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World's First GM Babies Born

CanadaJohn said:
I'm getting too old for modern times. I still believe in the miracle and magic of new life and the wonder and discovery of what that life will become, warts and all. Many great people in history were ones who overcame disabilities that made them stronger. Not sure where we get with a society of perfect beings.
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Where humans are involved there aint no such thing as perfect beings or perfect society, too many definitions of perfect and everyone's opinion of the definition, is different.
 
Gee, when I first read the subject line I thought it was about General Motors,
 
Un biased said:
Id like health not a slow death
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And what a wonderful choice. I'd go with the mathematical genius, also a wonderful choice. What you don't seem to see is that so many of our greatest humans have gotten that way by battling genetic illness/predisposition.
 
Kal'Stang said:
:confused: Is it their right to do this? Do human being have a right to genetically modify their offspring?
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I would argue that they do, especially when the modification occurs before the offspring is even conceived.

Kal'Stang said:
Their offspring has no say in the matter so if what pro-lifers argue about an unborn child not having a say in the matter and that they have rights also is correct reasoning then wouldn't the same apply here also? If a ZEF has rights then wouldn't this be interferring with those rights?
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Offspring's got no say in being born, either, or in who its parents are. No difference. Genes are genes no matter where you get them from.
 
What could possibly go wrong?
 
I think this is one of those situations that we might HAVE to go down this road whether we want to or not. The rest of the world is not subject to our code of ethics or morality and you can bet that this science is already wildly advanced beyond anything that you are going to hear about publicly.

You can literally send your brain into overload trying to contemplate all of the potential ramifications. Interesting times we live in for sure.
 
Wait until somebody figures out the genetic predisposition to voting Republican or Democrat. Instead of importing new voters, Democrats will just breed them.
 
Kal'Stang said:
That would be about cloning. Which this is not about. This is about genetic manipulation to enhance our physical bodies. Be it to get rid of diseases or other "enhancements" I'm not sure.

I'm actually of two minds about these kinds of things. Excuse the geekiness here but Star Trek actually dealt with some of the possible issues of genetic manipulation. I know, its fiction, not reality. But the points that were brought up are still valid. In the original series they had Kahn who was suppose to be stronger and smarter than the normal human, unfortenately it also gave him an arrogance to match. In another show they tried to make humans immune system attack germs and virus before it even entered the body, which ended up attacking other humans that were not modified. While these things may not happen it is still a possibility. Ones which could bite us in the butts after its too late to do anything about it.

I would have to say that if we are going to be doing this then there are going to have to be ground rules put into place not just in what is done, but also in how not only they are treated but also in how those who have not been genetically enhanced are treated.

This is just one HUGE can of worms. I wonder if we are ready for it.....
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Good afternoon, Kal'Stang. :2wave:

Long time no see! We must be posting on different threads...

Excellent post! I was an avid follower of the StarTrek series, and I have them all on DVDs so I can re-watch them at leisure. So many times scientists discover something that could be beneficial, but then carry that thought further into things that were never imagined initially. What's to stop them from proceeding further to see what is possible? Nothing. That's what research is for, I guess.

There was also a series called "First Wave" that covered this topic, but unfortunately DVDs are not yet available, or I would have them! In one show humans were modified to give them gills to breathe underwater for harvesting plant life from oceans.. Anything is possible. "If you can imagine it, you can achieve it" William Arthur Ward.
I am not sure we are ready for it. :shock:
 
Desmond Morris noted once in a lecture of his I attended back in the late 70s that man's increasing ability to develop technologically outpaces our ability to adapt to these changes socially by a large and increasing margin. He predicted much of the social turmoil and degradation we're seeing today and believed that would ultimately level us to an evolutionary foote (standard extinction).
 
CanadaJohn said:
Good idea? Until such time as self-centered humans get the idea that breeding genetically perfect children for spare parts sounds good.
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Yeah. I'm pretty sure that a guy named Mengele was working on stuff like this a few years back.
 
The potential for enhancing the lives of individuals who would otherwise be born with serious health issues is enormous, and quite exciting. These are baby steps toward a future when no child will ever have to face a life of pain and crippling disease if inter-utero genetic modification can eliminate the genetic cause. This is a good thing. I'm not understanding the fear and negativity. This is truly an amazing and awesome scientific breakthrough!
 
DiAnna said:
The potential for enhancing the lives of individuals who would otherwise be born with serious health issues is enormous, and quite exciting. These are baby steps toward a future when no child will ever have to face a life of pain and crippling disease if inter-utero genetic modification can eliminate the genetic cause. This is a good thing. I'm not understanding the fear and negativity. This is truly an amazing and awesome scientific breakthrough!
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With every tool it's capacity for harmful use mirrors it's capacity for beneficial use. As many humans who will choose to use the tech for benefit will choose to use the tech for harm (intentional or not). What good does it do to prevent a few diseases if you eventually tank the species?

This falls under the old wisdom - just because you can doesn't mean you should.
 
clownboy said:
With every tool it's capacity for harmful use mirrors it's capacity for beneficial use. As many humans who will choose to use the tech for benefit will choose to use the tech for harm (intentional or not). What good does it do to prevent a few diseases if you eventually tank the species?

