After reading it I feel like Gattaca barely scratched the surface. It was actually a pretty tame movie.
Some of the points made by the author are far scarier: gene editing startups with VC funding and sociopathic founders or amoral autocratic governments (think N.Korea, Russia, etc)
I’d wager that it is the second most accurate and prescient science fiction movie only behind 2001. It’s also better than 2001 because it’s pretty much the only good sci-fi movie I know that didn’t involve a “fantastical” or god-like being/power playing a major role (in that regard tying with Martian).
This may seem like a controversial opinion, but I think that it's a good development.
Some people have lost the "genetic lottery" in ways that make them dependent on medication. And for some, it may block career options, such as color vision deficiencies.
We should embrace it, instead of painting dystopian scenarios. At least, we shouldn't stop people from fixing problems that they were unfairly born with.
What OP describes, at least to the extent that I agree with them, is both but mostly germline editing. Most genetic issues aren't really treatable after birth (though we are nowhere near the limit, so in the future who knows). Genes don't really code for traits so much after the embryo develops, most of the effect comes from the manual process of cells bumping against each other
this is far from the truth in multiple ways. There are a wide range of genetic issues (typically recessive mutations) where somatic engeering would work great. And genes continuous encode for "traits" (really, molecular phenotypes) after development (which ends long after the embryo is born).
I think I would be okay with germline editing too, in selected cases. It's not like a child is going to say "hey, thanks for not fixing my cancer-causing mutation when you had the chance, mum".
Then you have less qualms about it than the author of the article, whose career would benefit a lot from a free-for-all.
"The social and political implications of gene editing are also huge unknowns, and unfortunately there’s been scant debate among policy makers and the general public."
There are a lot of genetic defects we can engineer away. There’s a lot of other things that aren’t defects, but social pressure will make people want to engineer them away.
(Bonus points as the gay gene didn’t really exist; but as I’m bi, people like that would’ve tried to eradicate me before I was born if they’d had a way to do so).
As I expect my resistance to social pressure to be exactly average until shown otherwise, I sometimes find myself wondering what things I falsely believe to be real defects that would be moral to eradicate.
If parents could turn their children into tech company CEOs, how could we get non-borderline-autistic weirdos? That's the real question lol. But honestly, I'd expect that the actual result would be that severe autism which results in disability could largely be selected out, but neurodivergency would mostly fade into the background of the data. It's still around for a reason, and I personally am thankful even if I do have trouble with eye contact. If my sensory sensitivities were significantly worse though, or I had co-morbid epilepsy, I might want a tweak or two.
For too long, the children of the rich have been denied their rightful genetic advantages. We need a ruling class we can really worship with a straight face.
It is called education and has been around for millenia. If somebody suggested limiting education due to offering "unfair advantages" and contributing to inequality they would be considered absolutely bonkers. Yet with genetic engineering it is somehow completely different.
Compared to the advantage of "has more money", I really could not care less. Either better genes actually increase standing, in which case it would disproportionately help the lower class (which in this world would have "worse" genes), or they don't, in which case every person helped on the margin is great and it doesn't effect inequality at all. That's a silly reason to cripple the species.
I don't see what's so hard about it. When something gets better than it used to be, that's an improvement. Better eyesight, hearing, intelligence, endurance, strength, etc etc - improvements.
I won't get into any argument that "less is more". I don't believe that crap. We shouldn't stop until we find the limits of the universe.
How about gay vs straight? Being gay used to be classified as a disorder. That has changed in time, many (most?) now understand it as something different but not better or worse than being straight.
When it comes to differences between people, there are a lot of traits that we should be careful about categorizing as better or worse. Especially if it leads to us essentially eradicating the trait via eugenics.
Can you reference a credible study that links sexual orientation to genes? I've never thought of that as something inherited.
I don't think we're anywhere near genetic manipulation of human mind, if that's even a real thing. Perhaps we could manipulate behavior driven by hormones, but I don't think we could do too much there without breaking the whole system.
I wasn’t saying that there is a gay gene, just explaining there are cases where differences in human traits are deemed “better” by some governing body but aren’t actually better.
And I'm saying that you're presenting a non-problem. Traits such as gay/straight won't be changed by genetic engineering, probably ever, so there's no need to have this discussion.
