Homo Superior?

[FreidanX]

So... after reading an article on the development of gene therapy... I asked myself questions that I really didn't know the answer to:

With the ability to modify the genes of unborn children becoming increasing more advanced and versatile... to what extent should the technology be used? Should it be used for purely medical purposes such as treating genetic disorders at the pre-natal stage?

Or should it be used to tailor other traits of a person such as intelligence, physical appearance, or personality?

Would you *want* to have such modification done to you, if given the option, for changes such as greater intelligence, a sense of humor, or faster metabolism? Would you want it done to you children for non-life-essential changes such making them a boy/girl, giving them blonde hair, or giving them a greater attention span?

Is this the direction that human evolution should take? Or should we leave the evolution of our genes to nature and accept the dice as they land?

Tell me what you think.

[poxpower]

How much are you willing to pay? Then that's how it's going to be used.

[FreidanX]

At 6/10/03 01:40 AM, poxpower wrote: How much are you willing to pay? Then that's how it's going to be used.

Good point. I think as soon as they can prove that it doesn't result in some kind of horrendous side effect (like grotesque mutations on that episode of Outer Limits) then, yes, human genetic engineering it will become a marketable commodity like everything else.

Won't be long before you see genetic engineering firms sending people catalogues containing various "designer genes" :

#30129 - ON SALE! With this set of genes, your kid will be an exact duplicate of Kevin Costner! Ideal for children of grotesque parents. [Removal of genes inhibiting decent acting skills sold seperately].

[Mr-Plad]

well there are certinly good applications for gene therapy. heres the problem. nuclear energy was promiseing as well. its the most powerful form of energy that we have the ability to harness. its usefulness as an energy source boundless yet we used it to build enough bombs to destroy the entire planet ten times over. god only knows what they would do with gene therapy. if i had to make a guess at its use for military purposes though, id say gene therapy would be ideal for building an army.

[Leap]

Here's the thing.

Your genes are not the only thing that define your personality. There are hundereds of other factors that make you what you are.

There are many other things that were invented with good intentions in mind (dynamite .etc) but which have have fallen into the wrong hands. Chances are that this technology will be widely misused.

[Miles]

At 6/10/03 01:28 AM, FreidanX wrote:
Is this the direction that human evolution should take? Or should we leave the evolution of our genes to nature and accept the dice as they land?

Tell me what you think.

screw natural selection. if we get to have genetic perfection its only gonna happen through gene therapy.

[Jiperly]

At 6/10/03 01:28 AM, FreidanX wrote: Or should it be used to tailor other traits of a person such as intelligence, physical appearance, or personality?

its debateable weither or not personality is based on genetics or the way the person is born.

Would you *want* to have such modification done to you, if given the option, for changes such as greater intelligence, a sense of humor, or faster metabolism?

If it helps them succeed, then what parent wouldn't want that?(unless it only singles them out, making them a loner and anti-social, and then they become a failure with great potiential......cause that would kinda suck....)

Would you want it done to you children for non-life-essential changes such making them a boy/girl, giving them blonde hair, or giving them a greater attention span?

Is giving them greater Attention span really all that non-essential? If your child has ADD, does that mean they will receive the equal chances in life as a person without?

Is this the direction that human evolution should take? Or should we leave the evolution of our genes to nature and accept the dice as they land?

we have the opportunity to increase the human potiential, and give humans a chance they would not have for millions of years. I say we enter this feild with the utmost care, but we enter it nonetheless.

[misterx2000]

I think messing with humans is a disgusting idea. There's such a thing as too perfect...very eerie when you think about having a near-android kid.

[Freakapotimus]

At 6/10/03 07:57 AM, _miles_ wrote: screw natural selection. if we get to have genetic perfection its only gonna happen through gene therapy.

Yeah, what a way to get rid of that pesky thing called "diversity."

With any scientific advance comes pros and cons... anything that can be done with good intentions (like getting rid of genetic disabilities while in the womb) can be warped to fit the needs of the highest bidder ("OGM MAEK HER HAVE BLEU EYES!!!11!").

I seem to remember something like this somewhere on here before...

[Shih]

I'm waiting for when they no longer need these alterations to be done in utero. Just inject some tailored RNA wait a day or two and it rewrites your DNA 20/20 vision here I come... not to mention enhanced hearing, scent, maybe strength, yeah I could dig that.

