Is gene-therapy wrong?

[Angryman101]

Tell me, sir, have you ever heard the tale of Daedalus and Icarus?
OP: If this happens during our lifetime, I will raise some sort of extremist group and bomb the shit out of every single clinic and hospital that condones its use. Science tampering with the natural beauty of life in such a way is so far out of bounds it deserves to go up in flames.

You consider seizures, depression, retardation, Down's Syndrome, Autism, etc. natural beauty?

Is altering some chemical molecules really that much different than chemotherapy or blood transfusions or scanning someone's body or cutting them open and replacing their body parts with ones from a dead person's? Don't let your own opinion infringe on other people being able to keep on living.

If they have diseases like that, then yeah, they should die. That's the real world; people live, people die. I can't imagine manufacturing people to have ANY positive effects on society.

If you can tweak life, why not? Why make life sacred? I wouldn't want it to be abused, but I can could say that about everything in the world. It's something that can prevent unwanted instances from mankind and bring us further and stronger.

"Moral strings" are just holding us back...

Tell me, sir, have you ever heard the tale of Daedalus and Icarus?
OP: If this happens during our lifetime, I will raise some sort of extremist group and bomb the shit out of every single clinic and hospital that condones its use. Science tampering with the natural beauty of life in such a way is so far out of bounds it deserves to go up in flames.

Let's look at this story from a different perspective. Icarus fell out of ignorance, he didn't know the sun would melt the wax wings. I'm saying that what if he made wings of steel and flew past the sun?

He was enraptured by the feeling and thrill of flight and flew too high because he was over zealous and careless. His father told him the risks, there was no ignorance involved.

 

[dark_taint92]

Once you start engineering people the ideas of natural selection are rendered moot and in the place of a system that inevitably resulted in a fair cross section of attributes that has lead us from living in caves and fearing the sun to our current state in only a few thousand years you would apply the wisdom of a handful of people most probably governed by little more than gender sterotypes, unfulfilled dreams broad social trends.

One thing about what you've said here. Natural selection for us doesn't really work anymore natural selection is things like diseases, predator and abiotic factors, humans have over come all there natural predators, can cure most diseases and we can survive pretty much anywhere on earth with a supple of oxygen due to the technology we use. Natural selection for us if already moot.

My opinion on this is if it's going to help stamp out genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis and certain types of cancer I'm all for it but designing your child to how you want him or her is wrong because your taking the genes he/she inherited off you and destroying them making them some one completely different and in a way not related to yourself.

 

[Czargent Sane]

I dont believe that jean therapy is wrong, because I want my pants to feel good.


they've been through a lot.

 

[Levitas1234]

It just doesn't seem right, is not a valid argument.

 

[Drakmeire]

There was a robot chicken sketch about this, it was satirical but still showed a comparison to this and the Nazi notion of the "master race" I would rather just have a kid and see what happens. (you don't want to see me tweak anything, I will always overlook something, that's why all the Sims I designed fully manually all look like botched plastic surgery victims). Now if I could give my child laser beam eyes or eagle wings then I totally would.

 

[Ham_authority95]

Its not exactly wrong, but I absolutely do not agree with it. Its basically reducing offspring into some sort of plaything for parents.

I agree with this post.

However, if its to prevent the child from getting a genetic disease, they obviously think of it as more than a plaything

 

[NWS]

As a parent with a child who has a genetic disease(Cystic Fibrosis), I believe gene therapy should be allowed to cure potentially fatal conditions. Do I think I should use gene therapy so I don't need contacts? No, it's part of who I am, but to make it so I don't have to worry about my daughter dying young, or needing a lung transplant, I'd pay all the money I will ever make to give her the chance.

 

[^=ash=^]

Join the Earth Alliance, fight for a blue natural world, against the Coordinators of Zaft.

On a serious note, I don't care. Well, gene-therapy is very useful for screening for inherited diseases and can replace faulty genes for more healthy genetically healthy children. So I'm all for gene-therapy in the right context.

Granted changing eye / hair colour is improper use of the technology, but oh well.