At the end of the day I completely support this. The individual and social benefits to eliminating genetic diseases such as diabetes, parkinsons, alcholism etc. are enormous.
I'd love to have my future children partially designed to eliminate hereditary diseases. That's a no brainer.
Unintended Social Consequences & Controversies of This Technology
Would I use this technology to enhance their intelligence and athletic ability - of course, what responsible parent wouldn't want their child to have every possible advantage. This is more controversial because thousands(millions?) of individuals making individual decisions for similar reasons can cause an unintential social movement. Such genetic enhancement runs counter to our American ideals of fair play (witness our laws against performance enhancing drugs for athletes).
What about the ethics of deleting a gay gene, deaf gene or genes that make you fat? Parts of our society would do this without blinking. But other parts of our society(beyond the christianists) will have severe issues with this? E.g., won't deaf culture die out and should it (which is a huge issue)?
Depending on how far such technology progresses, it also has has the potential to cement the position of those at the top and eliminatig the eternal goal of meritocracy and social mobility. Without the last two, our Democratic-Capitalist society will eventually collapse due to revolts and possible revolutions - they'll be slow in coming, but they'll come. And it won't just be our nation, it will occur in other nation where the same technology is available and utilized.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
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