[misterx2000]

At 6/10/03 11:33 AM, Shih wrote: I'm waiting for when they no longer need these alterations to be done in utero. Just inject some tailored RNA wait a day or two and it rewrites your DNA 20/20 vision here I come... not to mention enhanced hearing, scent, maybe strength, yeah I could dig that.

Since you're already born, I think it'd be too late for you...

[Detesticus]

Wow...genetic egineering sounds like a nice concept I suppose. In a way, we would be replacing, or in this case delete, natural selection.

I mean, it's not as if we institute natural selection in our society and kill off fat and short people.

As far as ridding such things as Diabetes, Cancer, Obesity, and other negative genetic traits, it'd bea good idea. But like any large responsibility like this, it can be abused. I mean people would wnat there boy/girl to look a certain way.

You know...have the right facial structure, eye color, height, wieght, and all that crap. I mean it's like plastic surgery/cosmetic surgery inside the womb!

So, I like the idea, but wouldn't want it to be abused.

And as for personality, isn't that determined by the environment you grow up in?

[FreidanX]

At 6/10/03 12:01 PM, Detesticus wrote: Wow...genetic egineering sounds like a nice concept I suppose. In a way, we would be replacing, or in this case delete, natural selection.

Would it really be such a good thing? By deleting natural selection wouldn't we just be trading diversity for our ideas of "perfection"? I we were to allow it to go too far then the very essences of what we are and what defines us would themselves end up being turned into some kind of fashion industry where the very core of a person can be bought, sold, and altered like their clothing or hairstyle.

I mean, it's not as if we institute natural selection in our society and kill off fat and short people.

I don't know... we still often discriminate them based on primitive, inborn, and sometimes instilled ideals of what it is to be attractive and "normal."

As far as ridding such things as Diabetes, Cancer, Obesity, and other negative genetic traits, it'd bea good idea. But like any large responsibility like this, it can be abused. I mean people would wnat there boy/girl to look a certain way.

You know...have the right facial structure, eye color, height, wieght, and all that crap. I mean it's like plastic surgery/cosmetic surgery inside the womb!

So, I like the idea, but wouldn't want it to be abused.

Yeah. That's pretty much my view on it.

And as for personality, isn't that determined by the environment you grow up in?

Hmmm..... I'm no geneticist and it's a very big debate even in the scientific community about whether personality is nature (genes) or nuture (environment). I personally think it's likely somewhere in between. For instance, you could have someone with the excellent recollection and processing ability that gives great potential... yet self-esteem so low because of environmental stresses that they are really capable of little... But then again, I'm no psychologist.

[FreidanX]

At 6/10/03 08:04 AM, Jiperly wrote:

At 6/10/03 01:28 AM, FreidanX wrote: Or should it be used to tailor other traits of a person such as intelligence, physical appearance, or personality?

its debateable weither or not personality is based on genetics or the way the person is born.

True that. True that. I should have written some along the lines of "If THEORETICALLY it could be done..."
I do think it's somewhere in between, however.

Would you *want* to have such modification done to you, if given the option, for changes such as greater intelligence, a sense of humor, or faster metabolism?

If it helps them succeed, then what parent wouldn't want that?(unless it only singles them out, making them a loner and anti-social, and then they become a failure with great potiential......cause that would kinda suck....)

Yet, my fear is that in a way similar to how the fashion industry instills ideas of what is a good hair style or pair of pants to wear, parents can be instilled with ideas by the media on what are "good" traits to have in their children. Parents may see a set of genes in a catalogue which are advertised as making kids less "rebellious" in their teens and get the impression that such genes will "[help] them succeed"... yet their children end up mindless autonoms with a complete lack of curiosity or will to question the world around them.

Would you want it done to you children for non-life-essential changes such making them a boy/girl, giving them blonde hair, or giving them a greater attention span?

Is giving them greater Attention span really all that non-essential? If your child has ADD, does that mean they will receive the equal chances in life as a person without?

I listed "attention span" simply because IMHO it is so ambigous whether a lack of it is, in fact a sign of a disorder. In short, the extent to which ADD is real. Is a child who decides not to pay attention in History class really thinking about nothing? Or is he thinking about something more important to him such as why galaxies are formed or what made that poem so touching? Or is he just distracted becuase his mother is a raging alcoholic who will beat him with a shoe when he gets home?

But this is getting a little off topic. Start a seperate topic and we can debate this further.

Is this the direction that human evolution should take? Or should we leave the evolution of our genes to nature and accept the dice as they land?

we have the opportunity to increase the human potiential, and give humans a chance they would not have for millions of years. I say we enter this feild with the utmost care, but we enter it nonetheless.

