Posted on 02/24/2011 1:33:28 PM PST by neverdem
The idea of using genetic engineering to enhance human beings scares a lot of people. For example, at a 2006 meeting called by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Richard Hayes, the executive director of the left-leaning Center for Bioethics and Society, testified that “enhancement technologies would quickly be adopted by the most privileged, with the clear intent of widening the divisions that separate them and their progeny from the rest of the human species.” Deploying such enhancement technologies would “deepen genetic and biological inequality among individuals,” exacerbating “tendencies towards xenophobia, racism and warfare.” Hayes concluded that allowing people to use genetic engineering for enhancement “could be a mistake of world-historical proportions.”
Meanwhile intellectuals with a more right-wing bent such as Nigel Cameron, president of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, worry that “one of the greatest ethical concerns about the potential uses of germline interventions to enhance normal human functions is that their availability will widen the existing inequalities between the rich and the poor.”
Even proponents of genetic enhancement, such as Princeton University biologist Lee Silver, have argued that genetic engineering will lead to a class of genetically enhanced people that he calls the GenRich who will occupy the heights of the economy while unenhanced Naturals provide whatever grunt labor the future needs. Silver suggested that eventually “the GenRich class and the Natural class will become…entirely separate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee.”
A more optimistic view is that the ability to install whatever genes one might want will become so cheap and routine that everybody would have access to the technology, dissipating the fears of growing inequality, even speciation, between groups of people. Underlying all this...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
I always liked her overbite.
Very beautiful lady Ms Tierney.
What do you have against HER?
I always thought she was a decent actress, and a very beautiful woman...
TNSTAAFL principle, in biology, is called “antagonistic pleotropy”.
Before we selectively breed or genetically engineer humans towards a specific talent or task we should take a long hard look at race horses.
Are race horses fast? You bet, the fasted breed of horses! Do they have problems? You bet, thin legs prone to break, think papery skin prone to cracks, health problems, etc, etc.
I think Gattica had a good take on this. They bred their children for not having heart defects and for not being violent. What they got was a bunch of weak kneed long lived poofs who sure THOUGHT they were superior, but got beat in the clinch by a more aggressive heart ‘defective’ normal human.
The movie "Gattaca" was about this very thing.
I always liked her overbite.
You beat me to it. Gene was truly a major leaguer. Gorgeous. Who wouldn’t want to own her portrait from Laura.
Sorry, I couldn't help meself.
“one of the greatest ethical concerns about the potential uses of germline interventions to enhance normal human functions is that their availability will widen the existing inequalities between the rich and the poor.”
I believe the human race will be decimated through tailor-made virus warfare long before class distinctions will become an issue.
I used to know a carpenter who wished he had a third arm in the middle of his chest so he could hang on to the building while he worked with his other two hands. Why should genetic improvements just be for the upper class? lol
Yup, nice over bite
I am not a Tyrant! And I’m sick of being blamed for causing Cancer too!
“I always liked her overbite.”
That’s not an overbite, it’s an over-hang.
“Deploying such enhancement technologies would “deepen genetic and biological inequality among individuals,”
There are genetic and biological INEQUALITY among individuals? Really? After decades of being told there are NONE? Does this mean there is a similar inequalities between races?
Overbite?
You’re talking about da guy that beat Dempsey.
The singularity will intervene before that.
I’m hoping...
How in the world can someone possibly hold an informed opinion about the social effects of technologies that do not yet exist? The model they’re using is well-worn and historically creaky, to be charitable. One might as well propose at the beginning of the 20th century that the automobile would split society into haves and have-nots, which it did...until it didn’t anymore. Separate species? Uh, Morlocks and Eloi? Been done, thanks, and Wells was just as socially inclined as these prognosticators and just as hopelessly wrong.
Probiotic identified to treat ulcers (counters H. pylori)
Maternal fructose intake impacts female and male fetuses differently
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