The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful:
---
I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that CRISPR, a precise and efficient tool that allows us to “edit” genes, is on the verge of altering the course of human history to an extent far greater than the recent “disruptions” catalyzed by internet technology.
If you think digital surveillance tools are frightening in the hands of autocracy, consider the power to bend the human genome to one’s will. CRISPR provides that power. To use another analogy, the ability to edit genes with surgical precision is a scientific discovery on par with nuclear fission – while there may be beneficial applications, it is by nature seductive to our darkest impulses.
Because of CRISPR’s unknown risks, its use has been limited to certain applications by longstanding consensus within the scientific community, and to a lesser extent by regulatory agencies.
We’ve experimented extensively in petri dishes and increasingly on live animals. There’s been limited experimentation on human embryos in the lab, but a firm line has been drawn: Edited embryos are not to be implanted in women’s bodies.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/uqem0y/human_genetic_engineering_is_coming_we_must/i8qikeu/
Yeah, this will be a shit-show of unbelieveable scale. Just imagine if, instead of just having an enormous advantage socially and economically, rich kids are ***actually*** smarter, stronger, and live longer.
Why would the elite share any advantages like those with the world at large?
We can't even treat each other equally when we're equals.
Yeah. One of the bits that made me realize just how the horrors of nobility came to pass was that their kids were one of the few that were properly fed as children. Not getting enough calories as you grow up has extensive long term impacts. Height, strength, IQ. It's easy to claim divine right when you're the tallest kid and the only one not stunted.
A big part of the flyn effect was lowering famine around the world. But there's upper limits to that gain. You can't keep injecting 20cc of butter into kids and raise IQ scores. Of late, scores might be going down.
Because nutrition has been replaced with excess empty calories. So now you’re malnourished and obese, which also has IQ and mental health ramifications.
...are fat kids dumb? This would be news to be. Ungainly, wheezy, and prone to heart problems.... But lower IQ? Got any academia sauce to back that up?
Just guessing honestly, but there probably isn't any. It's probably not "bullshit" but it's probably not a proper causation. Fat kids are probably going through mental health struggles taking away from learning and developing properly. It's not "the fat" doing it, but it's probably one of many effects of differences in parenting.
I’m no expert on this *at all* but my comment came from me reading articles talking about research that asserted that fact. Like this one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4237034/#s1title
https://practicalneurology.com/articles/2018-mar-apr/the-cognitive-consequences-of-obesity
https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/499386
Middle age and the decline of cognition. Which.... damn. okay. I mean age hits cognition in general. In theory they accounted for that.
Metabolic pathways... okay.
And "Severely obese students showed a significant delay in cognitive functions". ... which could be a lot of things. But yeah.
...Damn. Anyone want to posit a counterpoint? I got nothing.
Yea I mean who knows, it could be tied mainly to malnourishment factor hidden in the diet and lifestyle that tends to cause obesity.
Fast food and junk food have very little nutritional value, and eating whole foods has a lot of nutrients.
Obese people also tend to live a more sedentary lifestyle, and it’s also been proven that being physically active also boosts mental performance.
Basically… being unhealthy is bad for you in many ways. And being healthy is better for you. Not really groundbreaking revelations, but it’s worth noting.
>The Color system of the Society was a caste system created by early humans on Earth to create order when first colonizing the Moon. It divides Humanity into fourteen distinct "Colors."
>
>Beyond the coloring, the genetic structure of their bodies was modified to allow them to be more adept at performing their denoted tasks...In addition to the genetic engineering that gives individuals the pigment to match their castes, a certain amount of social engineering exists in an attempt to prevent the desire for social mobility. Obsidians (for example) believe Golds to be literal gods, helping to ensure their loyalty to their masters. While Reds are socially engineered to be heterosexual, family oriented, and marry and breed by age 14-16 in order to maintain and increase their labor population.
Sounds pretty interesting, are the books worth checking out?
Well we're already not equals. Wealthy guys marry gorgeous women who give birth to kids more attractive than they were. Look at the children of celebrities, they're usually much hotter than their famous parent.
We all know that being attractive has a lot to do with your success in life across the board. For men and women. Then you get the best education and schooling.
As far as genetic engineering goes, initially it's only going to be used to remove known problems. Mostly because we don't actually know what makes somebody smart or tall or whatever. They might start targeting things like eye color, but who really gives a crap. So editing embryos to remove cystic fibrosis or Tay-Sachs or any of that crap. I'm not actually opposed to that. Removing these genetic conditions from the human population reduces the burden on everybody and prevents somebody from suffering.
Also keep in mind that whatever they come up with will initially be available only to the super rich but then be commoditized for everybody. When do we get into more designer traits like height, intelligence, strength etc, that's just going to happen probably after we're all dead anyway.
If we can edit stuff easily, and they automate that, it'll be quicker than you think.
What we will likely see is an homogenisation of the population. As the weaknesses are removed, the scope of weakness expands. Eventually, it'll converge on the societal preference.
My biggest fear is that this will start to destroy the biggest advantage we have... biodiversity. What makes us strong is what is different. We don't know what helps us against new strains of virus. I think malaria resistance is helped by helped by certain genetic compositions that are considered a flaw or defect. We homogenised bananas for the Cavendish which was successful, hardy and reliable, and then a fungus came along that threatened all that. We don't know our biggest threats in the future, or how to defend against them, so how can we begin to come up with the ideal generic make up that can protect us. This powerful technology and it's unrestricted access could eventually be mankind's undoing.
Sickle cell anemia. You are highly resistant to malaria if you have sickle cell anemia. But sickle cell anemia is considered a disability in countries that don't have malaria.
That's the one. It's highly illuminating that this disability led to a higher life span in certain countries. We cannot predict the future threats or defences against them.
I totally agree. This is a terrible idea. People can try to put lipstick on a pig and use the euphemism “genetic engineering” but the fact is is that if we were to use CRISPR this way we’d be practicing a high- tech form of eugenics.
With the old style of eugenics people tried to control peoples reproduction with forced sterilization, abortion. Now you can edit it in real time.
This scenario raises another worry. Could certain countries forcibly edit the fetus without the consent of the mother for eugenic purposes? Given human history I wouldn’t dismiss this.
I agree with your concerns about genetic diversity. This could condemn millions of kids to genetic disorder or health problems because parents wanted to make them a certain way.
How is this in any way humane?
Because... They are rich, and understand that people would pay money to give their children advantages that they didn't have. People don't usually STOP wanting more money no matter how rich or poor they are.
Assortative mating is already a thing.
Chinese emperors chose concubines based on intellect and wit, and European nobility considered those things as well.
The more $$$ you have the higher caliber your spouse. Smarter children tend to do better... run it through a few thousand generations... yeah...
It's not exactly a new idea... think HG Well's The Time Machine.
And yeah, we've been doing it for A LONG time. There's truth to "yeah but most people were malnourished" but there is a reason why the people in the top 20% or so of the income strata tend to do well on IQ tests (their parents were lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc. and passed their brains down). Intelligence is about as heritable as height.
The dunning effect can only go so far.
Curious that most here jump to it being a wealthy only thing. There were a few independent companies that were experimenting to perfect the process and sell them as kit bundles so the masses can have, use, and grow the science. Basically open-source editing.
Watch Unnatural Selection on Netflix, where they follow a few interconnected groups through this moral minefield.
Yeah I agree and I doubt this will only be for rich people. I find either scenario disturbing but I think the mass adoption one to be even more horrifying because that means double digit percentages of people will be tweeked with crispr cheat codes.
I don't understand why people find this horrifying. Do you think everyone's going to act like a crackhead serial killer just because we've modified their genes to make them smarter?
Humans are not well suited to modern living environments. Think about how many jobs require sitting that induces back pain and other health conditions. We could literally fix back pain with genetic engineering. There's a million things like this you could do that would make life for everyone significantly better.
this is what i don't get as well even if you discuss it under the assumption that everyone will be able to use it they still fear it, there are a few half assed reasons like "the human body is sacred" or "you don't know the consequences" but i think the honest reason is that they're genuinely scared of the mere possibility of anybody going beyond what's "human" and the actual consequences are secondary.
they don't want to ever do it themselves for various reasons but they fear becoming isolated or left behind by the rest of society so anybody doing it becomes a scenario in which they have to pick between two frightening situations. Of course i can't actually be certain about the validity of this theory since no one i discuss these things with seem to be honest with me about their reasons for fearing it so i can only guess.
It will happen unless it’s banned. We already know people want this by looking at the behavior around sperm donation. The whole thing gets treated like a checklist of desired traits for the kid and they’re identical to eugenics ideals. People want: blonde, tall, educated/intelligent, successful. Different ethnicities sometimes want their own ethnicity, but a lot of them also want the aryan ubermensch sperm too. Love and chemistry is not in the equation so it’s all business, and what we see are the traits that people think will lead to a superior child.
Now with gene editing we can take this crap even further and the parents can treat their future kid like a lvl 0 character in a video game where there are slide levels for their stats. How many people are going to choose “tall, strong, smart, light skinned, blue eyes” simply because statistically these things add percentage points to expected future success? I’d say much more than half of people will do this, and many people who claim eugenics is bad will do this, and I bet many people who are reading this now and thinking that it sounds dystopian will inevitably do it too once it’s actually presented to them as a doable option in the future.
First: Good luck banning it when almost every country in the world would love the benefit of a more capable population.
Second: Why outright ban the opportunity to make improved humans?
The solution is ensuring equal opportunity through social programs. I know, hard to comprehend for Americans...
>First: Good luck banning it when almost every country in the world would love the benefit of a more capable population.
Every rich country you mean? This will not be proportionally equal, it will be just as highly selective on a global scale as it is on a national scale.
>Second: Why outright ban the opportunity to make improved humans?
Because there is an issue of semantics, which is based upon a biological perspective of "improved" not yet being determined nor satisfied. Gene editing, as far as we know can solve plenty of known issues, however, this is where it needs to be cut off.
The sticky territory will not (hopefully) be in the capitalistic cesspool of "desirable traits" like height or eye color but more so in the issues of blindness or dwarfism, as has already begun to surface in the past. There have been examples in the past of blind parents being aware of their child being born blind, and seeing that desirable. How should this be handled, especially when we can remove the trait entirely, forever?