Improvement is just when you make a change and you subjectively think the positives outweigh the negatives.
If the negatives subjectively don't outweigh the positives, that's usually considered "deal with the devil" territory and is the kind of thing sci-fi writers love.
Different people define it differently for themselves, if as a result of these definitions one of the groups grows exponentially and others don't then that group had the correct definition.
You say that but most of the ways that humans would want fixing have already been readily implemented via surgery. Between boobjobs, HGH, limb-lengthening surgery, hair transplants, and even labiaplasty, there’s very little you can’t fix on your body today.
My fear is that extremist groups and governments will use this tech to change children according to their religious or extremist doctrine. Stuff like growing women without clitorises to promote FGM in Islamic countries.
Nonsense. There's no surgery in the world which would make me lose my allergies and eczema problems, but a few edited genes before birth might just do the trick.
Or an acquaintance of mine with cystic fibrosis, who's been in and out of hospital for the vast majority of her life and knows that she probably won't make it beyond 40; she definitely wouldn't mind if someone fixed those mutations before she was born.
What an incredibly uninformed and ableist take. There are a plethora of illnesses and disorders that are merely coped with. With no way of improving prognosis, the best medical science can offer is attempting to improve the quality of the life of the individual while they waste away.
A lot of this "controversial" stuff isn't ie therapeutic cures for sickle cell, a single nucleotide mutation with devastating impact on quality of life.
For some like myself with CDH1(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDH1_(gene)) it means a total gastrectomy is the prophylactic solution to avoiding hereditary diffuse stomach cancer. CDH1 is a more complex mutation than sickle cell.
These technologies are capable of doing more good than harm for society in the near term. The dystopian visions are not without merit, but that's the general rule of thumb for technology in general. A loss of genetic diversity is likely the gravest concern. Some mutations have benefit ie sickle cell vs malaria, but others like CDH1 have mostly been slipping under the evolutionary radar. There are multiple variants of concern and the mutation is just independently occurring across the global human population irrespective of any special heritage. There are other cancers/maladies just like this that medicine has no good solution for. They don't noticeably impede genetic reproduction so it carries from generation to generation.
For now most sane people are not considering germ-line modification. I would expect that to require multiple generations of study to even broach the subject.
Nah, actually probably perfectly obedient communist supercitizens, casually outcompeting the primitive individualistic westerner too concerned with ethics.
Long term it's great, it will remove diseases, promote equality, and fix all kinds of medical problems and deficiencies. I'm for it, but there are cautions to watch for.
My first concern is that with our current economic system, especially the lack of free health care in the US, this would be basically rolled out to rich people first, so for about 50 years or so rich people would not only be healthier from having access to more and better resources but also they would be now evolving in a healthier direction too. This itself is not a huge problem, but inequality becoming a greater inequality is something to think about and hopefully set it up such that it can be somewhat mitigated or avoided.
My second concern is again with out current economic model,(later after years of it being affordable only to the rich) we would end up rolling it out as for lack of a better term "manufacturing batches" like people would go to a store and choose a popular preset of options from what's available, and that preset would then become more economical and therefor commonplace, which in a lot of ways is like turning our species into a mono-gene-pool, with all the same dangers that come from relying on a single mono-crop (Great example is the potato famine of Ireland vs the Incas who also heavily relied on potatoes but had much more variety like over 300 kinds of potato, while Ireland relied on 1). Biggest concern with this, especially after a pandemic is that if a certain strain of virus hit's just right, and everyone is more the same than they used to be, it could be even more catastrophic than predicted. If we did roll it out in batches (highly likely) we will have entire generations and nations start to look all the same, certain groups wouldn't participate (the very poor, certain religious organizations) and they would likely feel significant persecution (much as poor kids are teased at school today) or at the very least be in-congruent with the greater parts of society, many would become second class citizens (much how Gattica predicted), also those laggards would become holdouts for known genetic diseases and so those who are engineered would rightfully avoid marriage/breeding with them, thus further solidifying the persecution and possibly diverging humanity's evolution.
Both of my concerns are not enough reason to not push forward, but they bring more concerns of distribution, pricing and variation, not of the technology itself. More or less I think we need to push forward scientifically, but we need to also make progress as a society too or else there will arise other problems that come with progress.