That's an excellent standpoint.

[dudeitsallama]

Personally, I'd be more than happy to exchange some of my genes for better ones, but I think it would be a bad, bad thing to let it happen on a world scale. Every species on earth needs diversity in order to survive.

Let's say we make everyone thin. Then, due to a reduction in pollution, global warming turns into global cooling and people start freezing like an annorexic chearleader in an icecream truck.

We need all kinds of people. If we made everyone smart, there wouldn't be anyone to drive school buses and ask us "Do you want fries with that?" If we made everyone white to get rid of racial intolerance, the human race would be wiped out by skin cancer when the ozone layer finally disappears. If we made all girls blonde with blue eyes and perfect bodies...I would do a happy dance.

So you see, using gene therapy when it isn't needed to make people "better" really makes us weaker as a species. Except for that last case. We should go ahead and do that.

[bumcheekcity]

At 6/10/03 10:15 AM, misterx2000 wrote: I think messing with humans is a disgusting idea. There's such a thing as too perfect...very eerie when you think about having a near-android kid.

Yer, but if you had the option to immunise your child from AIDS, Cancer, TB and Malaria while he/she was still in the womb, would you? Methinks you would.

It really shouldn't be uised for ahything else other than fighting disease though, not to change eye/hair colouur or anything.

[AntiClock]

Not only will gene-therapy soon be possible in developing children, but also in fully developed adults. The formula unlocking eternal life is in the works as we speak. The genetic process that governs aging has already been discovered, and scientists have already discovered how to slow it, and even halt it altogether (in lab mice). It’s simply a matter of time until a cure for aging is developed. It is very possible that we could be the first generation to live for 500, or even 1000 years. In fact, it's entirely possible, that with currant advances in medical technology, we need never die of natural causes. Ever.

It’s not a question of ‘should it happen’, or ‘can it happen’, it’s simply a question of ‘when’. The moral dilemmas we struggle with are largely ignored by the scientific community, who very rarely stop and ask ‘should I be doing this?’, and simply default to 'can it be done?'.

Given the opportunity, I would be the first one to take a sip from the proverbial ‘fountain of youth’. Yes, I’d love to live forever.

and the fact that a generation of perfect, intelligent, super- children would be much worse than the little morons we have running around consuming resources right now is surreal. If I'm going to share a world with other people, I'd rather those people weren't grotesquely stupid.

[Kenney333]

I figure eventually itll start getting used to genetically modify a persons brain to make them more intelligent and have better hand- eye coodination, but this would probably lead to it being banned because children without the modification wouldnt even be able to compete with the modified.

either way itll be a source of great controversy. but i think pox has great point about how as long as someones willing to pay for it, people will be willing to do anything, legal or not.

[mrpopenfresh]

Now that natural selection is pretty much inexistant, we have to make all the people who would naturally die in the nature because they are too weak somehow better.

[Shih]

At 6/10/03 08:23 PM, mrpopenfresh wrote: Now that natural selection is pretty much inexistant, we have to make all the people who would naturally die in the nature because they are too weak somehow better.

No we don't. One of the reason some people are born physically less caapable than others is population control, it's been shown that when a species population grows too quickly or becomes an unsustainable amount more offspring will be born with deformities or will just be less physically adaptable than others.

[FreidanX]

At 6/10/03 09:16 PM, Shih wrote: No we don't. One of the reason some people are born physically less caapable than others is population control, it's been shown that when a species population grows too quickly or becomes an unsustainable amount more offspring will be born with deformities or will just be less physically adaptable than others.

Why do you suppose that is?

[dudeitsallama]

At 6/10/03 08:04 PM, AntiClock wrote: Given the opportunity, I would be the first one to take a sip from the proverbial ‘fountain of youth’. Yes, I’d love to live forever.

I wouldn't. Life's a bitch. If you live forever, it'll be infinitely bitchier. Especially with the population multiplying exponentially until there are no more resources left.

and the fact that a generation of perfect, intelligent, super- children would be much worse than the little morons we have running around consuming resources right now is surreal. If I'm going to share a world with other people, I'd rather those people weren't grotesquely stupid.

Do you think genetically altering people's IQs is going to reduce the number of idiots (I know the word idiot is applied to a certain IQ range but that's not how I mean it) we have on this planet? The way I see it, the higher someone's IQ, the greater their capacity for stupidity because they can think of new ingenious ways to be total morons (again I'm not using the word in a clinical sense).