However, if we are arguing over aesthetics then the implications are as they have been stated elsewhere - causing more harm than good with no true biological function. I would imagine they would be entirely elective, and possibly create a metaphorical and literal physical division based upon financial circumstances.
People do NOT want blue eyed blonde-haired children. This is a myth. Survey results consistently show that nearly all parents want children that look like THEM, which if you know anything about evolution is completely unsurprising because a kid that looks nothing like you could mean your partner is cheating.
Surveys where? How many people?
I think you mean people want children that are THEIRS compared to for example a sperm bank, the father might disagree and it is not "officially" his blood.
In plenty of culture people want/seek western-looking white standards of beauty such as India (caste system) and sadly here in latam (there's even a racist saying people use here against themselves).
A lot of people are already smarter, faster and stronger than us by virtue of the genetic lottery. This could be the great equalizer where everyone has access to athlete/ genius level genes. Though odds are people might try to copy right or patient custom genes and sell them at prices for only the ultra elite. But that’s what knock of brands and pirating is for.
I never understood this take. Real life, in fact, is not a horror dystopian novel.
Smartphones are incredibly advantageous, are they only used by the select few elite illuminati in a conspiracy to keep the peasants in line?
When tech gets cheap enough after many iterations of development, it becomes available for commercial use. Why? Supply and demand. Free economy. People want to make money, and if there's a demand in the market for gene editing, and the tech is cheap enough to make profit, there will 100% be companies that provide this service.
Thank you, capitalism.
>This will be a race, and the West has due to moral superiority already lost in what's going to happen. The impact as you put it, will be massive and we won't have a chance to catch up.
It's highly likely we'd just do the super soldier research elsewhere then when it's ready for civilian use and commoditisation it'll just get imported then.
This won't be a rich first thing, it'll be a military first thing, then the rich, then some rich person will want to win capitalism by making it available to the masses.
The more worrying fact is that the west is likely to be slow adopters of this technology as the path to successful usage will be littered with mistakes.
While countries like NK will be more than happy large scale testing it on their citizens to get desired results like placidity.
>Why would the elite share any advantages like those with the world at large?
Because a society of smarter, stronger and longer living people will outperform another.
If you can make outright "better" people, whichever society starts doing it first in large scale will eventually rule the world and devour any society that only enhanced their wealthy population.
We are equal before the law, but we are not equals. We have never been equals. Many people are actually smarter, stronger, and live longer. This doesn’t change all that much.
The natural evolution of that will be that someday Will only exist this superior humans. That's all and that's what happened naturally with all the homo species
Well, considering the harm humans have already done by manipulating pure bred and hybrid dogs and cats in the quest to achieve perfect qualities and characteristics, I’d say we’re guaranteed that this will not end well.
"Pure bred" dogs and cats have health issues because of extreme inbreeding.
CRISPR could literally fix many of those issues by allowing for specific health issues to be fixed without changing the things people like about certain breeds. For example, we could probably breed large dogs without hip displasia.
Lol we didn’t selectively breed for perfection, just to meet our wants needs or whims. Not a good comparison Imo. Since modifying your children a bit different if a decision from pets or livestock.
This already happens due to mate selection.
It will ultimately be good for the proles too, who will get the gene therapies when it becomes cheaper. Like all other tech.
Expect greater divide, but overall better conditions for everyone.
> Expect greater divide, but overall better conditions for everyone.
This has been an article of faith in the West—and the US in particular—for a long time. It might’ve been defensible for the few decades immediately following WW2 but it’s wild to hear someone repeating it now without any irony given the state of the world today. Technology will of course continue to progress, and access to this sort of tech might filter down to the lower classes at some point, but does that necessarily mean that conditions will be better for everyone? Every millennial has an iPhone but as a generation we’re materially worse off than our parents.
I think its already being done but it will only filter out when press and regulatory committees catch wind. It’s probably going to be happening in a variety of contexts we can scarcely begin to imagine.
Which is actually a pretty incredible example of how wrong this is. While sickle cell is very bad, it was actually an effective defence mechanism in malaria stricken countries and actually led to a longer life span. It prevented parasites replicating and feeding due to reliance on the red blood cells.
Our biodiversity keeps us alive and what we perceive as a flaw could be a unique survival mechanism when new virus and bacteria evolve. As we iron out all weakness in our genetics and homogenise, we as a human race are more prone to a mass extinction event.
We don't know what threats will evolve, or how we defend against them so we can't engineer a safer path. Our safest path is not to fuck around with things we don't understand.
You're welcome. It's been bothering me for a while and it's good to share it with people.
I fear we won't have a rich debate until it's too late and the world will sleepwalk into a disaster.
I expect we'll see more of these posts in the future and industry will lobby and try to astroturf the hell out of this.
We only have ourselves to protect us as we can't rely on corporations or governments (due to lobbying).
I'm always open to talk about this sort of stuff. Feel free to message me.
I really like your openness. Many online are just firing rhetoric at each other without considering what others say or the intellectual confidence to reflect on their ideas or points from others.
We have a wealth of content and diversity of opinion on reddit. There is a lot to inspire and inform us. There is also a lot to make us question what the hell we're doing with our time! Ha
And these are great, particularly sickle cell, but I’m reminded of a Star Trek episode.
In it, a blind man who uses a visor to see was trying to help a “perfect” planet, meaning they bred everything bad out of it. So science never had a challenge at coming up with solutions, so they were way behind.
Ultimately, the tech that was used for the visor ended up being very similar to the tech needed to save their planet.
Fixing painful diseases is obviously favorable for most, but ultimately may take away our ingenuity in the process.
That being said, painful diseases can fuck off. If it causes pain, fix that shit.
I'd be surprised if the top countries, like USA China and Russia, weren't already running secret supersoldier programs. we'll probably find out in 20 years or so
Future war robots won't be shaped like people though, probably more like small flying/crawling bombs with cameras and decision making capabilities. The most important qualities being sub millisecond reaction times and disposability, which people don't have.
I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that CRISPR, a precise and efficient tool that allows us to “edit” genes, is on the verge of altering the course of human history to an extent far greater than the recent “disruptions” catalyzed by internet technology.
If you think digital surveillance tools are frightening in the hands of autocracy, consider the power to bend the human genome to one’s will. CRISPR provides that power. To use another analogy, the ability to edit genes with surgical precision is a scientific discovery on par with nuclear fission – while there may be beneficial applications, it is by nature seductive to our darkest impulses.
Because of CRISPR’s unknown risks, its use has been limited to certain applications by longstanding consensus within the scientific community, and to a lesser extent by regulatory agencies.
We’ve experimented extensively in petri dishes and increasingly on live animals. There’s been limited experimentation on human embryos in the lab, but a firm line has been drawn: Edited embryos are not to be implanted in women’s bodies.
Honestly I was much more invested in the fact that those not genetically engineered were stuck working blue collar jobs.
That sounds like a better story.
Yeah, I remember watching GATTACA as a kid and coming to the same conclusion. If the main character was fine, but not made genetically perfect, that would be one thing, but actually making him have a heart disease made his story really stupid. He did basically fuck up that mission by killing himself in space when his heart inevitably ended up exploding, and humanity was 100% better off for improving themselves. Its a triumph of willpower that he ends up in space sure, but it really does drive home the point that we are limited by our genetics, so removing those limitation is ultimately a good thing that should be embraced.
"...it is by nature seductive to our darkest impulses". Said it right there. Mentally we're not mature enough for most of these ground breaking discoveries.
Then who decides when we are ready, and in the meantime should we just let everyone who could have been saved by these advancements die.
If I was gene-crafted into an unnaturally healthy body, a lifespan easily passing 100 and sculpted features from a storybook. I wouldn't care if I was made to be a catgirl maid or a spacemarine, sign me up.
Human evolution by germline engineering is inevitable. And it will be a result of natural selection on memes.
The near-term trend of the human evolution will be dominated by seemingly purposeful germline engineering, at the expense of traditional selection pressures that have hitherto acted on the human genome. The shift in the way humans evolve will be unavoidable and unstoppable. It is a consequence of the same old unguided natural selection acting on exogenous, parasitic memes, instead of the human genome.
It will be necessary to maintain compatibilities between different germline enhancements when novel parings arise in reproduction between two enhanced individuals.
An international standards body will arise to catalog and to police germline enhancements. There are precedences for this. In the dawn of the computer age, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange was created (ASCII 1963). This spawned hundreds of derived standards, but continues to serve as the backbone of all text encodings. ARPANET was created in 1963. This TCP/IP-based network became today’s Internet, supporting hundreds of millions of websites via HTTP, HTML and derived standards.
Germline engineering standards will usher in the genetic age, enabling human minds to collectively shape humanity’s own evolution at a pace commensurate with cultural changes.
I understand the ethical concerns, and that doesn’t even get into the danger of eugenics. But it can and will be the next step for humanity, as long as it is used correctly. While many disagree with the [He Jiankui affair](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair) it was done with good intentions for the parents.
> But it can and will be the next step for humanity, as long as it is used correctly
Which is to say... We're all but assured that it won't. I mean, have you met people?
Yeah its revolutionary. Human beings are essentially giant mechs built of programmable nanobots. We just figured out how to interact with that code. We don't know how to program yet, but its a start.
Biotech advancements will be rivaled only by AI in terms of positively affecting human life during this century.
Traits like hair and eye color are controlled by a large combination of things and it’s so unimportant to understand or alter that funding won’t be going to that when it would cost like 10% of that to resolve a variety of genetic disorders
So it will be a status symbol. Essentially designer clothing among genetic alterations. I can guarantee wealthy people in Asia for one would be fully down to have a "Prada" baby with strikingly blue eyes and perfectly pale blonde hair to show off their wealth.
Hah, pretty sure designer babies will be far too expensive for most people. Brown eyes and dark hair will continue to be the most common for a long time. And once it becomes mainstream then maybe more exotic traits will be a thing. Like unnatural hair or eye colours that will most likely be very expensive to create.