The current push for equity combined with the technical ability to genetically engineer humans is frightening. Society has decided we have "incorrect" levels of diversity...though nobody can answer what the correct levels are. Without any question of "how do you know what you're doing is correct" we're changing our environment as much as possible to achieve the "correct" level of diversity. It's pure luck we can only modify our environment because we lack the technical capability to modify our genetics - given our current low standards of evidence, the damage we could do is immense.
We really need to come to terms with equity, privilege (nobody earned their genetics), etc. before this is a reality.
Maybe instead this stuff will be kept away from the general public and is only accessible to the true upper class, who is above the equity reshuffling of the unwashed masses anyway.
Capital and social capital is already giving their offspring an uncatchable advantage on, or outside of levelled playing fields. Genetic engineering could finally cement them into a biological royalty.
Why would anyone do that? It makes a great dystopian novel storyline, but no other medical advancement has ever been treated that way. The elites could easily have everyone dying of simple infections, but I can get antibiotics for $5 at the Walmart pharmacy. The elites could easily have people elderly dying of heart disease at much higher rates but Medicare pays tens of thousands of dollars for heart surgery on senior citizens.
No one is being evil by trying to harm others. Everyone is just seeing if they can get a reasonable advantage for themselves. All of us are doing it on a scale that's available to us, it's an emergent behaviour, not a conspiracy.
"Surely doing wild west genetic engineering would be bad, right? So let's have oversight and laws around it."
"But our friends advised us to check out that one clinic when we're in Dubai next time, and their kids are really exceptionally pretty and are doing so well in sports. I want to be careful for our baby since my grandfather had that one condition..."
> In my mind, to alter genes that will be passed down from generation to generation is a sacred act
There is nothing sacred about it. It's just a biological process. The only problem with GM babies are ethical considerations. But given how humanity as a whole could benefit immensely if these tests are successful, I think it's worth the sacrifice. Like even today we brainwash kids into fighting pointless wars where there is literally no benefit to mankind. On the other hand Genetic engineering can literally carve a new race of humanity. I am pretty sure China is already doing it. Unfortunately the west is too weak to take such tough moral decisions which benefit the community at the expense of the individual. Communism will win over here. Hopefully it takes all of mankind with it rather than some super sino master race.
“I expect that human genetic engineering, both therapeutic and “vanity” applications, will become an unfathomably profitable industry in the coming decades. I am open to the possibility that germline editing could be ethically applied in narrowly defined arenas of public health. But the determination of where to draw the lines should not be left up to venture capitalists and self-centred founders, as it was to a large extent with the IT industry. They are already salivating.”
I thought I was terrified of this shit before, but that phrasing hits like the doorframe of a Crown Victoria.
I love to hate on tech bros as much as the next tech bro, but I've watched so many people suffer with terrible diseases that I'm totally fine if it we end up with 1000 hairloss biotech startups if that also means we get one that prevents Alzheimer's.
I’m not saying that we should outlaw Cas9 or something. I’m saying that a company with the ethics of Theranos and the leadership of Theranos and the gold-plated, infinite money VC backing of Theranos playing jazz with the human germline is the stuff of nightmares.
Why would it remain affordable to them only? Economies of scale apply even if just the productivity learning curve. Doing the cost/benefit analysis it may make sense for a government to subsidize or outright provide it for free.
It is downright bizzare that people worry about the non-trivial and highly useful applications. What happened to bitching about the spending on baldness cures and penis pill research?
Far better writers than me have done all manner of speculative fiction on this, but the main thrust of it all is that as bad as our racism problem is now, and that’s very bad, it’s an appetizer for the main course that will come from speciating the human race on the basis of both meaningful and measurable genetic “superiority”.
That would be scary enough if the whole world voted on every little thing, but if Elizabeth Holmes is doing it under the Uber “It’ll become legal if we do enough of it” model?
It's at the intersection of education and healthcare.
Is it so outlandish to think that, in a country where education is so expensive it takes the average college student 20 years to pay off their debt; and medical costs are the cause of more than 60% of bankruptcies; a procedure that combined the two might be expensive?
