They are not more advanced technologically, this is being further advanced culturally/ethically/regulatory.
Of course those advances could over time lead to a technological advantage. For instance if they find a way to improve intelligence that could be a runaway advantage.
"advanced" ? It's maybe not the best term... If "ethically advanced" means having ethics that allow to do human tests to built a stronger race then Hitler was very "ethically advanced"
This is something that any number of scientists elsewhere in the world could have done but did not do because the technology is not tested and understood at a level that would make this safe. No competent ethics board would have signed off on this. This is troubling, not impressive.
On the one hand, hurray for them for trying to eliminate a couple of quite serious diseases.
On the other hand, we have very little clue what the long term effects of not having CCR5 will be for these children. Furthermore, do we really trust China to start messing with people's DNA? I could think up several uses for this that are downright dangerous in the hands of a country like China.
Some of them:
- Remove a key gene in a metabolic pathway which can be mitigated by dietary supplements, creating a biological dead man's switch in order to make it easier to control the population.
- Inserting a viral genome into the host genome (preferably also under some deadman's switch), creating in effect a biological weapon
They have no ethics whereas it is for privacy or human tests. Of course having no ethics is the easy way to get a technological advantage over others that have some. And it's going to drive all country to do the same (like how US and China surveillance drove other countries to do the same). It's sad to see the world going towards exactly the dystopia described in sci-fi : total surveillance, data about anyone's whole life, AI discriminating people in their everyday life based on those data, and soon some people stronger / more resistant / more handsome than other because their rich parents payed the prenium gene editing package (and how many failed-babies experiment to get there ?).
But people are happy about it because less terrorism and less diseases right ?
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 32.4 ms ] threadOf course those advances could over time lead to a technological advantage. For instance if they find a way to improve intelligence that could be a runaway advantage.
Their Social Ranking is used to identify individuals with appealing DNA, and that DNA is used to make future model citizens.
On the other hand, we have very little clue what the long term effects of not having CCR5 will be for these children. Furthermore, do we really trust China to start messing with people's DNA? I could think up several uses for this that are downright dangerous in the hands of a country like China.
Some of them:
- Remove a key gene in a metabolic pathway which can be mitigated by dietary supplements, creating a biological dead man's switch in order to make it easier to control the population.
- Inserting a viral genome into the host genome (preferably also under some deadman's switch), creating in effect a biological weapon
But people are happy about it because less terrorism and less diseases right ?