CRISPR and other tools aren’t science fiction anymore. If the wealthy get there first, what happens to everyone else?
Yes
They don’t need genetic engineering to have advantage over everyone else tbf.
Editing a gene is not like editing code. But I’ll let the rich folks experience the wonders of body-horror.
Who am I to deny them this nightmare😏
This happens in a smaller way with access to prenatal testing and abortions. Parents with access to those things are at least able to detect and avoid the more debilitating birth defect, while parents without access are more likely to have a child with a severe birth defect. If they’re already struggling materially, that can sometimes guarantee that both the parents and child will have no upward mobility.
I don’t think it’s the eugenic stuff that’s gonna take off, but fixing future developmental problems.
This has been a thing for at least a few years. Luckily last I checked (pre pandemic) it hasn’t taken off bc
- Eugenics reminds people of Nazis and is bad
- Genetic diversity might be the only thing that saves us in another pandemic. Kind of like how strains of bananas all go extinct at once if they’re genetic clones.
So probably too dangerous to actually take off any time soon. Iirc a Chinese scientist tried it and got sent to jail, seems to be a pretty universal thing
I wonder how that kid is doing. I would love to hear an update. It was bad and all but I am still curious.
This already happens with social factors that affect physical development like access to nutrition and a permanent place to live.
The questions reminds me of Brave New World.
They have bigger problems
The will find a way to be even more inbred than they already are
I think we all end up like the Asgards from SG-1 without the ability to transfer our consciousness to a new body.
Extinct via hubris. Obviously this assumes we do something about runaway global heating.
gattaca, and the cloning show with arnold in
“Your child will still be yours. Simply the best of you.”
the 6th day
Are you just now discovering that eugenics is bad?
The tech in itself isn’t inherently bad, it could solve a lot of issues for a lot of people. The problem is in equal access.
Which is generally the problem with eugenics. No one is arguing that avoiding downs syndrome is a bad thing.
And even then, editing out unwanted mutations can still stifle society as a whole and may be morally the wrong choice. For example, what about eradicating autism due to the immense pain these individuals receive due to our society? Is it better to change our society to accommodate people afflicted with it or wipe out the genes responsible for it if it is easier? And if we choose the latter, where is the cutoff point? Can we even tell when we crossed that line, where our drive to improve ourselves ended being done out of mercy and began to be about creating the model citizen?
As someone suffering from a terrible genetic disease that will kill me soon, any amount of preventing these diseases under any circumstances gets a thumbs up from me.
Sadly, the most probable cloning related future would be Gattaca
^(edit typo)
Yeah, I think we should probably allow the technology that will prevent people being born with these diseases first, and then worry about how we’re going to deal with the other stuff. This technology isn’t going to be possible to hold back indefinitely anyway.
It’s a new class of DARWIN humans, since such manipulated beings usually have shorter life expectation.
