What are your thoughts on genetic engineering from a moral/ethical point of view? Do you believe that we have the right as a species to direct our own biology? Would we risk becoming a Gattaca society?
The problem in Gattaca wasn't the genetic engineering, it was the social structures they built around it. I don't believe that those social structures are the inevitable result of genetic of engineering. Without those social structures, I don't find anything morally questionable about genetic engineering.
Having said that, I think there are practical reasons why such technology should be heavily regulated. A few off the top of my head:
1. If you allow people to genetically engineer at will, then traits that are unpopular but useful may be weeded out of the population. For example, in the western world, extroversion is valued above introversion. Genetic engineering could end up creating a western world filled with extroverts. This would create a severe shortage of the skillsets introverts excell in. To make matters worse, no one would notice this shortage for a generation. There would be generational cycles of weaknesses due to decisions made by parents.
2. If access to such technology is driven by the free market then it will become a situation where only the wealthy have access to it. What can end up happening is that the wealthy will ensure their children are genetically superior, thereby further entrenching the divide between the rich and the poor. In a world where the rich have access to genetic engineering and the poor do not, the rich will tend to always excell in whatever areas they were designed to excell in and they would be less prone to genetic diseases and disorders. This would virtually guarantee a never ending oligarchy.
3. This is closely tied to #1 above, but instead of focusing on the things we would accidentally weed out, imagine the things we would accidently create an over-abundance of. In a world where we can design our children, we would have way too many people who look alike because everyone chose genetic traits that are currently popular (everyone wants their girls to look barbies and boys to look like Brad Pitts or whoever the du jour pop culture icons are (I'm out of touch with that culture these days)).
So, in a nutshell, I don't think the practice is morally questionable. But I think some of the consequences could be really bad even if not for moral reasons. Therefore, a lot of care is necessary.
In my opinion, the safest route is to limit genetic engineering only to preventing genetic disorders and predispositions to diseases. Even in this, great care is needed, especially in the area of psychiatric conditions (do we want to end ADHD? what if, as some suspect, ADHD comes with certain benefits that we would accidentally weed out of the population?).
