Embryo Editing

I can see the desirability of editing out congenital defects or whatever the PC phrase is nowadays, but I'd hate to see designer babies. I would advise stiff regulation. We have an Embryology Authority in the UK (uh-oh! the State?)

Furthermore, there's potentially massive wealth getting in the way of the State!

Criminal elements, by definition, get in the way of the State. Whether all of those elements are harmful to society depend upon the extent of one's faith and allegiance to the State.

There was a time when liberals had very little faith in the State (albeit they called it the Establishment), but Leftists, never.

This board turns everything into a left-right argument. Let's have some fun. If you could design your baby, what you have it be like?

Just like me.

A baby Donald Trump!

Maybe a baby who could speak Latin and Greek and play the piano that I could exhibit in a travelling circus and make some money.

With the money ballplayers make, I'd design a kid with Willie Mays' reflexes and hitting ability.

Better still, a mixture of me and its mother. Oh, wait...

I have a thread on CRISPR somewhere. It carries a lot of thought on this same subject. I'll try to find it.

Basically, my take is that genetic modification is an inevitable and unstoppable technology which is going to change humanity and humans right down to our roots.

Thanks

I agree with your take and I'm not sure of how I feel about it. It's at once exciting and terrifying.

I think that kind of sums it up.

I have my doubts that in 500 years humanity (and humans) will look anything like what we are familiar with today.

Putting aside human modification, it seems likely that we will be able to bio-manufacture a wide range of plants and bacteria to serve our needs. How about bacteria that eat oil or plastic? How about plants that thrive in arid conditions and produce food, or medical compounds. This Djinn is too powerful to ever be put back in the bottle, so we're just going to have to adapt to it.

Here's the other CRISPR thread...

https://able2know.org/topic/322451-1

I think most parents will want to edit the genes so the kid doesn't yell and scream so much at age two.

And the military is going to want kid/soldiers who obey orders without questions and have no ethical restraints. And even if we pass laws to prevent it, someone will still do it.

And parents are going to want to eliminate genetic diseases from their children, and Congress is going to approve it, because it's "GOOD". And the germ line will be modified, and those changes will flow through the generations, and humanity will change.

It's going to get messy. And beautiful. And there's no way to stop it.

All or a great majority of us may upload to a virtual reality universe and leave the machines in charge of the earth.

I agree with what you are saying but there is at least one way it will be stopped and that is if it results in a horrifying catastrophe that leads to billions of deaths. Not only would such an event decimate civilizations and the ability of scientists to pursue research, the survivors are likely to impose draconian restrictions with a "Never Again!" goal in mind. Even people opposed to this technology shouldn't hope such a brake is applied.

Another, albeit much less promising, way to slow it down if not stop it is through the marketplace. Despite there being virtually no evidence that GMOs currently present a danger to humanity, because of the mindless anti-corporate backlash and fear mongering, one food producer after another advertises their products as "GMO Free" In some cases it's unlikely their product would ever contain GMOs but it's the same thing with "Gluten Free." I think that the advantages to consumers and producers will outweigh any faddish resistance, but then I didn't think GMOs would result in a cult like opposition.

One of the unique aspects of CRISPR is that it's easy (relatively easy) and cheap to do. It can be done in small labs without government grants or investors. It can be done in secret, and it can be done by people who don't care about the ramifications of the outcome.

When nuclear weapons were developed, we (humanity) were lucky that they required highly enriched, expensive, rare, difficult to handle, radioactive isotopes. This meant that even though he basic "formula" for a nuclear device could be understood by a high school kid, it was still very difficult and expensive to actually produce a working device.

The same inherent throttling mechanism does not exist with CRISPR, so this one is going to infect civilization very differently.

It goes without saying that if humanity exterminates itself then the issue will go away. But it's quickly going to be easier to manipulate genetic codes and therefor organisms, than it will be to change the environment or clean up toxins. The human organism is going to become extremely robust as this technology spreads through our gene pool because we're going to need to use it to defend ourselves against a more dangerous environment and more dangerous competition from within our own populations. The Red Queen principle will drive artificial selection just as effectively as it did natural selection.

The tall, beautiful, tough-skinned, strong-boned, super-intelligent, people with enhanced lung capacity, improved immune systems, no coronary disease and no genetic diseases, will quickly come to dominate the population simply by surviving better, not to mention being on top of the list for "best mates". Then there are going to be the new races, the green-skins, the purple-hairs, the ones with tails and the ones with claws.

Sounds like sci-fi doesn't it... People haven't recognized CRISPR for what it really is yet.