That wouldn't be this scientists fault. We shouldn't blame the researchers, but should blame the people who wield the technology. We can't blame the guy who invented the firearm for every death related to firearms. Plus, he explicitly states here how he is against that future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th0vnOmFltc&app=desktop
Whether or not humans are responsible to equip technology is not really a concern to people who are advancing science, and maybe it shouldn't be.
I wonder if a new version, new advancement would be a terror for everyone else. They'd drop a social step, can't do things, less needed, etc.
The movie Gattaca explored this a bit. People in the film are heavily defined by their engineering. They might not BE just engineered, but being superior, or inferior is all encompassing. It becomes all they are.
In the film it is a bit of a curse even for the best. Jerome failed (got a silver medal) at something and can't recover. His medal only turns to gold at the very end.
Gattaca didn't explore actual superiority of genetically engineered humans. It was mostly about a guy cheating his way through through a surveillance state that openly discriminates against humans with inferior genes. The scary aspect was that everyone blindly trusted the gene scanner to be infallible (proven wrong by the protagonist). Whether the scanner was based on genetics, machine learning or your eye color didn't actually matter to the story.
> The scary aspect was that everyone blindly trusted the gene scanner to be infallible (proven wrong by the protagonist).
It's been a while since I've seen the movie but the protagonist didn't prove that the gene scanner could fail. He just cheated his way through it by using a health person's DNA evidence.
In fact, the final(?) scene of the movie proved the exact opposite of your claim. Again, it's been a while, but I believe the protagonist was just about to board the rocket when he was surprised by one final DNA scan and as he didn't expect it to be there he knew he couldn't cheat through it. It was heavily implied, if not told to us, that the person who operated the scanner saw the scan report and should have turned him away if he followed protocol, but he let the protagonist through anyway. I wanna say the scanner person quipped about how the protagonist must have been qualified if he could go through the training program with his non-GMO'd genes.
The movie isn't about a surveillance state. It was about a hypothetical future where nobody was conceived naturally anymore. Everybody was conceived with pre-selected genes which I imagine improved physical and mental prowess while also eliminating deadly diseases and defects. The protagonist was naturally conceived and as a consequence he had eyesight problems and I want to say asthma as well. I had the impression that they didn't want to accept astronauts with say asthma because they would rather just not have to deal with that problem to begin with.
Perhaps I’m misremembering the film, but I don’t think anything was proven wrong in the film? ISTR it was always understood that the genetic evaluation gave a measured “chance” of this or that, but that society had decided that people with bad chances weren’t even worth the risk of being a bad investment.
I'm 26 right now and I'm not planning to have kids until I'm 35 for this exact reason. I don't want my kid to say: "Daddy, why do other kids have disease resistance and I don't? Do you not love me? Or were you one of those stupid anti-CRISPRers who don't believe in science (the anti-vaxxers of the next decades)?"
I'd rather wait for 5-10 years to make sure I don't make a lifelong mistake.
Frankly the technology is not 5-10 years away. Decades, plural. I'd be surprised if we saw it used as a reproductive aid to correct severe hereditary genetic disorders in the next 5-10 years, and we won't see it used for optional modifications until we have twenty or thirty years of experience from the "better than the alternatives" modifications that the techniques aren't just creating massive amounts of cancer.
Please rethink that it's a good world where positive genetic traits can be added to babies - in a world where this is common, you or your kids would be in unfair competition with genetically superior people simply because their parents are rich. And the poor would be, for the first time in history, objectively inferior.
Yes, kids with rich parents are already at advantage - just wait to see what genetic superiority does to that divide.
On the other hand, I usually stop and inspect myself whenever my reasoning that something is bad is not because it hurts me, but because I can't accept to see others improve.
Good rule of thumb is that people should have the freedom to do anything as long as it doesn't violate other people's right. How does a rich family violate poor family's right by making their rich baby better?
> Good rule of thumb is that people should have the freedom to do anything as long as it doesn't violate other people's right.
On the micro-economics scale, I would not only agree with you, but argue that a successful society depends on it. Just as you should be allowed to participate in whatever harmless recreational activities you like at your own home, so should you be able to keep for yourself anything you've made or earned. Without these freedoms, people lose their incentives to be productive members of society.
However, this breaks down on the macro scale when feedback loops get out of control. Monopolies, duopolies and the like are pretty accepted as bad for economic growth because they have the resources to crush competition and have total control over markets. But monopolies are often just the result of a company that was first to market, had economies of scale, entrenched themselves through legislation, maintained an established brand, and had other feedback loops to strengthen themselves.
Just as we break up monopolies to give competition a chance, we should be working hard to break feedback loops that enforce hierarchy of classes so we can give everyone a chance to be successful or fail on their own.
The parent comment is correct that genetically engineered babies would likely be a mechanism for the socio-economically powerful to entrench their status further. It's not necessarily an argument for outright banning CRISPR babies, but giving more power to rich families absolutely does harm poor families by putting the poor families at a competitive disadvantage.
> Just as we break up monopolies to give competition a chance, we should be working hard to break feedback loops that enforce hierarchy of classes so we can give everyone a chance to be successful or fail on their own.
Mmm...with respect to enforced/entrenched class hierarchies you argue that we should break them up. That looks good on paper but when it comes down to it many parents/families who are smart do their utmost to give their children a leg up. Is this not legitimate? Isn't this, generally speaking, how families that have retained status/prosperity across generations?
Just to clarify, I said to break feedback loops that enforce class hierarchy. I agree that parents/families should do their utmost to give their children a leg up, but the game also needs to be fair for all players.
Take universities for example. They're not-for-profit institutions that are dedicated to the pure advancement of knowledge. They're a purely good thing. But as the job market required workers of higher skill and knowledge, and as colleges became a necessity for anyone pursuing a sustainable career, tuition prices rose massively. Wealthy families can still afford university tuition and still have all the opportunities that come with, whereas poor families who don't earn scholarships are left with fewer options.
So universities--which still are a purely good thing--have now enabled a feedback loop for furthering the gap between rich and poor. The solution would never be to break up universities, but to break their role in this feedback loop (by, for example, making them not a prerequisite for employment, or by enabling more universal access).
Likewise, I fear for a future where genetically engineered super humans exist, where they are only born of families who can afford it, where employers will hire with exceeding prejudice in favor of people born this way, where universities will likewise favor people like this, and where the rest of humanity gets left out.
> On the other hand, I usually stop and inspect myself whenever my reasoning that something is bad is not because it hurts me, but because I can't accept to see others improve.
Good point. Not many are as clear thinking as you. The one point against this kind of manipulation is that I'm not sure we can predict all the potential consequences. By altering the genes of a few individuals we may incur unintended consequences in generations to come. So whilst we may not personally suffer from the guy next door giving siring to "superior" children there may be trouble a few generations down the line. Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic...
Thing is that any society that hesitates on adopting genetic engineering out of some fear of exacerbating income inequality or whatever is going to lose out in the long run to any civilization that has no such ethical hangups about genetic engineering. It's a prisoner's dilemma.
Remove IP laws, copy all the best tech from everywhere, and make it availible to everyone possible. Not sure how that will necessarily lose to a small number of the rich hoarding access.
I'd suppose governments with a socialised healthcare system would push and invest heavily if it means to lower the cost. Just like most (?) push for affordable medicine in one form or another.
Yes, if the time scales of the updates were spaced across generations. But I guess commercial availability of such technology would mean much shorter time scales leading to very bad consequences for the aging population. Eventually, perhaps leading events like one generation deciding to stop manufacturing babies. Could lead to scary consequences if not thought through...