Showing posts with label genetic engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genetic engineering. Show all posts

07 September 2020

What Should be Allowed and Outlawed in a World of Genetic Engineering?

In 1978, the first "test tube baby" was born. By 2017, babies born by in vitro fertilization (IVF) were 1.7% of all babies born in the US.

In 2018, 40 years after the first IVF baby, two baby girls were born whose genes had been edited. I think there is a real possibility that gene editing will become more common in 40 years than IVF is now.

Which genetic changes should be outlawed in such a world?

Which genetic changes should be allowed?

If you refuse to analyze or edit genes of your offspring and they suffer from what will then be an easily preventable genetic issue, should they be able to sue you?

Evolution to this point has been random. Will the world improve once evolution is made more intentional?

01 September 2020

Genetic Engineering and How Humanity Could Go The Way of The Dogs

In Hacking Darwin, Jamie Metzl writes that, "A BBC poll estimated that around half of all South Korean women in their twenties have had some type of plastic surgery." It gets more interesting when you talk about giving parents the ability to choose whether to edit their children's genes before birth to raise the probability that they'll be smarter, kinder, more athletic, more attractive, etc, Skillfully slicing genes rather than faces.

Metzl predicts that parents will adopt genetic engineering for their children and this could lead to a huge divide between those who can and will and those who can't or won't.

All dogs are the descendants of wolves, from chihuahua to Siberian Husky, dachshund to beagle. People began to breed dogs to exaggerate particular traits. Now these dogs hardly look related.

I wonder if the future of humanity will go to the dogs; so much variety among "us" as the genetic engineering becomes more creative that we're hardly recognizable as the same species.