Is gene-therapy wrong?

[ethaninja]

Youch. Are they serious? I mean, I'm not saying it wouldn't be justified if the child was going to grow into an epic douchebag, but still..

 

[Pegghead]

I heard about this a few years back and I didn't like the sound of it. It sort of reminds me of this old science fiction film my grandmother was telling me about where a man found himself in the future and couples wanting a baby would simply walk up to a specialised machine, punch in what they want, pay osme money and then voila.

To me while I'm against the restriction of science I think we have to keep it within some boundaries, man was never meant to play God after all.

 

[Snownine]

Do you know how many people this could save? Getting rid of hereditary diseases like Alzheimer's and Huntington's for good, stopping people from ever having crippling allergies or asthma, how can you not be for that?

I think what they are against isn't combating disease but the things that they would do for pure aesthetics like height, hair/eye color, ect.

OT: I personally think that using it to fight disease is a good thing and that it should be utilized if the parents choose to. I however think that "customizing" children into what you want like they are an inanimate possession is selfish and wrong.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

To me while I'm against the restriction of science I think we have to keep it within some boundaries, man was never meant to play God after all.

Says who?

 

[clipped crow]

The question extends beyond the mere sanctity of life. If we have the power to save a doomed life by curing a terrible illness in the womb, few would complain. But if we were given the power to determine everything about the resulting person you extend far beyond simply creating, preserving, or destroying life: you seek to engineer it. To do so is to literally toy with the power of the divine (literally or metaphorically depending upon your perspective) and the real question is can this power be leveraged in a way that is legitimately beneficial to the species. 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.

Two things.

One, "Divine" only exists out of ignorance, the world has always worked as it is without us.

Two, the people that have the knowledge and ability of this type of scientific research know much more about the given situation then just social "trends." Any pile of shaved monkeys with a stroke of luck could shove a couple of needles into a sac of flesh and change something, but to understand it and know where each piece goes and how it works in it's ups and downs is enough of merit to prove worthy to make a better human.

 

[Vault Citizen]

to stop genetic diseases such as hungtingtons being passed on and to give immunities to other diseases that could be caught later in life? = great idea

to have the right eye colour, etc = am not really bothered by it, if it doesn't hurt anyone why does it matter?

 

[Polyg0n]

I probably wouldn`t do that to my future kid, but I don`t really care if someone else did it. So I don`t think it`s wrong.

 

[Snownine]

The question extends beyond the mere sanctity of life. If we have the power to save a doomed life by curing a terrible illness in the womb, few would complain. But if we were given the power to determine everything about the resulting person you extend far beyond simply creating, preserving, or destroying life: you seek to engineer it. To do so is to literally toy with the power of the divine (literally or metaphorically depending upon your perspective) and the real question is can this power be leveraged in a way that is legitimately beneficial to the species. 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.

Two things.

One, "Divine" only exists out of ignorance, the world has always worked as it is without us.

Two, the people that have the knowledge and ability of this type of scientific research know much more about the given situation then just social "trends." Any pile of shaved monkeys with a stroke of luck could shove a couple of needles into a sac of flesh and change something, but to understand it and know where each piece goes and how it works in it's ups and downs is enough of merit to prove worthy to make a better human.

The trends he is talking about are the things the parents, not the scientists creating the technology, will be using to determine what constitutes a perfect child.

 

[clipped crow]

The question extends beyond the mere sanctity of life. If we have the power to save a doomed life by curing a terrible illness in the womb, few would complain. But if we were given the power to determine everything about the resulting person you extend far beyond simply creating, preserving, or destroying life: you seek to engineer it. To do so is to literally toy with the power of the divine (literally or metaphorically depending upon your perspective) and the real question is can this power be leveraged in a way that is legitimately beneficial to the species. 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.

Two things.

One, "Divine" only exists out of ignorance, the world has always worked as it is without us.

Two, the people that have the knowledge and ability of this type of scientific research know much more about the given situation then just social "trends." Any pile of shaved monkeys with a stroke of luck could shove a couple of needles into a sac of flesh and change something, but to understand it and know where each piece goes and how it works in it's ups and downs is enough of merit to prove worthy to make a better human.

The trends he is talking about are the things the parents, not the scientists creating the technology, will be using to determine what constitutes a perfect child.

Then I am sorry for misreading.

I agree that these things shouldn't be a public decision given to anyone, but I disagree with throwing them completely away when they can do so much good.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Two things.

One, "Divine" only exists out of ignorance, the world has always worked as it is without us.

No. I used the word quite correctly. In this case I was referring to the use of a power so awesome in it's scope and implications that previous generations would have imagined could only belong to a god. The same can be said of the combat prowess of Achilles for example.

Two, the people that have the knowledge and ability of this type of scientific research know much more about the given situation then just social "trends." Any pile of shaved monkeys with a stroke of luck could shove a couple of needles into a sac of flesh and change something, but to understand it and know where each piece goes and how it works in it's ups and downs is enough of merit to prove worthy to make a better human.

