Odd to see you and I apparently on disparate sides on this issue. Let’s see where we stand, eh?
Heinlein covered this topic in “Revolt in 2100”. His was a more optimistic version of Huxley’s “Brave New World”. In Heinlein’s story, there were “control naturals”, people who had not been modified or improved in regard to their genetic make-up, health, intelligence, and so forth. Such people sometimes unintentionally outed themselves by sneezing or coughing, a behavior almost unheard of in the world of 2100.
It’s worth the read, just to get a rather unbiased viewpoint expressed by the author, as well as a rollicking story to go along with it.
Heinlein himself was annoyed with the frailties of the human condition, especially after it started affecting him personally. I tend to agree with that.
You see, you can be almost perfectly healthy and still be plagued by minor issues such as kidney stones, or gout, or even more serious issues like an incipient aneurysm.
Some people might say they want to have a good-looking corpse, but I find that to be an entirely wasteful concept.
It takes only a small thing to take us down; our Goliath ambitions and sterling qualities brought down by the pebbles cast by vengeful Davids disrespectful of our personal magnanimity.
I am personally convinced that our lives are far too short. While it is currently fashionable to speak derisively of superannuated teenagers among us, the more tragic reality is that our true maturity is far too short. In precious few words “We grow too soon oldt und too late schmart.”
If this be true, for me, for Robert Heinlein, and for many out among our conversant audience, then perhaps, God willing, our modern-day science will continue its march to whittle away at our infirmities of age, and we will one day grow somewhat schmart before we get too oldt.
My main point of objection with the article is that I do not think we will ever have sufficient knowledge to work with genetic material without causing the intended beneficiary more harm than good. Just using our current main tool, selective breeding, we find that the animals on whom we experiment end up with a host of genetic problems when we attempt to select for a single factor we consider "positive."
Your point about a too-short period of functional maturity is well taken. On the other hand, there's a case to be made that wisdom accrues when things really start to hurt and you memento mori.