Jobar

As a longtime fan of science fiction, gengineering (a word created by an SF writer, though I disremember who) human beings is rather 'old hat' to me. Considering the state of our ability to actually do this, though, I want to get the ideas and opinions of the experts who frequent this forum. Is the genetic modification of humans to improve our fitness as living organisms immanent? If or when such things become possible, *should* we do them? And lastly, *what sort* of improvements to the human genome do you think will be done first?

Speaking as a very well-informed layman, and of course as someone with a huge sf library, I think that we will have the knowledge to 'tweak' an individual's genome at the level of the egg or blastocyte, within five years. If animal models confirm that improvements can be made safely and easily, then my opinion is that we should do so- and thus become the first species ever to guide our own evolution.

And I think that an excellent candidate for the first genetic modification would be to repair the ability to synthesize vitamin C, depending of course on how compatible the method used is to this particular repair.

pz

And whose child is going to be the first to be a recipient of this boon? If this were your child or your experiment, would you be the one to take responsibility if something went wrong?

This is actually an interesting example of the risks. I've been doing some research on fish development, and one of the things we've been doing is exposing embryos to large doses of exogenous ascorbate. We're seeing some things that we didn't expect at all: increases in embryonic mortality, and most interesting of all, some shifts in the rate of development.

So, we know one thing that reactivating the synthetic enzyme would do -- it would let the person avoid eating citrus fruits. There are probably a hundred other consequences of this change, many or all of which might be harmless, a few others that might be unexpectedly advantageous, others that might just change things in odd ways, and some that might actually be deleterious.

I think it would be really, really cool to find out. Any volunteers?

Gurdur

An end to scurvy, eh ?

Related:
A long whle ago, as part of a PhD, I wanted to use high-frequency, high-strength pulsating magnetic fields to switch off various parts of my brain (Broca's area, Wernicke's area, other areas) and test the results on my language ability.
My uni did have the necessary machine, and I had all the tests set up.

Despite my offer to be the only subject (and my point made to them that in my adolecence I had done far worse things to myself with drugs/alcohol) they still wouldn't let me do it.

Jobar

pz, I did say that animal models- chimps, most likely- would have to be done first, to check for unwanted side effects. (Are mice able to synthesize vitamin C? Any animal with the same genetic lack we have would do...)

As to volunteering... the writer Nancy Kress has done several stories about this, starting with Beggars in Spain, which won a Hugo IIRC. (The first experiment was a girl whose wealthy father had her changed so that she did not need to ever sleep. I know that is extremely unlikely to ever happen, but the story was a fine extrapolation of the social, political and personal consequences of human modification. Well worth reading.)

I think about the parents of the Raelian clones- assuming they are genuine. That is not a risk to which I would subject a child of mine, or one I would be responsible for. The animal models make it plain that there are too many negative consequences. But... if it was a case of possible advantages beyond simple notoriety... and the animal models seemed to demonstrate that the risks are minimal... then yes, I would volunteer my own child for that. The cost/benefit analysis would have to show a good potential benefit.

And I'm interested to hear about your fish experiments. Don't fish still have the ability to synthesize ascorbate? Is there any indication that metabolic synthesis of C might impose a burden of infant mortality, however slight, on animals which possess that ability? Vital questions to be sure!

Are there any other fairly straightforward genetic repairs or insertions which you can think of, that would improve an individual's fitness in some manner, that would have no, or few, potential drawbacks? Do you think we understand metabolism well enough to do this now, with animals? (And if such a thing is possible, would it have to be kept deeply secret to avoid torch-waving mobs of terrified fundamentalists?)

Principia

I think the issues that are likely relevant in this discussion are those that would apply to any hypothetical uber-technology, including genetic engineering. Say, a personal force-field generator is developed that renders the person wearing it immune to projectile weapons. If I were to hear of this invention, I'd be curious to know who gets to buy one, and how its use is going to be regulated. Is the ownership recorded through some kind of governmental registration program? Do we want to know who owns this technology? Can we institute laws that discriminate on the owners? Then, I usually wonder about some kind of fail-safe policy in case we decide later that the technology is undesirable (of course, until human short-sightedness is 'cured,' I think we can safely assume we're stuck with this prospect). Do we escalate the technology race to counteract its effects (e.g. perhaps a new weapon)? How does the social dynamic between the have vs. the have-nots play out? What if some side effect of the technology becomes permanent?

Maybe a knowledge historian of science and technology can remind us of some parallels.

I have always wondered why mate selection is not a form of directed evolution...

pz

Yeah, I've read those. The first one was good, but I felt like she'd kind of exhausted her perspective on the topic with the subsequent stuff.
Yes, the fish do make their own. We added extra exogenous ascorbate as a free-radical scavenger to (we hoped) compensate for other teratogens we were throwing at them. We were a little surprised to see the stuff was having other effects.
No, because I'm pretty good at imagining potential drawbacks.

One rather radical modification I'd be interested in seeing is a thorough removal of all junk DNA, as seems to have occurred naturally, somehow, in the pufferfish lineage. That's not because we have a good idea of what advantage it would provide, but precisely because we don't have the slightest clue what the effect would be.