Ah, but you missed the point entirely. I am not in any way asserting that the scientists will make mistakes in swapping genes; instead, I am presenting the hypothetical question. On the one hand we have the process of natural selection that has inevitably lead us to this point in history. On the other, we suppose that we grant the power to customize a baby to the parents. To support such a fundamental shift in they way that we, as a species, move forward you would have to agree that you would rather allow the influence of emotion, social trends, future hopes and crushed dreams govern the course of the species rather than the cold, pitiless gauntlet of life itself. This is not a question of morality. It is simply asking if you believe we, as a species, can do a better job than the systems that have seen life go from a single cell to complex organisms in the face of disaster, catastrophe, calamity and, recently, good old fashioned human intervention.

 

[Keava]

The only real problem i see with the whole gene-engineered perfect children is how much it will impact their lives later on. We, as humanity, already tend to be xenophobic towards anything different from us, racism, religious prejudice and simple nationalism are way too common. Now on top of that you will have a new group of people to hate on, those 'engineered', falling down close to the uncanny valley because they might be just too perfect, not natural, lacking the flaws we take as something normal and granted.

How long till such kids or even adult people will be frowned upon, what will be reaction of others when they find out that this person was 'enhanced' through genes, and on the other side what if one of those 'pipmed' persona's decides he is better than the rest?

I really dont mind curing the diseases, personally i dont mind changing eye color or other things, its just, as a whole, humanity tends to be rather immature.

 

[Nikajo]

It's definately unnatural to start messing around with the genes of a foetus. However, that said, some people have genes that carry certain congenital diseases and if these can be eliminated at the foetal stage through gene therapy then yes I would say that is absolutely a good thing to be able to do. We're along way off from that yet but it's theoretically possible.

As for messing around with genes for cosmetic purposes...well I don't agree with it but you can't tell people how to raise/gentically modify their kid can you? Considering that this kind of therapy isn't exactly going to be perfect yet I would say that it's a huge and unnecessary risk. It could cause all kinds of nasty complications, maybe even death. Is it really worth risking a still birth because you wanted your child to have blue eyes?

 

[Rakkana]

If its to get genetic diseases out the gene pool then I'm all for it. But i know they wont stop there so I'm against it.

 

[Angryman101]

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.

 

[clipped crow]

Two, the people that have the knowledge and ability of this type of scientific research know much more about the given situation then just social "trends." Any pile of shaved monkeys with a stroke of luck could shove a couple of needles into a sac of flesh and change something, but to understand it and know where each piece goes and how it works in it's ups and downs is enough of merit to prove worthy to make a better human.

Ah, but you missed the point entirely. I am not in any way asserting that the scientists will make mistakes in swapping genes; instead, I am presenting the hypothetical question. On the one hand we have the process of natural selection that has inevitably lead us to this point in history. On the other, we suppose that we grant the power to customize a baby to the parents. To support such a fundamental shift in they way that we, as a species, move forward you would have to agree that you would rather allow the influence of emotion, social trends, future hopes and crushed dreams govern the course of the species rather than the cold, pitiless gauntlet of life itself. This is not a question of morality. It is simply asking if you believe we, as a species, can do a better job than the systems that have seen life go from a single cell to complex organisms in the face of disaster, catastrophe, calamity and, recently, good old fashioned human intervention.

I don't see life as itself is intelligent, while I can see where you're coming from with a "don't fix what ain't broke" mentality. I think that our system that has carried us is merely blanket woven out of luck and not the full potential of mankind that could achieved by engineering life to "better" format based of the problems we already know exist.

I agree completely that merely parental consent of changing the life of their child before the even truly exist is absurd and edging into sci-fi horror.

 

[dekuben]

In before poor eyesight jokes.

 

[Soxafloppin]

Well youd be pretty pissed off if you turned down this option and you kid turned out to be an arrogant, idiotic waste of space!

Think about it THAT way.

 

[clipped crow]

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?

 

[Bagaloo]

I think it's a good idea, to an extent. Eliminating genetic defects in the womb, thus preventing them from being passed on sounds like a great thing to do, and would drastically improve the quality of the child's life.

The place it could go wrong is with the level of customisation. Retarded, attention seeking parents might try and work it so their child has bright blue hair, or an unnatural skin colour just for the sake of being different (or in this case, having different offspring). That wouldn't be fair on the kid, who would almost certainly get singled out for the way their parents made them look.

 

[Snownine]

The only real problem i see with the whole gene-engineered perfect children is how much it will impact their lives later on. We, as humanity, already tend to be xenophobic towards anything different from us, racism, religious prejudice and simple nationalism are way too common. Now on top of that you will have a new group of people to hate on, those 'engineered', falling down close to the uncanny valley because they might be just too perfect, not natural, lacking the flaws we take as something normal and granted.

How long till such kids or even adult people will be frowned upon, what will be reaction of others when they find out that this person was 'enhanced' through genes, and on the other side what if one of those 'pipmed' persona's decides he is better than the rest?

I really dont mind curing the diseases, personally i dont mind changing eye color or other things, its just, as a whole, humanity tends to be rather immature.

Your line about the superiority complex these engineered people may develop reminds me of a particular piece of fictional history that I am sure is many of the nerds here are familiar with. The Eugenics wars.

KHAN!!!