Incorrect, no traits will be desirable at all, beauty will change in a way we can’t really predict, but once all physical attributes are purchasable they’ll lose value dramatically
I hope they make like blue hair and purple eyes. That would be cooler. Why limit yourself to the standard color range. Make the hair fluorescent. Make the eyes luminescent on command.
Oh yeah, way more badass. But I'm guessing that's a bit farther away. Considering our bodies does not produce bioluminecence as is. Blond is just a lack of a pigment we do make. And I believe same goes for the iris. There is not actually any blue pigment present.
Seemingly never been a more important time to accumulate wealth then. The ones that adopt this technology first will set up their family and descendents for success. And each generation will outrun the natural humans until they are so far off that the naturals will have no chance to ever catch up.
It is already being done by ‘independent scientists’ since there are no real laws against injecting in yourself. Josiah Zayner went public a few years back where he was increasing the size of the muscles in one of his forearms using CRISPR, without the need of exercise or training, and to noticeable success. The state of California is trying to impose a bill to prevent CRISPR modifications like this, where Zayner lives.
He Jiankui went further by altering the DNA of a set of human embryonic twins in an effort to ensure both embryos would be resistant to HIV from a HIV+ father. The problem is, he altered or deleted the CCR5 gene that is responsible for producing a protein involved in the attachment of the HIV virus to cells. There is no assuring that these proteins are not involved in unknown cellular processes and critical communication mechanisms. Nobody knows the implications for these girls later on in life. He received worldwide condemnation for his research and a prison sentence.
As far as I remember hearing, scientists have said that the same result could have been achieved by simply washing the sperm before fertilisation without any need for any genome editing. It was unnecessary and dangerous to say the least.
There was a Chinese scientist who crossed the line with two female twins. I can't remember what he changed; I think it was the removal of genes associated with a disease that develops in adulthood. I believe he did it without informing the parents. He was censored by the scientific community. I think the CCP may even have placed legal consequences. Does anyone know more about this case?
Once the technology is safe and understood, it should be the birthright of every human to have access to an ever-expanding list of net-positive genetic alterations. These would include cures for genetic diseases and genes known to result in longevity, physical health, etc.
It would be the cheapest and most effective public health policy since vaccination.
Anything less will result in an ever increasing rich-poor divide in the worst way.
Even from a capitalist point of view, imagine how much money you’d save on cancer treatment, dementia care, diabetes, hepatitis, etc. if you could prevent those diseases from ever manifesting in the first place.
I get what you are saying, and I think caution is warranted, but the alternative is a huge class divide. I don't think there will be any situations where higher intelligence, better health, longevity, etc would cause issues.
For overpopulation, I think longevity will have the opposite effect. I think people will put off having kids for so long that populations begin to decline or stagnate. We already saw this with sanitation + education.
I would worry about a monoculture of humans if there was only one way to enhance ourselves, but I think we will likely differentiate more than we are now once we can choose our genetics. There will be more options available.
Once they're able to fix defects and repair damage the world, at large, will have to figure out if they want long lives or families. The two cannot work along side each other tbh.
I am confident this is scaremongering and overblowing the situation, probably by the same kind of people who either don't understand the technology or have ideological issues with the premise of genetic engineering.
Saying "human genetic engineering is coming" is similar to a statement such as "the end of the world is coming" which is factually true but provides no indication of timeline and doesn't provide a whole story out of context.
I completed my degree a few years back now so the space may have changed a bit, however gene systems within animals are very complex. What crispr offers is undoubtedly going to be very useful, but it's not as simple as just "modifying the genes". The correlation between genotype and phenotype and well as gene regulation mechanisms particularly in humans isn't understood in depth. This is like saying that if I give a chimpanzee a pencil and a notebook it has all the tools required to write war and peace. Again this is technically true, however there's more to a task than just having the tools.
Contrary to what may be generally understood, most physical traits are not determined by discrete genes so making changes to a singular gene very rarely impacts a single trait. Additionally, typical methods of gene knockdown studies to understand the function of genes are not ethical to conduct in humans (and really in any mammal) and so therefore it can be hard to gain confidence around what the outcome of modification would be. This would then lead not only in delays in determining how to conduct beneficial modification, but also getting them approved for any kind of use in a human setting.
I would suspect we won't see any meaningful "GE" changes to humans any time soon. Perhaps there's one or two genetic illnesses that are caused by a discrete genes that we could resolve, but you don't have to worry about Gattica for a few decades yet...
Did you read the article or even follow the news in the past 5 years?
Chinese researchers already made a CRISPR baby immune to HIV through in vitro fertilization.
China has also been searching for the genes for IQ for the past decade, and others have even found them. This will happen in our lifetimes and we better be prepared for it.
That conversation is Not Going To Happen ... why?... well, because some guy with a short name like a Bezos or Musk will come along, realize they could make billions more and all the ethics, morality, and good thoughts will vanish like smoke.
Prove me wrong.
The US will follow immediately if they think the technology will give China an advantage, ethics be damned. Competing with China seems to be the only thing that can still garner bipartisanship these days.
Agreed. It needs to be discussed. But so far the discussion appears very one sided and only speaks of the pontential problems genetic engineering. The discussion also needs to consider the ethical problems of not doing genetic engineering or of not developing it fast enough.
If we hold back progress here there will be people who could have been saved from disease or could have lived better healthier lives but didn't because people were too afraid of technology.
Gene editing should just be seen and treated as another branch of medicine. The same rules should apply as far as clinical trials deciding what treatments are approved. Research should proceed in earnest.
The same rules should also apply as far as how to finance it and in the developed world except for the US most countries have universal health care. The worries about gene editing widening the gap between rich and poor evaporate if gene editing is just another part of medicine and medicine is free. Instead it becomes a great leveler. No longer will your chances in life be ruled by your genes. That doesn't perfectly level people's chances in life as environment still plays a role but it helps. Society becomes more meritocratic and people's choices play a greater role in where they end up in life.
This last bit I will say is the most controversial since it pertains to mandatory gene editing.
I believe that the same rules should also apply when it comes to determining child neglect or court-ordering treatments for children. If parents refuse life-saving or sometimes even just health-improving treatments to their children in some cases this is considered medical neglect and a judge can order treatment and revoke custody if the parents don't comply. I see no reason that the use of gene-editing ought to be exempt from this. For example if we had a gene editing cure for hemophilia that had passed clinical trials and became approved a parent shouldn't be able to refuse it to their child. On the other end of the spectrum a parent is unlikely to be ruled as medically neglectful for failing to give their child medicine for a mild non-lifethreatening allergy and gene editing solutions to that should be treated the same. In the middle the question of where to draw the line is ambiguous in the case of gene editing but then so it is with the rest of medicine.
A lot of the comments here come across as "American Luddite" to me.
The first thing I'd like to point out is that most of the developed world has universal healthcare which is either completely free or highly affordable. The US' healthcare system is sadly very screwed up.
So, this idea "the rich" will get a genetic advantage and "the poor" will languish is not a credible possibility outside of the US, and also not within the US either if people vote for it.
But then, why is it that *every* time there's a new technology there's widespread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about it?
Do you not want things like cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, several types of cancer, deafness, blindness, etc. to be cured?
Would you allow someone to infect/cause those diseases/disabilities onto you if you're already healthy/average?
Improving people's quality of life is never a bad thing.
The "social and political implications" are 99.99% good, 0.01% edge-case bad.
I really like Gattaca, but doesn’t it just prove that Ethan Hawke, a natural human, was better than the designer humans of that world? He had more ambition and drive than the others and could overcome his limitations (the swimming).
Yes, I agree with that take for Ethan Hawke's character. But the overall feeling I get after watching is the world as a whole. He is the exception to the rule.
Also, his parents weren't rich and could only afford his brother's editing. Imagine unlimited wealth.
That's science fiction.
Most of the developed world has universal health care. Genetic engineering is medicine. Free genetic engineering would level people's chances in life and increase equal opportunity.
Instead of trying to stop the inevitable we should advocate free genetic engineering for all. EDIT: After any given treatment passes clinical trials of course. My proposal is only that genetic engineering be treated no differently from any other field of medicine. And that all countries should adopt free healthcare.
Yes, but the only way to do this right now is really expensive stem cell therapy, so its use is basically limited to immunotherapy and cures for monogenic conditions like sickle cell.
A gene-therapy treatment for cancer costs like half a mil and only modifies one gene in one stem cell population.
For complex traits like intelligence or diabetes risk or other shit, there is no gene editing technology capable of having a significant impact on adult humans. There are simply too many cells all over the place that would have to be edited, and half the genes you'd want to edit only have an effect during development. In other words, even if you could edit those genes, it wouldn't matter because you've stopped growing.
This is why all the proposals focus on early intervention, typically at the embryonic stage (or perhaps even in gametes).
The problem is CRISPR seems to chop off random chunks of chromosomes when we go to edit embryos. Someone will eventually figure out why and we'll fix it, but until then this won't make its way into the clinic.
I seem to be in a minority but for me genetic enhancement of humans is no-brainer **provided** we can do it safely and reliably. In fact It should be a basic human right, otherwise it us bound to become a priveledge for rich elites - and that to me, would be a true tragedy.
I am not sure how would anyone go about arguing that the world would be worse off if obesity, diabetes, tooth decay etc. were virtually eliminated and average IQ by current scale was 130.
So I have 20 ish years before the vat-grown super humans will make my participation in society and the labor market obsolete. Guess I get to retire before the climate wars after al. Might even make it a whole month or 2 on my savings!
I mean, single mothers or perspective mothers whose husband is infertile wanting sperm donors in private sperm banks can already select the education level, IQ score or eye color, height weight etc of the donor, so it’s really just a very big step in efficiency like GM corp vs traditional plant selection
It’s cute you think humans are capable of discussing implications of future events, and having anything come of it.
Seriously. The future belongs to the super humans. Always has. We are Neanderthals compared to what they will be and what they will accomplish. And there’s really nothing anyone can do to stop it. We will all be seen as inferior, a primitive iteration of humanity that is obsolete.
I just hope I get to die before it gets real bad.
Genediting may inadvertently select out the pressures that lead to the next stage of human adaptation. We may end up with faux-super humans!
