Camaban

well, personally, I certainly think that engineering children to be far smarter would be a good advancement.

Think about it, our world leaders would suddenly become more than highly placed monkeys.

and going by the Darwinian process of advancement of the species, these new incredibly smart people would breed far and wide, and eventually the whole race would be that much smarter.

Dank

A few thoughts...

Employing genetic engineering approaches arrogance levels previously reserved for theists. You think you (or your offspring) are so damn important? Nope, you're just a flash in the pan...why waste the resources?? Making people live longer is not a noble goal...there are enough people here already!

What will be achieved if (BIG if) a critical mass of superhumans occurs? How would that objectively benefit humankind?

There is plenty of fodder for evolution out there now...why risk screwing things up?

The Other Michael

You might consider if it makes any difference if the parents modify THEIR genes and then pass them along to the child.

There seems to be a number of people who feel that procreation rights shouldn't be abridged, so if the parents modify themselves, and then just pass those genes along to the child that might be seen as an entirely different case.

At least the parents are also partaking of the risks/benefits they are willing to "inflict" upon the child.

The difference may not be great, but I think there is actually a difference between the two scenarios.

cheers,
Michael

Koyaanisqatsi

I have two words for everyone. "Cane Toads."

Anyone from Australia want to clue everyone into what I'm talking about?

Humans are idiots. We discover one percent of something and act as if we've discovered one hundred percent of something.

Hence, the atomic bomb, plastic surgery, asbestos, x rays, Fen Phen, Paxil, Refined Oil, etc., etc., etc.

This is what will happen. Geneticists who think they know how to insure blue eyes will make blue eyed children. Two, three, maybe four generations into the gene pool and that artificial change will result in a new form of cancer or a new form of plague or a new form of...

Touch one thing and you start an avalanche, the consequences of which cannot be predetermined or accounted for. Always. It is always like that.

Always.

This, of course, won't stop us and the only end result will be a Talking Heads song...same as it ever was.

The problem is that the people who discovered the genetic code are not going to be the ones who alter the genetic code. The analogy most readily apparent would be your computer.

The person who conceived of your computer is not the one who uses your computer and although you are certainly competent enough to use your computer and probably know a great deal about the functionality and the concept and the blah, blah, blah, you didn't earn this knowledge, you simply acted upon it.

Although I'm loathe to quote Jurassic Park, Crichton made an excellent point as to why the application of the science could never work in the manner it was envisioned; there was no discipline involved. The genetic engineers will simply be standing on the shoulders of others and as such will make the same mistakes you and I make using our computers. We won't allocate enough memory, we will run two many programs at one time, we download a virus, etc., etc., etc.

The dilligence will simply dissappear with each generation, and although the geneticists will think that they are learning as their own beta testing goes on, just look to your operating system's version number to realize that the avalanche is always exponential and the "fixes" nothing more than damage control.

By the time you get to OS X or Windows 2000, all you have is a spider's web lattice. Yes, everything is connected in some way, but the gaps in between are so vast and so haphazzard, that any individual string can snap at any time and it will remain that way until the spider spins another web, ad infinitum.

My prediction? In fifty to seventy years, genetic engineering will simply end in the same way the internet died in the nineties, relegated almost entirely to pornography.

In other words, in the year 2062, hookers will be the only ones genetically engineered, I gurantee it.

[ June 21, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

The Other Michael

I have a vague recollection of stories about people licking them to get a toxic high - is that what you are referring to? But I thought that took place in the USA.

cheers,
Michael

Koyaanisqatsi

Cane toads were brought into Australia back in the 1920's-30's (I think, I can't remember the exact date) because beetles were devastating the sugar cane crops.

The cane toads lived in Hawaii and were supposed to feed on the beetles and their grubs.

Not only did they not feed on the beetles and their grubs, but they did feed on everything else.

Because they excrete a deadly poison, they have no natural predators. Anything that eats them, dies.

Each female lays on average 40,000 offspring. 40,000 frogs per one female, with no natural predators (that survive eating them).

Cats, birds, whole species of predators are being wiped out en masse by eating the hundreds of billions of frogs that are right now devouring everything in sight over (I think) one fifth of the entire continent of Australia.

As if that weren't bad enough, they are also extremely sexually active and will f*ck anything and I do mean anything. Goldfish, for example. And the way the engage in coitus is very violent.

In the documentary I saw, a man came home to find the forty goldfish in his pond all dead and floating. He couldn't figure out how they died, so he restocked the pond and took up watch only to discover that a single cane toad hoped in and started f*cking his fish one by one. The problem was that the manner in which they engage their "mates" is to strangle them, which female toads can handle, but goldfish cannot.

Worse--and this is where I fell off my chair laughing hysterically--they actually will f*ck their own dead. For eight hours a man watched (and in the documentary you see it happening, BTW) a toad f*cking a road killed frog.

They will f*ck the dead. I almost peed my pants.

They have no natural predators and they kill off any creature that tries to eat them. They devour all of the food that sustains the indigenous Australian biosystem and they are impossible to get rid of by human means, due to the fact that there are hundreds of billions if not trillions of them right now taking over the entire continent.

All of which started because a scientist saw a logical solution to a logical problem. Beetles are destroying our sugar cane, so bring in cane toads that eat those beetles. Simple.

The same thinking will be applied to genetic engineering, I guarantee it.

By the way, the name of the documentary is simply "<a href="http://www.reel.com/movie.asp?MID=40458" target="_blank">Cane Toads</a>" and if you can find it, rent it or better yet just buy it! It is quite simply the most hysterical/tragic documentary I have ever seen and I'm a huge documentary fan.

They f*ck their own dead. For about eight hours.

[ June 21, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

tronvillain

Of course, I specified that this genetic engineering be done properly, without unintended side effects. If that were the case, would you have a problem with it?

Koyaanisqatsi

I don't have a problem with it no matter how it is done (as anything that furthers the destruction of the human race I'm all for), I can just guarantee that it will not and cannot be done "properly" with no side effects.

There has never been anything mankind has ever done that was done "properly" with no side effects.

scombrid

That's because of The Fall you know.

The Other Michael

Funny, I thought it was all Coyote's fault.

cheers,
Michael