It will be a global market, like today cost savy people can go study in Europe and mtf bottom surgery is done in Thailand, future customers will go global, expecially with tens of thousands of dollars on the line
epigenetic alterations which is very similar to genetic alterations are already trivial to achieve for anyone right now. It's not that it is coming, it has been there for decades. Despite popular belief, people don't care about transhumanism/gerontology, more generally people can't care about things that require more than their very limited attention span.
An epigenetic alteration is a multiplier on the expression of a gene. it can either inhibit its expression or increase its expression, in a continuum like manner, and remarkably, in a tissue/cell specific manner. A complete inhibition is akin to a gene removal, behaviourally speaking and indeed there can be many synergies between multiples altered genes expressions.
The effects of an epigenetic alteration usually last 6 month although some consequences of the alteration might in some contextes be permanent.
Of course the main drug class for this are peptides.
now there are much more useful peptides out there,
for example:
thymalin, the thymus hormone, is revolutionnary as it reverse thymus involution. Thymus involution is the main programmed aging factor, which leads to your death as an evolutionnary advantage. I have discussed this topic enough the last week so I won't go into details here.
just so you know thymalin rejuvenate the thymus and increase lymphocite T naive cells production by up to 680% which totally fix immunodepression in the edlerdly and e.g. fix covid since day 1 (would have avoided 15 million deaths were people litterate) or reduce all cause mortality in humans by 410% when coadministarted with epitalon,
epitalon allow your cells to bypass the hayflick limit (maximum number of divisions). It also rejuvenate the pineal gland and therefore fix age related sleep issues.
BPC-157 significantly accelerate the time it takes for a physical injury to resorb. It is also unique in it's tendon rejenerative properties, its angiogenesis superior to VEGF, neuromodulation and its effect on IBS.
cortexin/cerebrosylin are potently nootropics and neuroprotective. Rethinalamin rejuvenate the eyes which can un-blind people in some conditions, e.g. solve glaucoma and macular degeneration.
there is an unlimited potential for peptides, many "incurable" diseases have seen peptides specifically made for them and acts as effective cures (e.g. multiple sclerosis), however for the most part their potential is untapped, the reason being that this tech is endogenously produced in the human body, which make them unpatentable, which makes them unlucrative and since public research clinical trials are inexistant, you will never see them massively adopted, unless by accident.
> just so you know thymalin rejuvenate the thymus and increase lymphocite T naive cells production by up to 680% which totally fix immunodepression in the edlerdly and e.g. fix covid since day 1 (would have avoided 15 million deaths were people litterate) or reduce all cause mortality in humans by 410% when coadministarted with epitalon
So where is the catch? Why more people are not talking about it and money is not puring into that if that's such a game changer? If it's that kind of miracle cure why for example Gates foundation or any other foundations doesn't invest in it ?
It is coming, but too slowly. Everyone, including people itt, gesture vaguely towards "ethical considerations", without being able to specify what they are and how they outweigh the massive ethical benefits.
>I expect that human genetic engineering, both therapeutic and “vanity” applications, will become an unfathomably profitable industry in the coming decades.
The most important application, by far, dwarfing both therapeutic and vanity, is improvements to intelligence.
This. Problems like preserving life on earth, and expanding to other planets are something that our descendants will have to solve. Increasing the intelligence of future generations is not only ethical, it is our duty.
Intelligence really doesn’t seem like the solution to any of our big problems.
I’ve heard this argument before (and probably made this argument at some point too), and it seems to boil down to thinking that people would agree with me if they would just be a bit smarter and/or more informed.
But I don’t think this is true at all. If it was then smart people would agree, but they don’t.
There is another line of thinking (often seen in science fiction) that suggests all problems are solvable if only you are smart enough. But they are not, some problems simply don’t have a reachable satisfactory solution. There is a reason these science fiction stories often come with a ‘benevolent’ dictator to impose the smart fix on everyone, because taking away free will is the only way to solve some of the hardest problems.
I think there is a strong argument for emotional intelligence, worldliness, and empathy though.
>Intelligence really doesn’t seem like the solution to any of our big problems.
Why not?
>I’ve heard this argument before (and probably made this argument at some point too), and it seems to boil down to thinking that people would agree with me if they would just be a bit smarter and/or more informed.
I don't want the next generation to agree with me. I want them to be on the next level.