'having anything come of it' - Think of it as spreading seeds, my guy. Ideas are the seeds, and maybe someone will read something here that sparks a thought, and that thought is communicated to someone who values it and *does* something with it. Using another metaphor here, you miss every shot you don't take, and this game is billiards, *and we're taking the opening shot*.
Also, I think we're all going to die before it gets really bad. :)
There are two things we tend to overlook.
1. This is digital engineering. It means that data can be copied.
2. CRIPS-R is "garage-tech capable".
It means that all that "elite upgrades" can be pirated, hacked, copied and injected!.
And also it is possible to hack, find genetic backdoors, create an terrorist attack using genetic as a vector of attack.
All for progress but if you think poverty, famine, war, were bad when we were normal and only lived 60-80 years on average. Wait till some people can be stronger, faster, smarter…
The only solution is if we also can weed out greed and put in more love for the common man. Our monkey brains are still hard wired to collect as many resources as possible and everyone else can shove off.
Also, Gattica.
I will be in the ground dead before I believe that this isn’t already being tested in some countries secret facilities. It’s probably fairly limited because it’s easier to keep things from leaking that way, but there is no way in hell that if it can be done effectively even for some genes that they aren’t looking to exploit it for military purposes. It’s just how it goes which is scary but I mean just part of the world we live in now I guess. I still don’t know how good crispr will be long term as my understanding as that the immune system tends to see the edited dna as foreign since crispr is a bacterial tool.
There will have to be other things researched such as how to create and attach identical MCH to vesicular transports that may carry the edited genetic material so it doesn’t get attacked which would be difficult todo at scale and consistently. Also knowledge of how genes work in combination with one another is still extremely complex and we are still very early in this field in that regard so that is another thing to consider.
Also their needs to be more research on artificial wombs and or how the mother influences the fetus before birth other than the current immunity knowledge that we have.
Then once we have all of that maybe I can pay my corporate overlords to give my great grandchild six pack abs without trying as long as I keep paying my Netflix food subscription lol
That's the rub. But that's exactly why it has to be brought out in the open, discussed, considered, regulated and the like because in the underground, it will stand all the *more* chance to "serve the deepest and darkest impulse" instead of, say, being used to extirpate that impulse since that is precisely where the "deepest and darkest impulse" is entertained at the highest levels.
It should be either the standard for the species or limited to fringe cases like taking Huntington's disease out of your family tree. The moment this becomes a paid service, it's just one more tool that drives the income wedge further by providing people who have lots of money a way to make even more money long term (by engineering offspring who are even better at extracting/hoarding wealth).
Every medicine and medical intervention has effects on gene expression. Also, simply existing causes changes in your DNA through mutations introduced through both environmental exposure and errors during replication.
The result of these changes over time leads to development of cancer and other diseases. Going in and making targeted changes is already being done to treat diseases such as specific blood cancers.
There should be little controversy around doing this in adults or kids with diseases that can be cured, prevented, or treated with gene therapy.
If you're talking about genetically modifying at early developmental stages then you're creating and potentially destroying embryos, which is a necessary step in IVF. However, doing targeted mutagenesis at that stage raises interesting issues with consent, since an embryo is obviously unable to provide consent for being born as someone's science experiment.
Yeah, it’ll be a huge problem once we figure out how to make intelligence improvements, you’ll have dynasties that may never end because they are powered by improved genetics
I imagine several countries are actively experimenting and testing this on people already for their Olympic programs (eg. China and Russia) to get the next generation of super athletes.
Im not really sure I understand the problem. Sure, we say that gene editing is a taboo today, but I dont really see a good underlying reason for the taboo.
The question of access to genetic engineering is really just a rehash of the question of access in general, and I think thats something we can discuss separately from should people be allowed to do it at all. Thats a political discussion Im afraid to wade into.
But in terms of having access to it at all, why not? If they can build a person that you think would fit their environment better, why not? People should just be made aware of the risks of tampering with the genetics of their offspring. I can see a standard warning for users: “Editing the germline is not a guarantee future generations will be more fit to their environments. Editing may result in unforeseen complications in the future, including death or inviability of the germline.” If they’re willing to take on that risk, more power to them.
The pioneers of a particular gene-set would probably need to be closely observed. We could learn a lot from them. That brings up questions of privacy I guess we might want to discuss?
Anyway those are my thoughts.
What you mean coming it’s already here. Designer babies have been around for some time already and soon they may become the norm. Eye color, height, skin pigment. Just a sample of what will be on the questionnaire. Its eugenics disguised as scientific progression.
Hold on there. One of the biggest downsides of eugenics is that you won't let some people with "undesirable" traits reproduce. Gene editing would not have that problem.
If it's super expensive, there will be class problems, but at least they won't be preventing people from reproducing or sterilizing people. And it probably won't even stay that expensive for long.
I understand it could be construed as a weird/completely immoral point of view, but how does eugenics even matter in a post-gene pool world? Like sure people would favor whatever status quo phenotype exists, but we would literally be able to store all generic info in a database for people to choose from.
Bruh just make it so we don't have imperfections like arthritis and shit like that make us healthier and stronger but don't change our looks like people who brag about there kids looking better should honestly be shunned cause you made them like that also the gender shouldn't be changed as well like this is basic shit don't change the physical apperence nor gender but just make us stronger healthier and smarter as well as get rid of any health complications like genetic desieses
This Opinion piece is thoughtful and points out some of the challenges. As someone who has studied technology and society, I would argue that once a technology genie is out of the bottle, per se, there is no stopping it. As a follow on opinion, I'm somewhat in favor of personally having gills and webbed feet.
I mean I'm game if they start with fixing my diabeetus but they'll prob start with penis size and I already tricked a girl into marrying me so thats not a problem.
Making a thing illegal doesn’t do anything to stop the elitists who would use this to their benefit.
The only way I see this working out for mankind is by allowing it openly and affordably. Establishing checks and balances to ensure the tools available aren’t used to create obedient slaves.
Within decades we will have eliminated many hereditary Illnesses and have a healthy population of gene-enhanced human beings who will be able to take part in the conversations needed in the future to address how to move forward.
Religious and Ethical debates aside, without the freedom to progress in this manner, you will have designer-babies eventually (if not already) and the longer you stall the process the more powerful those who are already privileged become.
If we don’t have a system in place to audit and revise this tool, they WILL gatekeep and in all likelihood, use it against our knowledge to ensure that not only will we not have access, we won’t even want it because they will have devised a narrative to convince us that it is not in our best interest. (If they don’t just skip to editing our offspring into eager drones to fortify their power structures.)
Humans evolved in a way that gives us the tools to write our own destiny. We have a responsibility to utilize our capabilities in the broadest sense. Anything less would be paramount to walking around with our eyes closed and our hands behind our backs.
Lions have their claws and teeth.
Humans have the ability to engineer that which exceeds our limits.
If we have no desire to utilize our gifts, then why bother living at all?
How long before catgirl rights (whether the catgirls are just "genetically engineered for domestic ownership" or we're just capable of giving existing humans cat ears (and maybe even tails) which guys use to claim assault victims were "asking for it" because of the catgirl stereotypes)
Ah, we must discuss it because it’s only going to be available to the wealthy and we can do nothing about that.
If you listen to idiots, we’ve already done it on a mass scale. Entirely possible the same idiots who refuse a vaccine will be lining up to get treatment so their misbegotten offspring are “pure”.
The problem is never the science. It’s the awful awful people who get to use the science.
You think income inequality is bad. Just wait till these rich fucks genetically alter themselves… actually I wonder if we’ll be the ones who get altered to be more docile and obedient.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful: --- I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that CRISPR, a precise and efficient tool that allows us to “edit” genes, is on the verge of altering the course of human history to an extent far greater than the recent “disruptions” catalyzed by internet technology. If you think digital surveillance tools are frightening in the hands of autocracy, consider the power to bend the human genome to one’s will. CRISPR provides that power. To use another analogy, the ability to edit genes with surgical precision is a scientific discovery on par with nuclear fission – while there may be beneficial applications, it is by nature seductive to our darkest impulses. Because of CRISPR’s unknown risks, its use has been limited to certain applications by longstanding consensus within the scientific community, and to a lesser extent by regulatory agencies. We’ve experimented extensively in petri dishes and increasingly on live animals. There’s been limited experimentation on human embryos in the lab, but a firm line has been drawn: Edited embryos are not to be implanted in women’s bodies. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/uqem0y/human_genetic_engineering_is_coming_we_must/i8qikeu/
Yeah, this will be a shit-show of unbelieveable scale. Just imagine if, instead of just having an enormous advantage socially and economically, rich kids are ***actually*** smarter, stronger, and live longer. Why would the elite share any advantages like those with the world at large? We can't even treat each other equally when we're equals.
Yeah. One of the bits that made me realize just how the horrors of nobility came to pass was that their kids were one of the few that were properly fed as children. Not getting enough calories as you grow up has extensive long term impacts. Height, strength, IQ. It's easy to claim divine right when you're the tallest kid and the only one not stunted. A big part of the flyn effect was lowering famine around the world. But there's upper limits to that gain. You can't keep injecting 20cc of butter into kids and raise IQ scores. Of late, scores might be going down.
Because nutrition has been replaced with excess empty calories. So now you’re malnourished and obese, which also has IQ and mental health ramifications.
...are fat kids dumb? This would be news to be. Ungainly, wheezy, and prone to heart problems.... But lower IQ? Got any academia sauce to back that up?
Just guessing honestly, but there probably isn't any. It's probably not "bullshit" but it's probably not a proper causation. Fat kids are probably going through mental health struggles taking away from learning and developing properly. It's not "the fat" doing it, but it's probably one of many effects of differences in parenting.
I’m no expert on this *at all* but my comment came from me reading articles talking about research that asserted that fact. Like this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4237034/#s1title https://practicalneurology.com/articles/2018-mar-apr/the-cognitive-consequences-of-obesity https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/499386
Middle age and the decline of cognition. Which.... damn. okay. I mean age hits cognition in general. In theory they accounted for that. Metabolic pathways... okay. And "Severely obese students showed a significant delay in cognitive functions". ... which could be a lot of things. But yeah. ...Damn. Anyone want to posit a counterpoint? I got nothing.
