In another thread I asked about genetic engineering but didn’t get much of a response, so I’ll refrase the question. Is it the parents’ responsibility to give their children the best genes they possibly can? That is, should we even try to create “perfect” people?
In the future, (whether anyone likes it or not) the technology will be available to create (from the parents’ eggs/sperm or from donors) human embryos that have no KNOWN genetic defects. That is, the resulting children will not have sickle cell anemia, Down’s Syndrome, near sightedness, male pattern baldness, obesity, twelve toes, a nose that looks like a boat keel… This technology will only be avilable to wealthy people and there will always be poor people who have to take whatever genes there parents could give them. (Note, I’m not saying that it isn’t possible through random chance to be born with fewer gene defects than anyone else on the planet, just not very likely.)
Is this a good thing, or are we creating a race of super humans as endorsed by the “great visionaries” of the twentieth century such as Adolf Hitler?
Like most scientific advances it is a mixed bag. Dynamite was great for getting at the Earth’s resources but it also led to some great advances in blowing humans into teeny tiny bits.
So now we’ve got genetic advances. As you pointed out there are many positive aspects since we might be able to get rid of certain genetic defects. But then there are other points. We might be able to make sure our kids are heterosexual, at least 6 feet tall, good eyesight, hair & eye color, and a variety of other traits.
I don’t think this is the same type of vison people like Hitler had. Unless of course people without genetic enhancements aren’t treated like human beings or something.
I like the question but remember my uncles talking about how they thought everyone would fly heliocopters by the time they were grown up. They said it seemed so possible yet it came to nothing. My guess it that the general public just didn’t understand how frail the chopper really was and still is.
Will picking and choosing genes be as easy as it seems? It might not be. The knock-out sequences being done on mice now may tell us what parts of the genes do what but which agency would possibly approve of this kind of testing in humans?
Is this a good thing, or are we creating a race of super humans as endorsed by the “great visionaries” of the twentieth century such as Adolf Hitler?
assuming that teh technology becomes feasible to create “perfect” or perhaps unflawed babies, i think that most of humanity will continue to create babies teh old fashioned way.
even if teh new strain of people is fitter, and thus wins the survival game, it would not preclude teh imperfect ones from also surviving. in teh long run i believe a diverse gene pool will survive inevitable environmental change better, as it has a greater number of protoypes. gene pools that have fewer errors, also have fewer possibilites for adaptation to change.
I must weigh in. Gene therapy will be used to cure genetic diseases, as humans do not like to see their children die of awful diseases, or even to suffer from dandruff (a disease caused by a fungus resident in all of us but symptoms only show up if genetic factors are present) or the like. Gene therapy will be used to make babies, and therefore older people, look good because parents love to show off their cute little infants. What’s wrong with either of those two uses? Is anyone killing anyone else? Gene therapy is a medical technology. It will save countless lives. It will even make finding a good partner easier because more than a few psychological problems are genetic. All good things. What’s the problem here?
Perfect People? Great. Just what we need, as if there weren’t a few billion already.
However, you are suggesting a perfect world through perfect body people [called: severaly able body]? I wish that could be the case but the world is ruled by personality & you can’t select genes for that. Also, theere is NO gene for race.
Gattaca is a movie. It is set in the “not too distant future” where the technology to create perfect people has been nearly perfected and is widely available. Society has split into two parts, the genetically engineered perfect people, and everyone else (called God’s children since God determined their genes). The “perfect” people have their own subculture and are given special treatment by employers, police, and society at large. For instance, when a murder is committed the perfect people in the area are automatically assumed to be innocent since the genes for violent behavior have been weeded out, only God’s children are suspects. The title Gattaca, IIRC, refers to a space exploration company which only hires perfect people. An imperfect person who happens to be as tall and smart and beautiful as the perfect people wants to be a part of space exploration so he tries to fake his way into Gattaca. The whole movie is about the troubles this pretty boy has faking his way through Gattaca. I hated this movie because instead of focusing on the schism between the perfect people and God’s children, it focused on the problems of a pretty boy who wasn’t given the same special treatment afforded to all the other pretty people. All together now: AWWWWWW, poor baby.
The human gene sequence is composed of four basic “building blocks,” if you will, which are amino acids that have been labeled A, C, G, and T. They are complementary pairs, with A’s binding to T’s, and C’s to G’s.
The keen-eyed observer will note that the word GATTACA can be formed using the four letters labeling these amino acids (and the opposite strand of this particular segment of DNA would be CTAATGT, which would be well-nigh unpronounceable).
We now return you to your regularly scheduled debate.
While I don’t really have any problem with this either (other than the implicit have/have not situation- which I really don’t count since it already exists) I think you’re underestimating the human desire to have one’s children, well, look like one. I certainly expect people, given the technology of course, to engineer their children to be healthier/smarter/even more good looking, but I doubt that it will lead to a homogenization of society. The variance in people’s tastes combined with the desire to have kids that resemble one in some degree will be enough, I fell, to prevent everyone from looking alike.
Just kinda depends on how these “engineered” genetics mix with the un-engineered kind. Will the result look like Princess Di or Prince Charles? Generally, artificially limiting the gene pool (as happens during inbreeding) has not been kind to the offspring; this is true for humans, dogs, whatever. I’d expect this to be true for “perfect” genes as well.
You raise an excellent point about inbreeding. Inbreeding tends to produce inferior offspring because recessive (i.e. defective non-functioning) genes pair-up and leave the resulting animal with lots of genetic defects and diseases. In the case of genetic engineering, though, the idea is to weed out all the defective/recessive genes and have nothing but good functioning genes in the entire genome of the species. If I understand it correctly if a man and a woman have flawless genes then their offspring will have flawless genes except for various random mutations. Thus, if everyone had flawless genes (such as in a sub-society of perfect people) then siblings could marry and produce children without any defects. This assumes that the same process of screening the embryos for gene defects prior to implantation is maintained to weed out the random mutations. Are there any genetic engineers out there who can confirm this?