>I think there is a strong argument for emotional intelligence, worldliness, and empathy though.
If you have a society of monkeys, no matter how worldly, emotionally intelligent they are - they are not creating astrolabes to travel the oceans, they are not domesticating animals, they are not writing plays, they are not building huts, even.
Similarly, if you create a society of humans with a higher average intelligence, we will likewise experience a phase shift and access new wonders of culture and science that are simply inaccessible or extremely impractical right now. I cannot tell you what these wonders will be, but I am certain they exist.
And in my humble opinion, we have already started to hit a wall in terms of what areas of intellectual achievement are possible with our current 'hardware' limitations. There are already areas of math, of physics, of biology that maybe 10-20 people on the whole Earth are capable of working in. We struggle to come up with any satisfying macro economic theory with testable predictions. Religious thought has very obviously stalled as well.
I just really wonder though if we have not taken the idea of the brain as computer too literally and this clouds our thinking on everything at this point.
Think about how much different the concept of IQ is if we don't have computers. With computers we just think of IQ as a type of clock speed of the brain. To get "smarter" people then we just need to do some kind of overclocking.
It seems likely to me we are confusing a model for reality. Even worse that in confusing that particular brain/computer model for reality we tend to confuse all models of reality for reality. Simulation theory on down.
>Intelligence really doesn’t seem like the solution to any of our big problems.
Simple example: how many people in the USA understand that inflation / money printing / quantitative easing is a tax and should be avoided at the level it is used to finance the spending? Not many, for sure.
Btw intelligence is not only sheer analytical power, it is also emotional control, selintrospection, focus skill, collaboration and interpersonal skill.
I remember Jim Watson saying that stupidity could someday be cured, and everyone absolutely lost their minds and pretended that he was calling stupid people bad. Somehow.
Not hugely surprising to today-me, but I was still young enough that it was a bit disillusioning to see that people couldn't even see (or say out loud) that being more intelligent would help us all.
Why is low-risk minor gene editing such a big deal? Much higher-risk breeding is allowed. Parents with genetic defects likely to produce rejects are allowed to breed, and the babies are not culled. It's not like humans have a breeding quality control program.
This seems very similar to computer security and privacy concerns. Everyone says "someone should do something about this!" yet very few people, businesses, or governments do anything. After decades of lax security the US gets involved in a war with Russia and now tells business that they better be prepared for being hacked. Right, close all those unknown zero day holes right away! Be prepared to dump your 3rd party software when your vendors get hacked! The author says she suspects there are business and government groups already working on implementations and that this is a worldwide issue, not to be solved by any one country. The chances of getting world agreement on anything seem close to zero. I think she's right and it's going to be a free-for-all scenario. Historically people in China during One-Child sometimes aborted females because everyone wanted their one child to be male. Being able to choose genetic features seems likely to be extremely popular (and will make things like skin color a choice.)
On the other hand, do we even really know how genes work? I thought I read that what we thought were transcription boundaries are not actually boundaries at all, so that greatly increases the number of possible interactions with the genome. And the "junk" dna actually does something. Also, a great many traits and diseases seem to be associated with many more than one gene, which implies interactions between genes which also makes figuring out what happens when you alter specific genes much more complex. The case where one gene is tied to one trait seems to be the exception rather than the rule. And then there is the question of the influence of mitochondrial DNA from the mother, and the recent research showing that certain chemicals can determine which organ stem cells will turn into (which genes control those chemicals? What happens if they get altered?) I'm not convinced scientists really know what they are doing here, which likely means some rather bad experimental outcomes. We can't predict what small evolutionary changes in the coronavirus do, and we're going to precisely control the process that makes a human? I don't think so.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadAfter reading it I feel like Gattaca barely scratched the surface. It was actually a pretty tame movie.
Some of the points made by the author are far scarier: gene editing startups with VC funding and sociopathic founders or amoral autocratic governments (think N.Korea, Russia, etc)
Some people have lost the "genetic lottery" in ways that make them dependent on medication. And for some, it may block career options, such as color vision deficiencies.
We should embrace it, instead of painting dystopian scenarios. At least, we shouldn't stop people from fixing problems that they were unfairly born with.
as well as "germline editing, in which changes are made to the DNA of an embryo".