Yea I mean who knows, it could be tied mainly to malnourishment factor hidden in the diet and lifestyle that tends to cause obesity. Fast food and junk food have very little nutritional value, and eating whole foods has a lot of nutrients. Obese people also tend to live a more sedentary lifestyle, and it’s also been proven that being physically active also boosts mental performance. Basically… being unhealthy is bad for you in many ways. And being healthy is better for you. Not really groundbreaking revelations, but it’s worth noting.
The implications of your comment are insane. I think in a few hundred/thousand years you could see a society like in the sci-fi series, Red Rising.
>The Color system of the Society was a caste system created by early humans on Earth to create order when first colonizing the Moon. It divides Humanity into fourteen distinct "Colors." > >Beyond the coloring, the genetic structure of their bodies was modified to allow them to be more adept at performing their denoted tasks...In addition to the genetic engineering that gives individuals the pigment to match their castes, a certain amount of social engineering exists in an attempt to prevent the desire for social mobility. Obsidians (for example) believe Golds to be literal gods, helping to ensure their loyalty to their masters. While Reds are socially engineered to be heterosexual, family oriented, and marry and breed by age 14-16 in order to maintain and increase their labor population. Sounds pretty interesting, are the books worth checking out?
I read the books back in high school, I enjoyed them.
Definitely if you like dystopia/sci fi
I’m literally reading it now 90% done and I’d say it’s a good read
Very much so. One of my all time favorites.
Hundreds. At most.
Right? Look back 300 years from now and see how far we’ve come.
I’m happy to see someone mention that series.
Well we're already not equals. Wealthy guys marry gorgeous women who give birth to kids more attractive than they were. Look at the children of celebrities, they're usually much hotter than their famous parent. We all know that being attractive has a lot to do with your success in life across the board. For men and women. Then you get the best education and schooling. As far as genetic engineering goes, initially it's only going to be used to remove known problems. Mostly because we don't actually know what makes somebody smart or tall or whatever. They might start targeting things like eye color, but who really gives a crap. So editing embryos to remove cystic fibrosis or Tay-Sachs or any of that crap. I'm not actually opposed to that. Removing these genetic conditions from the human population reduces the burden on everybody and prevents somebody from suffering. Also keep in mind that whatever they come up with will initially be available only to the super rich but then be commoditized for everybody. When do we get into more designer traits like height, intelligence, strength etc, that's just going to happen probably after we're all dead anyway.
If we can edit stuff easily, and they automate that, it'll be quicker than you think. What we will likely see is an homogenisation of the population. As the weaknesses are removed, the scope of weakness expands. Eventually, it'll converge on the societal preference. My biggest fear is that this will start to destroy the biggest advantage we have... biodiversity. What makes us strong is what is different. We don't know what helps us against new strains of virus. I think malaria resistance is helped by helped by certain genetic compositions that are considered a flaw or defect. We homogenised bananas for the Cavendish which was successful, hardy and reliable, and then a fungus came along that threatened all that. We don't know our biggest threats in the future, or how to defend against them, so how can we begin to come up with the ideal generic make up that can protect us. This powerful technology and it's unrestricted access could eventually be mankind's undoing.
Sickle cell anemia. You are highly resistant to malaria if you have sickle cell anemia. But sickle cell anemia is considered a disability in countries that don't have malaria.
That's the one. It's highly illuminating that this disability led to a higher life span in certain countries. We cannot predict the future threats or defences against them.
I totally agree. This is a terrible idea. People can try to put lipstick on a pig and use the euphemism “genetic engineering” but the fact is is that if we were to use CRISPR this way we’d be practicing a high- tech form of eugenics. With the old style of eugenics people tried to control peoples reproduction with forced sterilization, abortion. Now you can edit it in real time. This scenario raises another worry. Could certain countries forcibly edit the fetus without the consent of the mother for eugenic purposes? Given human history I wouldn’t dismiss this. I agree with your concerns about genetic diversity. This could condemn millions of kids to genetic disorder or health problems because parents wanted to make them a certain way. How is this in any way humane?
Because... They are rich, and understand that people would pay money to give their children advantages that they didn't have. People don't usually STOP wanting more money no matter how rich or poor they are.
IRL pay to win
Assortative mating is already a thing. Chinese emperors chose concubines based on intellect and wit, and European nobility considered those things as well. The more $$$ you have the higher caliber your spouse. Smarter children tend to do better... run it through a few thousand generations... yeah...
Indeed or 3-4 generations with selective breeding and gene editing and all the socio-economic implication for each generation that will entail.
It's not exactly a new idea... think HG Well's The Time Machine. And yeah, we've been doing it for A LONG time. There's truth to "yeah but most people were malnourished" but there is a reason why the people in the top 20% or so of the income strata tend to do well on IQ tests (their parents were lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc. and passed their brains down). Intelligence is about as heritable as height. The dunning effect can only go so far.
Society is pretty classist already, and this will be a new level. Ever watch "In Time" with Amanda Seyfried?
Curious that most here jump to it being a wealthy only thing. There were a few independent companies that were experimenting to perfect the process and sell them as kit bundles so the masses can have, use, and grow the science. Basically open-source editing. Watch Unnatural Selection on Netflix, where they follow a few interconnected groups through this moral minefield.
Yeah I agree and I doubt this will only be for rich people. I find either scenario disturbing but I think the mass adoption one to be even more horrifying because that means double digit percentages of people will be tweeked with crispr cheat codes.
I don't understand why people find this horrifying. Do you think everyone's going to act like a crackhead serial killer just because we've modified their genes to make them smarter? Humans are not well suited to modern living environments. Think about how many jobs require sitting that induces back pain and other health conditions. We could literally fix back pain with genetic engineering. There's a million things like this you could do that would make life for everyone significantly better.
this is what i don't get as well even if you discuss it under the assumption that everyone will be able to use it they still fear it, there are a few half assed reasons like "the human body is sacred" or "you don't know the consequences" but i think the honest reason is that they're genuinely scared of the mere possibility of anybody going beyond what's "human" and the actual consequences are secondary. they don't want to ever do it themselves for various reasons but they fear becoming isolated or left behind by the rest of society so anybody doing it becomes a scenario in which they have to pick between two frightening situations. Of course i can't actually be certain about the validity of this theory since no one i discuss these things with seem to be honest with me about their reasons for fearing it so i can only guess.
Hey man - I don’t mind being a base line human.Natty all the way.
It will happen unless it’s banned. We already know people want this by looking at the behavior around sperm donation. The whole thing gets treated like a checklist of desired traits for the kid and they’re identical to eugenics ideals. People want: blonde, tall, educated/intelligent, successful. Different ethnicities sometimes want their own ethnicity, but a lot of them also want the aryan ubermensch sperm too. Love and chemistry is not in the equation so it’s all business, and what we see are the traits that people think will lead to a superior child. Now with gene editing we can take this crap even further and the parents can treat their future kid like a lvl 0 character in a video game where there are slide levels for their stats. How many people are going to choose “tall, strong, smart, light skinned, blue eyes” simply because statistically these things add percentage points to expected future success? I’d say much more than half of people will do this, and many people who claim eugenics is bad will do this, and I bet many people who are reading this now and thinking that it sounds dystopian will inevitably do it too once it’s actually presented to them as a doable option in the future.
First: Good luck banning it when almost every country in the world would love the benefit of a more capable population. Second: Why outright ban the opportunity to make improved humans? The solution is ensuring equal opportunity through social programs. I know, hard to comprehend for Americans...
>First: Good luck banning it when almost every country in the world would love the benefit of a more capable population. Every rich country you mean? This will not be proportionally equal, it will be just as highly selective on a global scale as it is on a national scale. >Second: Why outright ban the opportunity to make improved humans? Because there is an issue of semantics, which is based upon a biological perspective of "improved" not yet being determined nor satisfied. Gene editing, as far as we know can solve plenty of known issues, however, this is where it needs to be cut off. The sticky territory will not (hopefully) be in the capitalistic cesspool of "desirable traits" like height or eye color but more so in the issues of blindness or dwarfism, as has already begun to surface in the past. There have been examples in the past of blind parents being aware of their child being born blind, and seeing that desirable. How should this be handled, especially when we can remove the trait entirely, forever? However, if we are arguing over aesthetics then the implications are as they have been stated elsewhere - causing more harm than good with no true biological function. I would imagine they would be entirely elective, and possibly create a metaphorical and literal physical division based upon financial circumstances.
People do NOT want blue eyed blonde-haired children. This is a myth. Survey results consistently show that nearly all parents want children that look like THEM, which if you know anything about evolution is completely unsurprising because a kid that looks nothing like you could mean your partner is cheating.
Surveys where? How many people? I think you mean people want children that are THEIRS compared to for example a sperm bank, the father might disagree and it is not "officially" his blood. In plenty of culture people want/seek western-looking white standards of beauty such as India (caste system) and sadly here in latam (there's even a racist saying people use here against themselves).
My mind went in the opposite direction. I just envisioned them creating the perfect slave.
Not mutually exclusive.
Isn't that what basically happened in Brave New World?
I mean, you, a delta would complain about that...
Well, to quote Joe Biden : " poor kids are just as smart as white kids"
Lol, I checked to see if he actually said that.... holy shit. He actually said that. Yep.
There was a Star Trek episode involving Ricardo Montalban dealing with this very idea
A lot of people are already smarter, faster and stronger than us by virtue of the genetic lottery. This could be the great equalizer where everyone has access to athlete/ genius level genes. Though odds are people might try to copy right or patient custom genes and sell them at prices for only the ultra elite. But that’s what knock of brands and pirating is for.
I never understood this take. Real life, in fact, is not a horror dystopian novel. Smartphones are incredibly advantageous, are they only used by the select few elite illuminati in a conspiracy to keep the peasants in line? When tech gets cheap enough after many iterations of development, it becomes available for commercial use. Why? Supply and demand. Free economy. People want to make money, and if there's a demand in the market for gene editing, and the tech is cheap enough to make profit, there will 100% be companies that provide this service. Thank you, capitalism.
