly the paradigm shift that the article makes it out to be.
I don't think he meant thin as "skinny." Rather, I'm sure he meant "not fat."
His point is still perfectly valid -- When we select mates, qualities we find physically attractive can always be attributed to some sort of positive genetic attribute.
The very fact that you find an extremely skinny girl unhealthy (thus unattractive) is a direct result of this, and illustrates his point perfectly.
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Where would I be if my parents had followed a course of genetically engineering their children? I would NOT be around because I am predisposed to being overweight, under-athletic, and have less-than-perfect vision despite having an excellent mind and capacity for learning and thought.
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Yes, that embryo that became you would not exist. But in its place would be an individual without those physical imperfections but all the mental abilities, and guess what? That individual would be YOU!
I'm not advocating genetic engineering here. I just get tired of hearing that silly argument of if such-and-such never happened, I WOULDN'T BE HERE as if that would be a terrible tragedy.
Gee, if my father hadn't taken that trip to Boston in his twenties, he never would have met my mother, and I WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN BORN, thus I never would have had the social connections to get into Harvard, and I wouldn't be on this great promising political career with eventual presidential hopes, and... but wait, none of that happened! Instead, my father actually went to Asia, and met my mother, and I was born overseas, and thus I will never be the president, but I'm blessed with having two cultures, which never would have happened in the first scenario. So which is the greater tragedy/lost opportunity? There are an infinite number of potential scenarios, each centering on an individual who would be just as much YOU, some much better off, some much worse off.
Thinking like this is just silly and pointless. Arguing a point based on it is futile and proves nothing. And most of the time it's used to justify a series of completely random events and circumstances in the past as a preordained reason for one's existence, or something to be thankful for because you really wish things were better and need to rationalize it.
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Where would YOU be under such a system? Probably non-existant
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Just try telling that to the poor genetically superior individual whose chance to exist was usurped by the imperfect person who was born instead!
I once thought that an effective way of keeping parents from tinkering with the genes of their children is to not allow genetic engineering to be performed on people less than X years of age.
It doesn't quite work that way. The whole idea behind using genetic engineering like this is to do away with genetic deficiencies (like diseases) so that they *aren't* passed on to offspring. You cannot use genetics like this once the person is already fully grown. The changes must be made in the earliest stage of a person's development.
It's called "being selective."
There are reasons we find people attractive. It's about damn time people stopped buying into that "it's the personality that counts" crap and started following their instincts. The people that disregard these biological signals are doing themselves and their offspring a disservice.
Tommy, you say you don't *like* soccer? How can you not like soccer? You're MEANT to play soccer. You were BORN to play soccer. It's in your BLOOD for god's sake. Do you have any idea how disappointed in you your parents (Ronaldo and Mia Hamm, naturally) will be if you give up soccer? Now I want to see you do 500 more penalty kicks this *INSTANT* and then you can eat...
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grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
see my point.
um, no. ?
Are you saying that we are under an ethical obligation to create a superior species? My first problem starts with "ethical obligation" and goes downhill from there.
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What do you think of the current nuclear test-ban treaty? Here, we have a technology that basically everyone agrees shouldn't be used, and will most likely only find a potential use as a terrorist weapon. I'm all for GE and AI, I think they might be great fun, but I also see the danger in tampering with the basics (see: Nagasaki). So far we're 1/1 in controlling technology that can obliterate us all. By the end of the next century I really hope we're 100/100 'cause 99% uptime for sanity just ain't gonna cut it.
A friend of mine just got his master's degree in biological engineering (with an environmental focus). He related to me a study he had seen about the amount of a certain bacteria at a toxic site over the course of 40 years. It seems that the initial tests showed none of this bacteria and the second tests showed median to high-levels. What is significant is that this bacteria happened to be the one that "ate" the toxic waste. Life finds it's niche. I have yet to see a lifeform spring forth from the intelligence of another (your GE + AI), but you never know. Messing with the forces of nature (see: Hurricane) can often leave one wishing one hadn't.
I'm not against these studies (I'm all for 'em), but the application of these technologies should ALWAYS be kept away from scientists, usually they just want to see the bits that are left over, and while Mad Politician might seen likely, Mad Scientist is the more common label.
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Where in the world do you get the impression that I'm in any way advocating greed or prejudice? I'm totally lost as to how you made that leap.
All I'm saying is that people should put some faith into the things that draws one person to another. If you find somebody physically and emotionally attractive, there's a reason you find them that way: You have evolved to detect signs of health, fertility and stability in your mate. Today it's very "PC" to ignore these signs and settle for mates that are weak in many of these respects yet strong in other, less important respects.
I don't know how the hell you picked up anything sounding like Hitler from that. Please explain.
While skin color and speech are patently obvious to anyone who can see and hear, how do you find out about someone's genes without taking a sample and doing a test? And without the knowledge of a person's genes, how can you use that to discriminate against them? If it is unlawful to perform the test, it's awfully hard to discriminate and not risk the penalties.
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Deja Moo: The feeling that
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Admittedly, it's intriguing. And it does have some very good uses; engineering certain birth defects out of the population is one example.
But sometimes it's not worth the price. The effects will be far worse than could justify any good that comes out of it. Consider:
1) First, the technique has to be perfected in humans. How many thousands, perhaps even millions, will suffer while that's going on?
2) The movie Gattaca shows a society rife with what it calls "genoism"; the belief that engineered people are superior to those who are non-engineered.
3) Is forcing a kid into what may very well be the wrong kind of body for that child, for no other reason than the parents' interests, really a Good Thing? I've never met anyone who could predict the future; you can't know what your child will be like. Parents who would "sculpt" their children into their own image are, quite frankly, among the most selfish bastards I know of.
4) Consider the problem of hate groups. Talk about adding more fuel to the flames. The most extreme are quite likely to engineer their children to be better "warriors for the race" or whatever. Worse, get these people into power and you really have trouble as engineering becomes mandated.
5) Speaking of warriors, I don't even want to know what sort of things governments are going to mandate. But very likely it won't be a pretty sight.
Genetically engineering children could have some truly remarkable benefits. But it may well not be worth the price. As I said, genetically engineering out birth defects is one thing, but it must be very strictly controlled if things aren't to get totally out of hand.
I just took one of my remote controls into my room, turned off all of the lights, and pushed some buttons, and I *could* see it. It was very faint and distinctly red. My roommate can't see it, but I don't think he was looking hard enough.
I think you're pretty much correct with respects to the cause. The peak wavelength (as bright as your typical superbright LED) is probably in the correct 850-900nm spectrum with low-intensity light escaping at much lower (800nm and probably less) wavelengths, which we can see. It seems logical. Kinda nifty, regardless.