This falls under the old wisdom - just because you can doesn't mean you should.
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The same fear-mongering could be used to describe every scientific breakthrough in the medical field, from vaccines and antibiotics to organ transplants, X-rays, CT scans and MRI's. All have had immense beneficial effects on humankind... and if misused, all could do irreparable harm. :shrug: I stand by my opinion that this is an amazing and awesome discovery, with tremendous potential benefits.
 
Great, they're modifying human babies to make them better human beings. I'll be obsolete by the time I'm 30 years old.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Good idea? Until such time as self-centered humans get the idea that breeding genetically perfect children for spare parts sounds good.
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Just think of what the Nazis could have accomplished had they known how.
 
clownboy said:
The issue is the slippery slope of eugenics. Designer babies. So many dangers here, we're messing with the gene pool, and that's going to bite us in the butt species-wise. Remember entropy.
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Admittedly, I'm pretty much a naturalist and purist, so I have great reservations about this. In nature, what is physically unfit for breeding, can't breed. The idea of having two "mothers" genetically, and one father, is an idea I find a bit repulsive. We have no idea what the long-term implications will be, nor how the method will be used for the unethical and/or perverted purposes of whomever can make the ultimate decisions in matters like this. Pandora's Box, anyone?
 
The only thing I don't like about IVF is that sperm are supposed to compete and the healthiest/strongest sperm fertilize the egg, but with IVF they choose a sperm and use it to fertilize. I don't think this creates the best genetic outcome.

In terms of all the modifications, there is no evidence that people modifying their genes will lead to viable offspring who do not have their own genetic diseases down the line. Natural selection will still win out by eliminating modifications that are not advantageous to the species.

As for creating higher intelligence, that's highly subjective. Most scientists base intelligence on IQ which is really an aptitude test, which is a test of logic and not creativity. I don't think it's necessarily advantangeous to create babies who are more logical. If we had more creative and critical thinking modalities included in the education system, people would have higher intelligence anyway. Making people "smarter" so that they can do the same mundane education modules and narrow-minded thinking of the industrial education system does not a better human make.

I don't think humanity is ready for elective genetic engineering of their offspring, but it seems like it's going to start happening soon one way or the other. In the case of the OP, it's my opinion that if a person's genes don't permit them to reproduce, then there is a good reason for that, and we should not be mixing genetic lines together.
 
I have a question.

If we manage to "fix" life so that we no longer need to worry about disease and genetic "disabilities" then aren't we also shutting off the mechanism by which we evolve as a species? Are we really so arrogant as to believe that as a species we have reached the pinnacle of our evolutionary journey and no longer need the trials of nature to encourage us in one direction or another?

What happens next? Will we institute a UN council on biological desirability to sort out what the next level of human "progress" will be?

In the past we have seen governments take on the role of God and gods and all those civilizations, no matter how great their accomplishments at the time, have fallen. There is a reason for that.

Nature is entropic. It MUST be entropic because that diversity, including the pain and suffering that goes with it, is what gives our lives meaning and allows us to grow as individuals, as civilizations and as a species.
 
DiAnna said:
These are baby steps toward a future when no child will ever have to face a life of pain and crippling disease if inter-utero genetic modification can eliminate the genetic cause.
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I certainly appreciate what you're saying there, but does the possibility not exist that in solving one problem we're simply exacerbating others?

We've got ~7 billion on this little planet as it is and population is growing logarithmically (on the steep end) if not expotentially.

Meanwhile, we're depeleting natural resources at an ever increasing rate, creating polution like never before in history, and replacing traditional middle class jobs with machines.

Sure, these kids are gonna be healthier than they would have otherwise have been, in a sense.

But when they grow up jobless, with no access to clean water, breathing smog, and suffering from the kinds of communicable diseases that grow in poverty and squalor have we (or "science" really) done them any favors?

Now obviously this is a "doom & gloom" assessment of the global future, and who knows, maybe cold fusion and perpetual motion machines and our ability to discern the secretes of the Universe once we learn to talk to the Dolphins will render it more apocryphal than prophetic.

But it's at least something to think about.

Packing more people onto the planet by means of circumventing Darwin might just hasten our demise as a species.
 
Well how about that!!!! Hitlers master race is only a generation away!
 
Lutherf said:
If we manage to "fix" life so that we no longer need to worry about disease and genetic "disabilities" then aren't we also shutting off the mechanism by which we evolve as a species? Are we really so arrogant as to believe that as a species we have reached the pinnacle of our evolutionary journey and no longer need the trials of nature to encourage us in one direction or another?
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There are many who argue that humans have not evolved all that much in the past 100,000 years because our environment no longer challenges us enough to need major adaptations. If this argument is at all true, then it means the only way for us to change is if we change ourselves.

I personally think it's folly to assume that genetic engineering is the next natural course of our species' development. It's an idea that has been propagated by science since we discovered DNA, and expounded upon by everything from science fiction to actual scientific theory. It's similar to how some transhumanists believe our next natural leap in development is to embed technology into our bio-structures.

Time will tell I guess, but I believe that there is a certain foundational arrogance to our culture that presumes we can always do better than nature, when that is often proven wrong. It's colonialism transplanted into genetic engineering. There is a lot about the human body and consciousness that is still a big question mark, and to go tinkering with that is hubris.
 
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