How much GREATER would they have been if they were NOT so inflicted? How much more could Stephen Hawking do if he were free from restrictions?**
Actually, from a special I saw on Stephen Hawking, his disease contributed to his greatness.
Because he can’t expression himself in a normal fashion, thru writing, doodling, etc, he has often had to create mental images and memorized them.
This lead him to visualizing and conceptualizing that is very different from other physicists and hence, his ability to look at things in a very different fashion.
I seem to remember this from the movie/video version of his book, A Brief History of Time, which was partly autobiographical.
Of course, this is just about Stephen Hawkings, I dunno about others.
Oh, I KNEW someone would drag Hitler into this . . . I think he was more into post-natal abortions.
As for Stephen Hawking . . . HE may have made lemons out of whatever lemonade disease he has, but how many twitching, wheelchair-bound people are sitting there NOT formulating theories and writing books and marrying their slutty nurses and appearing on The Simpsons? Ask THEM if they’d have liked their DNA fooled around with before birth so they could be walking around today.
My point is that if genetic testing were available around the time that Hawking was born, his parents (if they had had the mindset of today’s parents) may have looked at the results and said, “Shit! Our baby will be born with some icky genes that will make him totally incapacitated as an adult, and he will barely be able to express himself. Out with him!” Even if they were idealistic people, I doubt they had any idea that the thoughts he would manage to express would revolutionize the physics world as much has Hawking ended up doing.
If they had tried again and had another kid who was healthy as a horse, he might have become a total moron. And we wouldn’t have “A Brief History of Time”.
Well, yes, many people do rise to greatness in the face of adversity (a la Helen Keller). Makes all of us non-inflicted feel quite inadequate and useless to society.
Overcoming a hardship is the mother of invention and creative thinking: having a problem, and then solving that problem.
In fact, perhaps we could ALL get the same affliction as Hawking, and ALL rise to greatness!! I’m calling my local genetic engineer right now…
Well, yes, many people do rise to greatness in the face of adversity (a la Helen Keller). Makes all of us non-inflicted feel quite inadequate and useless to society.
Overcoming a hardship is the mother of invention and creative thinking: having a problem, and then solving that problem.
In fact, perhaps we could ALL get the same affliction as Hawking, and ALL rise to greatness!! I’m calling my local genetic engineer right now…**
The point I’m trying to make, Wrath is that genetics is a crap shoot, very dependent upon chance and the way people deal with the hand they’re dealt once born. For every Stephen Hawking, there’s an Elephant Man.
My problem is with Eve’s selective breeding program, even with the best of intentions, we would breed out that genetic random-ness. That random-ness has brought us to the point where we are now, which IMHO is pretty good. Take it out and who knows what might happen.
Without a full understanding of what genetics does to the physiology and psychology of a human, we’re playing with dynamite. This is the realm of the Gods and we’re playing in it with very human ethics and understanding.
But, those on the side of caution make it sound like we’ll be genetically engineering every human all of a sudden, and that simply won’t be the case. Not everyone will be rich enough to afford it, nor will it be available in all societies across the globe.
Genetic defects that cause diseases will be slowly be discovered, treaments proposed, tested and administered, just like the vaccines that cured polio and small pox, in spite of all the doomsayers.
I would love to see the day when the Jerry Lewis Telethon’s total annual goal is down to $500.23 so Timmy can get braces.
If memory serves, the Eloi and the Morlocks evolved into the states in which we found them in the novel after an initial class rift that set them in their respective roles and environments. The cause of that initial class rift was my point in that first post.
Actually, I didn’t have much of a point. I just wanted to use “creepy, midget cave monkeys” in a proper context.
I remember reading an article that was discussing this sort of thing, and the author used the example of China: What if this sort of genetic manipulation became available and then everyone decided to have male children? There would be almost an entire generation that was male.
I read that and said to myself “So what?” I mean, yeah, fine. Even if you overlook that it wouldn’t happen (I mean, this is China, people!) it’s a self-remedying situation. So you have a nation of boys. That was desirable then. Guess what becomes desirable next? Eventually it would all even out. Further, you can almost guarantee that no one would ever make that mistake again.
So…what if some folks did have their children baked to their liking? There will be enough people who won’t that there will still be a vast and open gene pool, roiling with untouched genetic material.
If it ever becomes a valid possibility, it’s not something like haircoloring that you can just do at home, it will have to be done under the supervision of trained professionals.
It also has to be remembered that the science will be constantly developing, so what may be a pitfall in the beginning may be easily handled in just a few years.
There.