But I really don't think that the eternal life question will ever come up. If Jurassic Park teaches us anything, it's that if you mess with nature it'll spit tar in your face and eat you.

[Alejandro1]

At 6/10/03 01:28 AM, FreidanX wrote: Or should it be used to tailor other traits of a person such as intelligence, physical appearance, or personality?

"Oh what brave new world that has such people in it."

Genetic altering's a good thing... if you want 20 million identical epsilons working for a million identical alphas.

The thought just blows my mind away... better take a soma tablet and lie down.

[Commander-K25]

The problem with tinkering with genes is that you're altering a process that has been fundamentally random for billions of years, and when you do that, things that have always been protected against by nature can become problems. What if a certain popular genetic trait contains a hidden susceptibility to a certain type of disease? By the laws of evolution, a disease to exploit that susceptibility will devlop and could wreak havoc when the population is homogenized to a large degree.

Personally, I favor technological enhancement, neural chips, cyber-tech, etc. Genes are hard coded and inflexible once you're born. Technology can be upgraded, swapped out or turned off.

[bumcheekcity]

At 6/10/03 10:18 PM, dudeitsallama wrote: But I really don't think that the eternal life question will ever come up. If Jurassic Park teaches us anything, it's that if you mess with nature it'll spit tar in your face and eat you.

I think possibly if we piss around with genes then will get mutant/monster things that don't look human.

[misterx2000]

At 6/11/03 01:26 AM, bumcheekycity wrote:

At 6/10/03 10:18 PM, dudeitsallama wrote: But I really don't think that the eternal life question will ever come up. If Jurassic Park teaches us anything, it's that if you mess with nature it'll spit tar in your face and eat you.

I think possibly if we piss around with genes then will get mutant/monster things that don't look human.

Movies are good examples...esp those "thinking" ones.

6th Day is a great example...look what cloning does to you. You look like Bill Gates, but even worse, become a semi-formed slippery-fish-bald Bill Gates lookalike! Who gets shot by Arnie Schatzi!

[Shih]

At 6/11/03 12:45 AM, Commander-K25 wrote:
Personally, I favor technological enhancement, neural chips, cyber-tech, etc. Genes are hard coded and inflexible once you're born. Technology can be upgraded, swapped out or turned off.

Yeah but the problem with tech upgrades is what do you do when an essential one breaks down, or if a poor surgeon implants one there's just as much room for broad problems with cybernetics as their is genegineering.

Imagine the I Love You virus uploaded directly into your brain.

[Nirvana13666]

*Turns the DAG Light On* - this is for Funk...

Wouldn’t it be better to make sure a child had a chance to succeed in life even before they were born? With the technology we have today we could prevent many medical conditions that might threaten this person’s life in the future even before him/she is born. We could help develop a productive personality so that they would strive for the betterment of mankind. If we start now we could develop an elite population of great thinkers. Technology in this form would develop minds that could possibly save the world from its own destruction.

So many people suffer discrimination because they are overweight or not as intelligent as the next. With this kind of technology we could fix that. We could set the rate of a person’s metabolism and raise the potential of their IQ even before birth. Free will isn’t something that will be taken away through this process. Each person that undergoes such modifications will just be more motivated to succeed and be a more productive member of society then they would have originally been.

[FreidanX]

At 6/11/03 09:21 AM, Shih wrote:

At 6/11/03 12:45 AM, Commander-K25 wrote:
Personally, I favor technological enhancement, neural chips, cyber-tech, etc. Genes are hard coded and inflexible once you're born. Technology can be upgraded, swapped out or turned off.

Yeah but the problem with tech upgrades is what do you do when an essential one breaks down, or if a poor surgeon implants one there's just as much room for broad problems with cybernetics as their is genegineering.

Imagine the I Love You virus uploaded directly into your brain.

I *really* wouldn't mind an upgradable computer integrated with my brain. Imagine retaining the capabilites that place man above machine yet gaining the capabilities that place machine above man. As long as I could protect myself from mental intrusion... or maybe you could have stronger minded individuals using their own neural augmentations to dominate others by control their own brain-computers. Good idea for a novel... too bad it's probably already been done. >:(

Anyway, as for the last point, I find some ways of thinking that exist in our society alot worse to a normal mind than a computer virus would be to an augmented one. At least you can get rid of most viruses.

I wouldn't doubt if gene therapy is used to make "super soldiers" by the military at some point...