I was just talking about stuff like this a little ago with my friend. How much longer before someone tries to genetically manipulate humans to give more 'desirable' characteristics ? I know its not exactly the same thing, but its closely related.
From what I've read, it's quite feasable to do that now. In fact I was watching a show on The Learning Channel a few weeks ago about just this. They were talking with some scientist at Cornell or Berkley or wherever and this scientist said that as long as it's early enough, they can change the sex of a baby while it's in the womb.
There are advantages/disadvantages and all that. I just think its morally wrong to mess with nature this way. This is not a religious argument as I dont even follow any religion. I just believe that its unnatural and cant come to much good. Maybe short term good yes, but long term, its gonna mess up something big time.
It really depends. If this gets to the stage where we can make animals we could bring back extinct species we helped destroy. Of course I think all genetics should be focusing on getting rid of the "evil" gene in people first
I don't see any problem with it personally, it isn't scary unless you have a stone age mind. We have evolved nearly to the point where we can become designers and creators at the most basic level and that should be embraced. I throughly disagree with the ruling that parents cannot design their babies, it is their child and if the technology exists for them to customise it then so be it. Engineering human beings to become better than we are will allow us in fact to bypass evolution and improve ourselves. All very exciting It will be more interesting though when they figure out how to control the four forces, weak, strong, electromagnetic and gravity to produce any desired outcome. I think humanity will split into two in the future, one half will embrace our technology and live in a golden age, the other will live in the dark too afraid of the new. Be this a belief in false prophets/deities or simply stubborn closed mindedness.
/ puts on biologist suit I think military scientists are doing these things since mid 80s (aka biological weapons). Viruses have a very small DNA that traduces in few proteins, and biologists know exactly how these proteins work and how they interact. For plants, animals and humans things are really complicated as they have a huge DNA. Even if we fully know the DNA sequence of a superior organism, this doesn't bring us very far because we still don't know the interactions between genes, and these interaction are one of the mayor forces in the development of an organism. It's like we have bilions pieces of a puzzle and this puzzle is three dimensional. Furthermore we don't know exactly how a single piece combines with another one. So in my opinion we are decades and decades away before we can built a superior organism from scratch. / drops the suit
Although in principle, I agree, in reality the human race isn't ready for anything like this. Imagine what rouge nations or terrorists would be able to do with this technology. I'm not saying that we shouldn't disregard any of this just because of what might happen, I'm only saying that we really need to be extremely careful on how this progresses. Personally, I'm not one for genetic engineering, I believe in Darwin's Theory of Evolution and survival of the fittest. There's a reason that nature took this route, I'm concerned that if we go against nature, it will destroy us in the long run due to lack of diversity. Hope that makes sense - I'm real tired...
No way anyones getting rid of the 'evil' gene unless the human species is wiped out. The human gene pool is pretty much not as good as it was at one point. Once people start messing with it to get 'better' results in their eyes, its going nowhere but downhill. What people see as 'good' is not always the best for nature or the species. So once these engineered people start having kids and go around spreading their genes around, the human DNA getting worse, it could come to point where one virus could wipe out half the planet (I agree its an extreme situation, but its an example of what can happen). Especially, with new mutant viruses being created in labs around the world.
i have to agree with the majority of the opinions here. But i take it the"evil gene" comment is just a joke. "Evil" only exists in fairy tales, and you ought to know that.
wasn't gattaca that one weird movie where there was a new kind of racial discrimination... only the genetically "improved" people got the jobs and the not improved people were considered inferior and got to be janitors or do similar crap jobs. i didn't like that movie.
I like that movie. Makes you think. And a curiosity. The title gattaca is formed by letters that could represent a DNA sequence: Guanine Adenine Timine Timine Adenine Citosine Adenine (g.a.t.t.a.c.a.)
This is seriously only going to increase the amount of spam... "Want a bigger penis? Have your DNA altered!" ... I speak only of the evil evil email spam.. not the lovely warm sweetly sented spam I produce..
/me is not religous on the whole cloning thing, or genetic stuff or stem cell research or all that jazz. I think that genetic altering is a very scary thing. If hilter had this technology. Super soilders might not just be in comic books. Now im not saying superhuman strength and such. What if he could make all babies have the genetic predisposition to gain muscle easily, be 6'2" and weight 215lbs with only 6% body fat. Humans that would have fast metabolisms and immunities to some diseases and even more things. I mean some stuff might seem far off but in all reality there is scary stuff in knowledge. Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. Thats something I don't like to think about but its sorta true. Maybe im just over reacting, But I do believe there are some things that should never be attempted. Cloning Humans, and trying to create artifical intelligence. If you were to create artificial intelligence. It would be mathmatically smarter than the said person or what it was programmed with. It would grow smart and in a sense of some sort of soul. Since i believe that you can not make AI without having it actual "live" which to me means that it would have feelings and such. bah. This is all to deep.