The author is concerned by the latter and I think you describe the former.
"The social and political implications of gene editing are also huge unknowns, and unfortunately there’s been scant debate among policy makers and the general public."
There are a lot of genetic defects we can engineer away. There’s a lot of other things that aren’t defects, but social pressure will make people want to engineer them away.
For example, when I was a child, British tabloids were saying “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ finding”: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/08/30/gay-gene-newspapers-19...
(Bonus points as the gay gene didn’t really exist; but as I’m bi, people like that would’ve tried to eradicate me before I was born if they’d had a way to do so).
As I expect my resistance to social pressure to be exactly average until shown otherwise, I sometimes find myself wondering what things I falsely believe to be real defects that would be moral to eradicate.
Of course, it's not like society has any choice - if rival nations are willing to genetically engineer humans, can we afford to fall behind?
I don't see what's so hard about it. When something gets better than it used to be, that's an improvement. Better eyesight, hearing, intelligence, endurance, strength, etc etc - improvements.
I won't get into any argument that "less is more". I don't believe that crap. We shouldn't stop until we find the limits of the universe.
When it comes to differences between people, there are a lot of traits that we should be careful about categorizing as better or worse. Especially if it leads to us essentially eradicating the trait via eugenics.
I don't think we're anywhere near genetic manipulation of human mind, if that's even a real thing. Perhaps we could manipulate behavior driven by hormones, but I don't think we could do too much there without breaking the whole system.
If the negatives subjectively don't outweigh the positives, that's usually considered "deal with the devil" territory and is the kind of thing sci-fi writers love.
My fear is that extremist groups and governments will use this tech to change children according to their religious or extremist doctrine. Stuff like growing women without clitorises to promote FGM in Islamic countries.
Or an acquaintance of mine with cystic fibrosis, who's been in and out of hospital for the vast majority of her life and knows that she probably won't make it beyond 40; she definitely wouldn't mind if someone fixed those mutations before she was born.
A lot of this "controversial" stuff isn't ie therapeutic cures for sickle cell, a single nucleotide mutation with devastating impact on quality of life.
For some like myself with CDH1(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDH1_(gene)) it means a total gastrectomy is the prophylactic solution to avoiding hereditary diffuse stomach cancer. CDH1 is a more complex mutation than sickle cell.
These technologies are capable of doing more good than harm for society in the near term. The dystopian visions are not without merit, but that's the general rule of thumb for technology in general. A loss of genetic diversity is likely the gravest concern. Some mutations have benefit ie sickle cell vs malaria, but others like CDH1 have mostly been slipping under the evolutionary radar. There are multiple variants of concern and the mutation is just independently occurring across the global human population irrespective of any special heritage. There are other cancers/maladies just like this that medicine has no good solution for. They don't noticeably impede genetic reproduction so it carries from generation to generation.
For now most sane people are not considering germ-line modification. I would expect that to require multiple generations of study to even broach the subject.
You don't need genetic engineering to start fixing the genetic lottery for for most people, just redistribution of wealth.
Once youve fixed that genetic lottery, it gets a lot harder to make a dystopia from solving other genetic lotteries
Gattaca here we come:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
After that, axlotl tanks.
Humans are natural, we are part of nature
After all, human ingenuity is a result of natural selection that emerged precisely because it works better.
My first concern is that with our current economic system, especially the lack of free health care in the US, this would be basically rolled out to rich people first, so for about 50 years or so rich people would not only be healthier from having access to more and better resources but also they would be now evolving in a healthier direction too. This itself is not a huge problem, but inequality becoming a greater inequality is something to think about and hopefully set it up such that it can be somewhat mitigated or avoided.
