What about balding? Is that a superficial change or a enhancement?
Wouldn’t removing a whole chromosome be easier than changing a single gene? A chromosome contains hundreds of genes and it would seem when you’re dealing with stuff this small bigger is easier.
This is an interesting thought experiment. Also, humans have fashion, and if genetic manipulation becomes a thing we can change like fashion, we’re going to have trends. There’s going to be a time in 2208 when big ears will be a thing. Then it’ll be all about small toes. Someone will order a baby pushing the limits of living human in scale and shape. We’ll get humans with extra backup organs inside them - two hearts or three kidneys. I remember reading about someone having a sci-fi universe like this and it was a marker that you were filthy rich if your child was genetically modified to have iridescent skin, because it didn’t improve you in any way other than being a wealth/fashion statement.
Anyway, it’s interesting to think about a future of designer babies.
I would worry about humans becoming like a pure-bread dog that has been breed to accentuate particular trait to the extreme.
Being able to fully customize a child might be the ONLY thing that might make me want one at all.
It’s hard to be unbiased because I have an infant with a serious genetic disorder, (a mutation, not inherited), but even setting that aside your hypothetical is problematic. Another poster pointed out the difficulty in eradicating Downs Syndrome in a fetus. Something else to consider is that in order to do this, the “modifications” would have to be done right after sperm meets egg (or possibly even before in some instances). So there is no way that you could already be pregnant and then be told this by a doctor. And how would you alter mutations? In an existing body of cells? I am not even close to a scientist, so maybe that’s the problem, but I don’t see how it would ever be possible- even in the distant future- in a way that would preserve the method currently used to create children. So then it’s more like crossing a line into children being grown, rather than made. And once you have crossed that line, where do you stop?
Back to the personal, and ignoring all of that, my answer is I don’t know. I’d love for my son to suffer less, but it would not take many changes before his personality were also altered. In a pure hypothetical, I can see compelling arguments on both sides of things. But when you are pregnant, and confronted with the news and decision, shoot. I just don’t know. Pregnancy is a very emotional place. Similar I would think to pre-adoptive anticipation. You fiercely love that bundle of cells exactly the way it is from the second the pee stick turns pink, and to step outside of that and design it seems like a leap to me still.
I would also like to say, in as unwhiny a way as possible, that the way your poll question is worded is sort of ouch. Parents of someone with “Downs Syndrome or similar” feel a little sting to hear their extant and beloved children described as “serious genetic problems”, no matter how true we know it to be. Not trying to be a wienie here- but I personally like to know when I have said something hurtful, so maybe you do too.
Yes, but not in the ways most people would. When these issues come up people usually talk about making their kids smarter, more attractive or healthier. Those things are important but I would want a kid who is more resilient and has positive emotional and mental health. Someone who rebounds from trauma and is very resistant to mental illness.
Modern biology has tons of tools for manipulating specific DNA sequences. If you’re willing to accept a nontrivial error rate, you can cut out and replace specific genes with ease. The new hotness in genome editing techniques is something called CRISPR. It’s a big improvement on previous techniques that worked at low efficiency, but it’s not perfect. Using it, the success rate for genetically modifying an organism has improved from less than 1 in 100 to more than 1 in 10, possibly even better than 1 in 2 in the best cases. It also has off-target side effects. That’s acceptable for research purposes but even a 90% success rate is heinously unacceptable for humans.
I’m not aware of any techniques that can remove one of three specific chromosomes from a living cell. Hell, I’m not even aware of techniques that allow identification of chromosomes in normal living human cells. That’s outside my area of expertise so there certainly may be methods that I haven’t heard of. My WAG is that physically plucking a whole chromosome out of a cell would be difficult, labor-intensive, and most of the time it would kill or irreparably damage the cell.
I imagine that any genetic alteration of humans would involve in vitro fertilization. Already, it’s possible to do pre-implantation genetic testing of human embryos, and related techniques are used to genetically modify other organisms.
There’s also precedent for genetic modification of cells in children and adults. For now this usually involves removing certain kinds of stem cells from the patient, modifying them in the lab, and re-implanting the successfully modified cells back into the patient. I can imagine techniques that use some sort of virus to deliver gene editing vectors to most cells in the body, but efficiency would be very low and side effects more common than if you were injecting the vectors directly into an embryo.
At which point my nasty evil suspicious side pokes up its hand and interrupts all the assurances of the perfect-knowledge side to point out that corrupt fertility doctors could contribute their own genetic material to the process, in place of whatever donors (including their husbands) the would-be mothers thought were contributing… one quick-and-easy way to eliminate genetic diseases from that side of the family… :dubious:
What, do you think such things have never happened before?
I’m surprised that so many people are willing to make changes so (at least according to the poll). Either the Anti-GMO movement is much smaller than we’re led to believe or people are more willing to change their child’s DNA than their corn’s.
My children have chronic, genetic illnesses that adversely alter their quality of life and it’s expected length.
I would not have had an issue with it even without that personal motivation.
I seriously doubt I would consent. Human eugenics always seems to turn out poorly.
How about: “The thought of doing such a thing creeps me way out”?
Make them really tiny so they’re cheaper to feed?
I’m sure it has a lot to do with your miracle technology. It’s very far away from what is scientifically plausible in the near-term. You start with options like intelligence genes and athletics genes, and yet we don’t even know which ones those are. Then you allow parents to do the modification after conception (eliminating costly and unreliable options like IVF) and you give this thing 100% success rates with no adverse side effects. You also do not mention a price tag.
You wouldn’t have to tweak your suppositions very much to get totally different poll responses, I think.
It’s like the difference between “Do you want a free, magical unicorn with a horn that cures poison?” and “Would you pay $1 million for this mutant goat with a horn that occasionally kills small children?” 
(Not that I’m any friend of the anti-GMO crowd. Give me mutants with a side of antibiotics, please!)