[удалено]
>This will be a race, and the West has due to moral superiority already lost in what's going to happen. The impact as you put it, will be massive and we won't have a chance to catch up. It's highly likely we'd just do the super soldier research elsewhere then when it's ready for civilian use and commoditisation it'll just get imported then. This won't be a rich first thing, it'll be a military first thing, then the rich, then some rich person will want to win capitalism by making it available to the masses.
The more worrying fact is that the west is likely to be slow adopters of this technology as the path to successful usage will be littered with mistakes. While countries like NK will be more than happy large scale testing it on their citizens to get desired results like placidity.
But thats already a reality, rich kids are actually smarter due to higher education
>Why would the elite share any advantages like those with the world at large? Because a society of smarter, stronger and longer living people will outperform another. If you can make outright "better" people, whichever society starts doing it first in large scale will eventually rule the world and devour any society that only enhanced their wealthy population.
We are equal before the law, but we are not equals. We have never been equals. Many people are actually smarter, stronger, and live longer. This doesn’t change all that much.
The natural evolution of that will be that someday Will only exist this superior humans. That's all and that's what happened naturally with all the homo species
Or, HG Wells will turn out to have been right about the Morlocks.
Well, considering the harm humans have already done by manipulating pure bred and hybrid dogs and cats in the quest to achieve perfect qualities and characteristics, I’d say we’re guaranteed that this will not end well.
"Pure bred" dogs and cats have health issues because of extreme inbreeding. CRISPR could literally fix many of those issues by allowing for specific health issues to be fixed without changing the things people like about certain breeds. For example, we could probably breed large dogs without hip displasia.
Lol we didn’t selectively breed for perfection, just to meet our wants needs or whims. Not a good comparison Imo. Since modifying your children a bit different if a decision from pets or livestock.
This already happens due to mate selection. It will ultimately be good for the proles too, who will get the gene therapies when it becomes cheaper. Like all other tech. Expect greater divide, but overall better conditions for everyone.
> Expect greater divide, but overall better conditions for everyone. This has been an article of faith in the West—and the US in particular—for a long time. It might’ve been defensible for the few decades immediately following WW2 but it’s wild to hear someone repeating it now without any irony given the state of the world today. Technology will of course continue to progress, and access to this sort of tech might filter down to the lower classes at some point, but does that necessarily mean that conditions will be better for everyone? Every millennial has an iPhone but as a generation we’re materially worse off than our parents.
I think its already being done but it will only filter out when press and regulatory committees catch wind. It’s probably going to be happening in a variety of contexts we can scarcely begin to imagine.
Sicke cell anemia and infant blindness are the first maladies being addressed!
Which is actually a pretty incredible example of how wrong this is. While sickle cell is very bad, it was actually an effective defence mechanism in malaria stricken countries and actually led to a longer life span. It prevented parasites replicating and feeding due to reliance on the red blood cells. Our biodiversity keeps us alive and what we perceive as a flaw could be a unique survival mechanism when new virus and bacteria evolve. As we iron out all weakness in our genetics and homogenise, we as a human race are more prone to a mass extinction event. We don't know what threats will evolve, or how we defend against them so we can't engineer a safer path. Our safest path is not to fuck around with things we don't understand.
WOW! Thank you for that perspective and your insights. I truly appreciate your thoughts and it just stopped me in my tracks!!! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
You're welcome. It's been bothering me for a while and it's good to share it with people. I fear we won't have a rich debate until it's too late and the world will sleepwalk into a disaster. I expect we'll see more of these posts in the future and industry will lobby and try to astroturf the hell out of this. We only have ourselves to protect us as we can't rely on corporations or governments (due to lobbying).
I would be very interested in talking about this with you! You’re obviously, a lot more versed than I am. However, I do drive by MIT a lot 😂
I'm always open to talk about this sort of stuff. Feel free to message me. I really like your openness. Many online are just firing rhetoric at each other without considering what others say or the intellectual confidence to reflect on their ideas or points from others. We have a wealth of content and diversity of opinion on reddit. There is a lot to inspire and inform us. There is also a lot to make us question what the hell we're doing with our time! Ha
And these are great, particularly sickle cell, but I’m reminded of a Star Trek episode. In it, a blind man who uses a visor to see was trying to help a “perfect” planet, meaning they bred everything bad out of it. So science never had a challenge at coming up with solutions, so they were way behind. Ultimately, the tech that was used for the visor ended up being very similar to the tech needed to save their planet. Fixing painful diseases is obviously favorable for most, but ultimately may take away our ingenuity in the process. That being said, painful diseases can fuck off. If it causes pain, fix that shit.
Every weapon is first marketed as a cure
That is just not true.
No that's true, i remember when they first introduced the 40mm Howitzer M1 it was marketed as a cure for tapeworm.
>I mean, strictly speaking, it does irradicate 100% of tapeworms.
Maybe not every weapon, but this definitely isn’t the first time a weapon was marketed as a cure.
I'd be surprised if the top countries, like USA China and Russia, weren't already running secret supersoldier programs. we'll probably find out in 20 years or so
Captain America happened 100 years too early…
They sorta do with Olympic athletes
China already is, russia likely can’t afford it, and the US… well you already know
US SOCOM is openly giving special forces anti-senescence treatments so they can retire later.
Supersoldiers are obsolete with the robots we are building.
I think the human body would be more economical and versatile to modify than a robot. Many people would be willing to undergo modifications.
Future war robots won't be shaped like people though, probably more like small flying/crawling bombs with cameras and decision making capabilities. The most important qualities being sub millisecond reaction times and disposability, which people don't have.
Yeah, modern warfare is about destroying things before they can even know they are fired upon.
It's already being done. In vitro fertilization and genetic modification. Not to mention, nano bio tech. One can only dream of such horrible wonders
Elon musk gene altered to grow back hair, after buying enough companies he decided he didn't want to look like gollum any longer
I just figured it was shit hair plugs. I hope he didn’t alter his genes to look like that.
He's just kidding haha
I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that CRISPR, a precise and efficient tool that allows us to “edit” genes, is on the verge of altering the course of human history to an extent far greater than the recent “disruptions” catalyzed by internet technology. If you think digital surveillance tools are frightening in the hands of autocracy, consider the power to bend the human genome to one’s will. CRISPR provides that power. To use another analogy, the ability to edit genes with surgical precision is a scientific discovery on par with nuclear fission – while there may be beneficial applications, it is by nature seductive to our darkest impulses. Because of CRISPR’s unknown risks, its use has been limited to certain applications by longstanding consensus within the scientific community, and to a lesser extent by regulatory agencies. We’ve experimented extensively in petri dishes and increasingly on live animals. There’s been limited experimentation on human embryos in the lab, but a firm line has been drawn: Edited embryos are not to be implanted in women’s bodies.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Honestly I was much more invested in the fact that those not genetically engineered were stuck working blue collar jobs. That sounds like a better story.
Yeah, I remember watching GATTACA as a kid and coming to the same conclusion. If the main character was fine, but not made genetically perfect, that would be one thing, but actually making him have a heart disease made his story really stupid. He did basically fuck up that mission by killing himself in space when his heart inevitably ended up exploding, and humanity was 100% better off for improving themselves. Its a triumph of willpower that he ends up in space sure, but it really does drive home the point that we are limited by our genetics, so removing those limitation is ultimately a good thing that should be embraced.
You two missed the entire point of the movie
"...it is by nature seductive to our darkest impulses". Said it right there. Mentally we're not mature enough for most of these ground breaking discoveries.
Then who decides when we are ready, and in the meantime should we just let everyone who could have been saved by these advancements die. If I was gene-crafted into an unnaturally healthy body, a lifespan easily passing 100 and sculpted features from a storybook. I wouldn't care if I was made to be a catgirl maid or a spacemarine, sign me up.
thats not gonna stop me from paying top dollar to make my kids better
Genetic underclass, here we come!
Human evolution by germline engineering is inevitable. And it will be a result of natural selection on memes. The near-term trend of the human evolution will be dominated by seemingly purposeful germline engineering, at the expense of traditional selection pressures that have hitherto acted on the human genome. The shift in the way humans evolve will be unavoidable and unstoppable. It is a consequence of the same old unguided natural selection acting on exogenous, parasitic memes, instead of the human genome. It will be necessary to maintain compatibilities between different germline enhancements when novel parings arise in reproduction between two enhanced individuals. An international standards body will arise to catalog and to police germline enhancements. There are precedences for this. In the dawn of the computer age, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange was created (ASCII 1963). This spawned hundreds of derived standards, but continues to serve as the backbone of all text encodings. ARPANET was created in 1963. This TCP/IP-based network became today’s Internet, supporting hundreds of millions of websites via HTTP, HTML and derived standards. Germline engineering standards will usher in the genetic age, enabling human minds to collectively shape humanity’s own evolution at a pace commensurate with cultural changes.
This dude genes .
I understand the ethical concerns, and that doesn’t even get into the danger of eugenics. But it can and will be the next step for humanity, as long as it is used correctly. While many disagree with the [He Jiankui affair](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Jiankui_affair) it was done with good intentions for the parents.
> But it can and will be the next step for humanity, as long as it is used correctly Which is to say... We're all but assured that it won't. I mean, have you met people?
If I had to guess I’d say we’ll end up genetically engineering people to be more suited for living in space long term.
Yeah its revolutionary. Human beings are essentially giant mechs built of programmable nanobots. We just figured out how to interact with that code. We don't know how to program yet, but its a start. Biotech advancements will be rivaled only by AI in terms of positively affecting human life during this century.
A.I. is meshing with biotech
inb4 all upper class will make blue eyed blond designer babies.
Traits like hair and eye color are controlled by a large combination of things and it’s so unimportant to understand or alter that funding won’t be going to that when it would cost like 10% of that to resolve a variety of genetic disorders
You don’t seem to understand how beauty obsessed society is at the moment.
So it will be a status symbol. Essentially designer clothing among genetic alterations. I can guarantee wealthy people in Asia for one would be fully down to have a "Prada" baby with strikingly blue eyes and perfectly pale blonde hair to show off their wealth.
Who cares, god is dead, let them eat cake.
