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by zepto 3679 days ago
How do you know that enabling people who happen to have resources in one of the current political regimes to edit their embryos will reduce suffering? It could just as easily increase it.
2 comments

It's not a matter of enabling this at the regime level. Regimes get to make their own laws. We in the west may not be able to stop clearly unethical embry editing, so whether we can do that or not is completely orthogonal to whether we should consider some uses of the technique to be ethical and allowable.
Do you know what Tay-Sachs is?
How is that relevant?
It's a source of suffering that can be solved through genetic engineering of embryos that some group of people with resources will be inclined to address.

It is relevant because it precisely fits your criteria.

Sure but my point is that technology that empowers a small group of powerful people to reduce their suffering may end up increasing suffering overall.
Yes. This is possible. You are completely correct.

Of course, this is in fact true for all values of $TOOL in "Given $TOOL, a bad thing may happen".

Sure - but the risks vary from tool.

Rich people editing their babies seems like it's more risky for society than most tools.