My second concern is again with out current economic model,(later after years of it being affordable only to the rich) we would end up rolling it out as for lack of a better term "manufacturing batches" like people would go to a store and choose a popular preset of options from what's available, and that preset would then become more economical and therefor commonplace, which in a lot of ways is like turning our species into a mono-gene-pool, with all the same dangers that come from relying on a single mono-crop (Great example is the potato famine of Ireland vs the Incas who also heavily relied on potatoes but had much more variety like over 300 kinds of potato, while Ireland relied on 1). Biggest concern with this, especially after a pandemic is that if a certain strain of virus hit's just right, and everyone is more the same than they used to be, it could be even more catastrophic than predicted. If we did roll it out in batches (highly likely) we will have entire generations and nations start to look all the same, certain groups wouldn't participate (the very poor, certain religious organizations) and they would likely feel significant persecution (much as poor kids are teased at school today) or at the very least be in-congruent with the greater parts of society, many would become second class citizens (much how Gattica predicted), also those laggards would become holdouts for known genetic diseases and so those who are engineered would rightfully avoid marriage/breeding with them, thus further solidifying the persecution and possibly diverging humanity's evolution.
Both of my concerns are not enough reason to not push forward, but they bring more concerns of distribution, pricing and variation, not of the technology itself. More or less I think we need to push forward scientifically, but we need to also make progress as a society too or else there will arise other problems that come with progress.
The Revolutionary Phenotype: The amazing story of how life begins and how it ends
We really need to come to terms with equity, privilege (nobody earned their genetics), etc. before this is a reality.
Capital and social capital is already giving their offspring an uncatchable advantage on, or outside of levelled playing fields. Genetic engineering could finally cement them into a biological royalty.
"Surely doing wild west genetic engineering would be bad, right? So let's have oversight and laws around it."
"But our friends advised us to check out that one clinic when we're in Dubai next time, and their kids are really exceptionally pretty and are doing so well in sports. I want to be careful for our baby since my grandfather had that one condition..."
There is nothing sacred about it. It's just a biological process. The only problem with GM babies are ethical considerations. But given how humanity as a whole could benefit immensely if these tests are successful, I think it's worth the sacrifice. Like even today we brainwash kids into fighting pointless wars where there is literally no benefit to mankind. On the other hand Genetic engineering can literally carve a new race of humanity. I am pretty sure China is already doing it. Unfortunately the west is too weak to take such tough moral decisions which benefit the community at the expense of the individual. Communism will win over here. Hopefully it takes all of mankind with it rather than some super sino master race.
I thought I was terrified of this shit before, but that phrasing hits like the doorframe of a Crown Victoria.
But what about a treatment giving unborn children +15 IQ, but affordable only to parents earning $300k/year?
It is downright bizzare that people worry about the non-trivial and highly useful applications. What happened to bitching about the spending on baldness cures and penis pill research?
That would be scary enough if the whole world voted on every little thing, but if Elizabeth Holmes is doing it under the Uber “It’ll become legal if we do enough of it” model?
Yeah that fucking terrifying.
It's at the intersection of education and healthcare.
Is it so outlandish to think that, in a country where education is so expensive it takes the average college student 20 years to pay off their debt; and medical costs are the cause of more than 60% of bankruptcies; a procedure that combined the two might be expensive?
Of course the main drug class for this are peptides.
An example being melatonan 2, which activate melanin in a continuous like, dose dependent manner. so you can progressively darken your skin https://alchetron.com/cdn/melanotan-ii-d26dbedd-94fb-434a-8d...
if abused, you can become ultrablack https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/08/15/04/2B6033FA000005... this change is permanent.
now there are much more useful peptides out there, for example: thymalin, the thymus hormone, is revolutionnary as it reverse thymus involution. Thymus involution is the main programmed aging factor, which leads to your death as an evolutionnary advantage. I have discussed this topic enough the last week so I won't go into details here. just so you know thymalin rejuvenate the thymus and increase lymphocite T naive cells production by up to 680% which totally fix immunodepression in the edlerdly and e.g. fix covid since day 1 (would have avoided 15 million deaths were people litterate) or reduce all cause mortality in humans by 410% when coadministarted with epitalon,
epitalon allow your cells to bypass the hayflick limit (maximum number of divisions). It also rejuvenate the pineal gland and therefore fix age related sleep issues.
BPC-157 significantly accelerate the time it takes for a physical injury to resorb. It is also unique in it's tendon rejenerative properties, its angiogenesis superior to VEGF, neuromodulation and its effect on IBS.
cortexin/cerebrosylin are potently nootropics and neuroprotective. Rethinalamin rejuvenate the eyes which can un-blind people in some conditions, e.g. solve glaucoma and macular degeneration.