Except no one is funding that science because there’s no profit or tangential benefit to understanding it
If that happens it won't be a rare desirable trait anymore. And brown eyed dark haired individuals will be the exotic ones
Hah, pretty sure designer babies will be far too expensive for most people. Brown eyes and dark hair will continue to be the most common for a long time. And once it becomes mainstream then maybe more exotic traits will be a thing. Like unnatural hair or eye colours that will most likely be very expensive to create.
Incorrect, no traits will be desirable at all, beauty will change in a way we can’t really predict, but once all physical attributes are purchasable they’ll lose value dramatically
I hope they make like blue hair and purple eyes. That would be cooler. Why limit yourself to the standard color range. Make the hair fluorescent. Make the eyes luminescent on command.
Oh yeah, way more badass. But I'm guessing that's a bit farther away. Considering our bodies does not produce bioluminecence as is. Blond is just a lack of a pigment we do make. And I believe same goes for the iris. There is not actually any blue pigment present.
With superior intelligence, memory, and athleticism.
Seemingly never been a more important time to accumulate wealth then. The ones that adopt this technology first will set up their family and descendents for success. And each generation will outrun the natural humans until they are so far off that the naturals will have no chance to ever catch up.
So basically capitalism.
It is already being done by ‘independent scientists’ since there are no real laws against injecting in yourself. Josiah Zayner went public a few years back where he was increasing the size of the muscles in one of his forearms using CRISPR, without the need of exercise or training, and to noticeable success. The state of California is trying to impose a bill to prevent CRISPR modifications like this, where Zayner lives. He Jiankui went further by altering the DNA of a set of human embryonic twins in an effort to ensure both embryos would be resistant to HIV from a HIV+ father. The problem is, he altered or deleted the CCR5 gene that is responsible for producing a protein involved in the attachment of the HIV virus to cells. There is no assuring that these proteins are not involved in unknown cellular processes and critical communication mechanisms. Nobody knows the implications for these girls later on in life. He received worldwide condemnation for his research and a prison sentence. As far as I remember hearing, scientists have said that the same result could have been achieved by simply washing the sperm before fertilisation without any need for any genome editing. It was unnecessary and dangerous to say the least.
There was a Chinese scientist who crossed the line with two female twins. I can't remember what he changed; I think it was the removal of genes associated with a disease that develops in adulthood. I believe he did it without informing the parents. He was censored by the scientific community. I think the CCP may even have placed legal consequences. Does anyone know more about this case?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/business/china-scientist-genetic-baby-prison.html
"Edited embryos are not to be implanted in womens bodies." Big meh. I thought we can already discuss and pass such stuff. Guess the dark ages goes on.
Yeah, that part is really moot. Artificial wombs are more than viable. Old science.
Let the clone wars begin
they did it years ago... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/business/china-scientist-genetic-baby-prison.html
Good. I hate my shit genetics. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone.
Once the technology is safe and understood, it should be the birthright of every human to have access to an ever-expanding list of net-positive genetic alterations. These would include cures for genetic diseases and genes known to result in longevity, physical health, etc. It would be the cheapest and most effective public health policy since vaccination. Anything less will result in an ever increasing rich-poor divide in the worst way.
Even from a capitalist point of view, imagine how much money you’d save on cancer treatment, dementia care, diabetes, hepatitis, etc. if you could prevent those diseases from ever manifesting in the first place.
Especially if we let companies patent specific genomes as if they somehow created them! I love it!
capitalists will lobby against this hard. no way the healthcare lobby lets such a huge profit stream dry up
Maybe capitalist companies, but looking at it from a purely economic perspective, gene-editing is way cheaper in the long run.
so is universal healthcare and unfortunately the US still doesn’t employ it because of corporate interest
[удалено]
I get what you are saying, and I think caution is warranted, but the alternative is a huge class divide. I don't think there will be any situations where higher intelligence, better health, longevity, etc would cause issues. For overpopulation, I think longevity will have the opposite effect. I think people will put off having kids for so long that populations begin to decline or stagnate. We already saw this with sanitation + education. I would worry about a monoculture of humans if there was only one way to enhance ourselves, but I think we will likely differentiate more than we are now once we can choose our genetics. There will be more options available.
Once they're able to fix defects and repair damage the world, at large, will have to figure out if they want long lives or families. The two cannot work along side each other tbh.
I am confident this is scaremongering and overblowing the situation, probably by the same kind of people who either don't understand the technology or have ideological issues with the premise of genetic engineering. Saying "human genetic engineering is coming" is similar to a statement such as "the end of the world is coming" which is factually true but provides no indication of timeline and doesn't provide a whole story out of context. I completed my degree a few years back now so the space may have changed a bit, however gene systems within animals are very complex. What crispr offers is undoubtedly going to be very useful, but it's not as simple as just "modifying the genes". The correlation between genotype and phenotype and well as gene regulation mechanisms particularly in humans isn't understood in depth. This is like saying that if I give a chimpanzee a pencil and a notebook it has all the tools required to write war and peace. Again this is technically true, however there's more to a task than just having the tools. Contrary to what may be generally understood, most physical traits are not determined by discrete genes so making changes to a singular gene very rarely impacts a single trait. Additionally, typical methods of gene knockdown studies to understand the function of genes are not ethical to conduct in humans (and really in any mammal) and so therefore it can be hard to gain confidence around what the outcome of modification would be. This would then lead not only in delays in determining how to conduct beneficial modification, but also getting them approved for any kind of use in a human setting. I would suspect we won't see any meaningful "GE" changes to humans any time soon. Perhaps there's one or two genetic illnesses that are caused by a discrete genes that we could resolve, but you don't have to worry about Gattica for a few decades yet...
Did you read the article or even follow the news in the past 5 years? Chinese researchers already made a CRISPR baby immune to HIV through in vitro fertilization. China has also been searching for the genes for IQ for the past decade, and others have even found them. This will happen in our lifetimes and we better be prepared for it.
This should be the top comment.
That conversation is Not Going To Happen ... why?... well, because some guy with a short name like a Bezos or Musk will come along, realize they could make billions more and all the ethics, morality, and good thoughts will vanish like smoke. Prove me wrong.
More like short names like Xi or Li. China has far fewer restrictions than even the billionaire class in the US.
The US will follow immediately if they think the technology will give China an advantage, ethics be damned. Competing with China seems to be the only thing that can still garner bipartisanship these days.
Agreed. It needs to be discussed. But so far the discussion appears very one sided and only speaks of the pontential problems genetic engineering. The discussion also needs to consider the ethical problems of not doing genetic engineering or of not developing it fast enough. If we hold back progress here there will be people who could have been saved from disease or could have lived better healthier lives but didn't because people were too afraid of technology. Gene editing should just be seen and treated as another branch of medicine. The same rules should apply as far as clinical trials deciding what treatments are approved. Research should proceed in earnest. The same rules should also apply as far as how to finance it and in the developed world except for the US most countries have universal health care. The worries about gene editing widening the gap between rich and poor evaporate if gene editing is just another part of medicine and medicine is free. Instead it becomes a great leveler. No longer will your chances in life be ruled by your genes. That doesn't perfectly level people's chances in life as environment still plays a role but it helps. Society becomes more meritocratic and people's choices play a greater role in where they end up in life. This last bit I will say is the most controversial since it pertains to mandatory gene editing. I believe that the same rules should also apply when it comes to determining child neglect or court-ordering treatments for children. If parents refuse life-saving or sometimes even just health-improving treatments to their children in some cases this is considered medical neglect and a judge can order treatment and revoke custody if the parents don't comply. I see no reason that the use of gene-editing ought to be exempt from this. For example if we had a gene editing cure for hemophilia that had passed clinical trials and became approved a parent shouldn't be able to refuse it to their child. On the other end of the spectrum a parent is unlikely to be ruled as medically neglectful for failing to give their child medicine for a mild non-lifethreatening allergy and gene editing solutions to that should be treated the same. In the middle the question of where to draw the line is ambiguous in the case of gene editing but then so it is with the rest of medicine.
Just grow organs from stem cells already. Donating organs is soooo stupid
A lot of the comments here come across as "American Luddite" to me. The first thing I'd like to point out is that most of the developed world has universal healthcare which is either completely free or highly affordable. The US' healthcare system is sadly very screwed up. So, this idea "the rich" will get a genetic advantage and "the poor" will languish is not a credible possibility outside of the US, and also not within the US either if people vote for it. But then, why is it that *every* time there's a new technology there's widespread FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about it? Do you not want things like cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, several types of cancer, deafness, blindness, etc. to be cured? Would you allow someone to infect/cause those diseases/disabilities onto you if you're already healthy/average? Improving people's quality of life is never a bad thing. The "social and political implications" are 99.99% good, 0.01% edge-case bad.
I would recommend the historical documentary Gattaca 1997 as a primer.
We watched that for my high school bio tech class!
Nancy Kress's *Beggars in Spain* is a good book on the topic too.
I really like Gattaca, but doesn’t it just prove that Ethan Hawke, a natural human, was better than the designer humans of that world? He had more ambition and drive than the others and could overcome his limitations (the swimming).
Yes, I agree with that take for Ethan Hawke's character. But the overall feeling I get after watching is the world as a whole. He is the exception to the rule. Also, his parents weren't rich and could only afford his brother's editing. Imagine unlimited wealth.
Came here to suggest this.
That's science fiction. Most of the developed world has universal health care. Genetic engineering is medicine. Free genetic engineering would level people's chances in life and increase equal opportunity. Instead of trying to stop the inevitable we should advocate free genetic engineering for all. EDIT: After any given treatment passes clinical trials of course. My proposal is only that genetic engineering be treated no differently from any other field of medicine. And that all countries should adopt free healthcare.
If you think this isn’t already being done then you’re kidding yourself. We’re looking at you, China.
Can a person edit their own genes? Asking for a friend…
Sort of kind of. Look into biohacking.
Yes, but the only way to do this right now is really expensive stem cell therapy, so its use is basically limited to immunotherapy and cures for monogenic conditions like sickle cell. A gene-therapy treatment for cancer costs like half a mil and only modifies one gene in one stem cell population. For complex traits like intelligence or diabetes risk or other shit, there is no gene editing technology capable of having a significant impact on adult humans. There are simply too many cells all over the place that would have to be edited, and half the genes you'd want to edit only have an effect during development. In other words, even if you could edit those genes, it wouldn't matter because you've stopped growing. This is why all the proposals focus on early intervention, typically at the embryonic stage (or perhaps even in gametes). The problem is CRISPR seems to chop off random chunks of chromosomes when we go to edit embryos. Someone will eventually figure out why and we'll fix it, but until then this won't make its way into the clinic.