PNC-27 is one of the most interesting peptide, since it is basically the best cure against cancer e.g. https://touroscholar.touro.edu/sjlcas/vol13/iss2/7/
there is an unlimited potential for peptides, many "incurable" diseases have seen peptides specifically made for them and acts as effective cures (e.g. multiple sclerosis), however for the most part their potential is untapped, the reason being that this tech is endogenously produced in the human body, which make them unpatentable, which makes them unlucrative and since public research clinical trials are inexistant, you will never see them massively adopted, unless by accident.
So where is the catch? Why more people are not talking about it and money is not puring into that if that's such a game changer? If it's that kind of miracle cure why for example Gates foundation or any other foundations doesn't invest in it ?
>I expect that human genetic engineering, both therapeutic and “vanity” applications, will become an unfathomably profitable industry in the coming decades.
The most important application, by far, dwarfing both therapeutic and vanity, is improvements to intelligence.
I’ve heard this argument before (and probably made this argument at some point too), and it seems to boil down to thinking that people would agree with me if they would just be a bit smarter and/or more informed.
But I don’t think this is true at all. If it was then smart people would agree, but they don’t.
There is another line of thinking (often seen in science fiction) that suggests all problems are solvable if only you are smart enough. But they are not, some problems simply don’t have a reachable satisfactory solution. There is a reason these science fiction stories often come with a ‘benevolent’ dictator to impose the smart fix on everyone, because taking away free will is the only way to solve some of the hardest problems.
I think there is a strong argument for emotional intelligence, worldliness, and empathy though.
Why not?
>I’ve heard this argument before (and probably made this argument at some point too), and it seems to boil down to thinking that people would agree with me if they would just be a bit smarter and/or more informed.
I don't want the next generation to agree with me. I want them to be on the next level.
>I think there is a strong argument for emotional intelligence, worldliness, and empathy though.
If you have a society of monkeys, no matter how worldly, emotionally intelligent they are - they are not creating astrolabes to travel the oceans, they are not domesticating animals, they are not writing plays, they are not building huts, even.
Similarly, if you create a society of humans with a higher average intelligence, we will likewise experience a phase shift and access new wonders of culture and science that are simply inaccessible or extremely impractical right now. I cannot tell you what these wonders will be, but I am certain they exist.
And in my humble opinion, we have already started to hit a wall in terms of what areas of intellectual achievement are possible with our current 'hardware' limitations. There are already areas of math, of physics, of biology that maybe 10-20 people on the whole Earth are capable of working in. We struggle to come up with any satisfying macro economic theory with testable predictions. Religious thought has very obviously stalled as well.
Think about how much different the concept of IQ is if we don't have computers. With computers we just think of IQ as a type of clock speed of the brain. To get "smarter" people then we just need to do some kind of overclocking.
It seems likely to me we are confusing a model for reality. Even worse that in confusing that particular brain/computer model for reality we tend to confuse all models of reality for reality. Simulation theory on down.
Simple example: how many people in the USA understand that inflation / money printing / quantitative easing is a tax and should be avoided at the level it is used to finance the spending? Not many, for sure.
Btw intelligence is not only sheer analytical power, it is also emotional control, selintrospection, focus skill, collaboration and interpersonal skill.
Not hugely surprising to today-me, but I was still young enough that it was a bit disillusioning to see that people couldn't even see (or say out loud) that being more intelligent would help us all.
https://www.jscreen.org/learn-more/lifestyle-and-planning/fa...
On the other hand, do we even really know how genes work? I thought I read that what we thought were transcription boundaries are not actually boundaries at all, so that greatly increases the number of possible interactions with the genome. And the "junk" dna actually does something. Also, a great many traits and diseases seem to be associated with many more than one gene, which implies interactions between genes which also makes figuring out what happens when you alter specific genes much more complex. The case where one gene is tied to one trait seems to be the exception rather than the rule. And then there is the question of the influence of mitochondrial DNA from the mother, and the recent research showing that certain chemicals can determine which organ stem cells will turn into (which genes control those chemicals? What happens if they get altered?) I'm not convinced scientists really know what they are doing here, which likely means some rather bad experimental outcomes. We can't predict what small evolutionary changes in the coronavirus do, and we're going to precisely control the process that makes a human? I don't think so.