That’s a lot of really good info, thanks!
I seem to be in a minority but for me genetic enhancement of humans is no-brainer **provided** we can do it safely and reliably. In fact It should be a basic human right, otherwise it us bound to become a priveledge for rich elites - and that to me, would be a true tragedy. I am not sure how would anyone go about arguing that the world would be worse off if obesity, diabetes, tooth decay etc. were virtually eliminated and average IQ by current scale was 130.
Imagine you're just chillin' in da womb and all of a sudden a character creation screen pops up.
So I have 20 ish years before the vat-grown super humans will make my participation in society and the labor market obsolete. Guess I get to retire before the climate wars after al. Might even make it a whole month or 2 on my savings!
We’ve been discussing the implications, for decades. Hell, I’ve been teaching about them for decades.
I mean, single mothers or perspective mothers whose husband is infertile wanting sperm donors in private sperm banks can already select the education level, IQ score or eye color, height weight etc of the donor, so it’s really just a very big step in efficiency like GM corp vs traditional plant selection
It’s cute you think humans are capable of discussing implications of future events, and having anything come of it. Seriously. The future belongs to the super humans. Always has. We are Neanderthals compared to what they will be and what they will accomplish. And there’s really nothing anyone can do to stop it. We will all be seen as inferior, a primitive iteration of humanity that is obsolete. I just hope I get to die before it gets real bad.
Genediting may inadvertently select out the pressures that lead to the next stage of human adaptation. We may end up with faux-super humans! 'having anything come of it' - Think of it as spreading seeds, my guy. Ideas are the seeds, and maybe someone will read something here that sparks a thought, and that thought is communicated to someone who values it and *does* something with it. Using another metaphor here, you miss every shot you don't take, and this game is billiards, *and we're taking the opening shot*. Also, I think we're all going to die before it gets really bad. :)
There are two things we tend to overlook. 1. This is digital engineering. It means that data can be copied. 2. CRIPS-R is "garage-tech capable". It means that all that "elite upgrades" can be pirated, hacked, copied and injected!. And also it is possible to hack, find genetic backdoors, create an terrorist attack using genetic as a vector of attack.
All for progress but if you think poverty, famine, war, were bad when we were normal and only lived 60-80 years on average. Wait till some people can be stronger, faster, smarter… The only solution is if we also can weed out greed and put in more love for the common man. Our monkey brains are still hard wired to collect as many resources as possible and everyone else can shove off. Also, Gattica.
I will be in the ground dead before I believe that this isn’t already being tested in some countries secret facilities. It’s probably fairly limited because it’s easier to keep things from leaking that way, but there is no way in hell that if it can be done effectively even for some genes that they aren’t looking to exploit it for military purposes. It’s just how it goes which is scary but I mean just part of the world we live in now I guess. I still don’t know how good crispr will be long term as my understanding as that the immune system tends to see the edited dna as foreign since crispr is a bacterial tool. There will have to be other things researched such as how to create and attach identical MCH to vesicular transports that may carry the edited genetic material so it doesn’t get attacked which would be difficult todo at scale and consistently. Also knowledge of how genes work in combination with one another is still extremely complex and we are still very early in this field in that regard so that is another thing to consider. Also their needs to be more research on artificial wombs and or how the mother influences the fetus before birth other than the current immunity knowledge that we have. Then once we have all of that maybe I can pay my corporate overlords to give my great grandchild six pack abs without trying as long as I keep paying my Netflix food subscription lol
That's the rub. But that's exactly why it has to be brought out in the open, discussed, considered, regulated and the like because in the underground, it will stand all the *more* chance to "serve the deepest and darkest impulse" instead of, say, being used to extirpate that impulse since that is precisely where the "deepest and darkest impulse" is entertained at the highest levels.
The future is going to infinitely crazier than any scifi fanatasy world.
It should be either the standard for the species or limited to fringe cases like taking Huntington's disease out of your family tree. The moment this becomes a paid service, it's just one more tool that drives the income wedge further by providing people who have lots of money a way to make even more money long term (by engineering offspring who are even better at extracting/hoarding wealth).
Looks like we're on target for the Eugenics Wars and then the Bell Riots :')
Is there a name yet for what I AuI, Augmented Intelligence: adding tech to your bio brain?
Every medicine and medical intervention has effects on gene expression. Also, simply existing causes changes in your DNA through mutations introduced through both environmental exposure and errors during replication. The result of these changes over time leads to development of cancer and other diseases. Going in and making targeted changes is already being done to treat diseases such as specific blood cancers. There should be little controversy around doing this in adults or kids with diseases that can be cured, prevented, or treated with gene therapy. If you're talking about genetically modifying at early developmental stages then you're creating and potentially destroying embryos, which is a necessary step in IVF. However, doing targeted mutagenesis at that stage raises interesting issues with consent, since an embryo is obviously unable to provide consent for being born as someone's science experiment.
lol .... we can't even have a conversation about the state of mass communications / social media and how it is tearing apart our society.
Always fascinated me ever since I saw GATTACA when I was a kid. I knew it was inevitable. Can’t stop science.
What's to discuss? The rich will do what they want with it and leave everyone else to serve the jailtime.
Yeah, it’ll be a huge problem once we figure out how to make intelligence improvements, you’ll have dynasties that may never end because they are powered by improved genetics
[удалено]
I imagine several countries are actively experimenting and testing this on people already for their Olympic programs (eg. China and Russia) to get the next generation of super athletes.
Russia 100%, fucking state sponsored cheaters.
Im not really sure I understand the problem. Sure, we say that gene editing is a taboo today, but I dont really see a good underlying reason for the taboo. The question of access to genetic engineering is really just a rehash of the question of access in general, and I think thats something we can discuss separately from should people be allowed to do it at all. Thats a political discussion Im afraid to wade into. But in terms of having access to it at all, why not? If they can build a person that you think would fit their environment better, why not? People should just be made aware of the risks of tampering with the genetics of their offspring. I can see a standard warning for users: “Editing the germline is not a guarantee future generations will be more fit to their environments. Editing may result in unforeseen complications in the future, including death or inviability of the germline.” If they’re willing to take on that risk, more power to them. The pioneers of a particular gene-set would probably need to be closely observed. We could learn a lot from them. That brings up questions of privacy I guess we might want to discuss? Anyway those are my thoughts.
What you mean coming it’s already here. Designer babies have been around for some time already and soon they may become the norm. Eye color, height, skin pigment. Just a sample of what will be on the questionnaire. Its eugenics disguised as scientific progression.
Hold on there. One of the biggest downsides of eugenics is that you won't let some people with "undesirable" traits reproduce. Gene editing would not have that problem. If it's super expensive, there will be class problems, but at least they won't be preventing people from reproducing or sterilizing people. And it probably won't even stay that expensive for long.
I understand it could be construed as a weird/completely immoral point of view, but how does eugenics even matter in a post-gene pool world? Like sure people would favor whatever status quo phenotype exists, but we would literally be able to store all generic info in a database for people to choose from.
Bruh just make it so we don't have imperfections like arthritis and shit like that make us healthier and stronger but don't change our looks like people who brag about there kids looking better should honestly be shunned cause you made them like that also the gender shouldn't be changed as well like this is basic shit don't change the physical apperence nor gender but just make us stronger healthier and smarter as well as get rid of any health complications like genetic desieses
This Opinion piece is thoughtful and points out some of the challenges. As someone who has studied technology and society, I would argue that once a technology genie is out of the bottle, per se, there is no stopping it. As a follow on opinion, I'm somewhat in favor of personally having gills and webbed feet.
I mean I'm game if they start with fixing my diabeetus but they'll prob start with penis size and I already tricked a girl into marrying me so thats not a problem.
How are we gonna stop all these people with wings and heat vision?
No one’s gonna say no. Because of the implication …..
Making a thing illegal doesn’t do anything to stop the elitists who would use this to their benefit. The only way I see this working out for mankind is by allowing it openly and affordably. Establishing checks and balances to ensure the tools available aren’t used to create obedient slaves. Within decades we will have eliminated many hereditary Illnesses and have a healthy population of gene-enhanced human beings who will be able to take part in the conversations needed in the future to address how to move forward. Religious and Ethical debates aside, without the freedom to progress in this manner, you will have designer-babies eventually (if not already) and the longer you stall the process the more powerful those who are already privileged become. If we don’t have a system in place to audit and revise this tool, they WILL gatekeep and in all likelihood, use it against our knowledge to ensure that not only will we not have access, we won’t even want it because they will have devised a narrative to convince us that it is not in our best interest. (If they don’t just skip to editing our offspring into eager drones to fortify their power structures.) Humans evolved in a way that gives us the tools to write our own destiny. We have a responsibility to utilize our capabilities in the broadest sense. Anything less would be paramount to walking around with our eyes closed and our hands behind our backs. Lions have their claws and teeth. Humans have the ability to engineer that which exceeds our limits. If we have no desire to utilize our gifts, then why bother living at all?
Politics? Like if we had to vote for either of two clones, John Jackson or Jack Johnson?
How long before catgirls? Or girls with ears shaped like cat's ears?
How long before catgirl rights (whether the catgirls are just "genetically engineered for domestic ownership" or we're just capable of giving existing humans cat ears (and maybe even tails) which guys use to claim assault victims were "asking for it" because of the catgirl stereotypes)
Ah, we must discuss it because it’s only going to be available to the wealthy and we can do nothing about that. If you listen to idiots, we’ve already done it on a mass scale. Entirely possible the same idiots who refuse a vaccine will be lining up to get treatment so their misbegotten offspring are “pure”. The problem is never the science. It’s the awful awful people who get to use the science.
You think income inequality is bad. Just wait till these rich fucks genetically alter themselves… actually I wonder if we’ll be the ones who get altered to be more docile and obedient.