G

I remember studying this in bio and oddly enough, English lol. I think something like this concept is just a whole bunch of bad waiting to happen. It’s good in the health aspect, yes. However, humans can’t ever just stop at the good. This could potentially turn into a big bloody monster. Anyone remember the movie “Gattaca”?

kristina

Yeah, i agree with G. Let’s face it, no parent wants their child to have down syndrome or hereditary cancer, and there is nothing wrong with ensuring their health is that of a normal person. But some people just don’t know where to draw the line.

There is always going to be that temptation to make sure your child has blue eyes, or the perfect nose, and that will start up a whole storm of controversy. It’s probably better that this doesn’t happen.

MarilyneL

I absolutely agree with you guys, I think that the basic reason(health) is good, but it will bring so many bad things, people will become obsessed and to me, it looks too much as a ” Child Shopping” just like you would with a car…

foretold

I don’t think that changing someone’s physics just to cure him because of some illness is unethical, and this includes genetic modification.

However, I have 2 major concerns with this kind of treatment consisting of screening, selecting and enhancing:

1- This may leed to a situation where everyone(actually a medium amount of people would be enough to cause this problem) wants the same kind of characteristics(it would be enough if several, not neccessarily all, were the same) for his/her children, which will result in a creeping degeneration of biodiversity and ultimately corrupt the entire human race. Biodiversity seems to be the most ignored aspect of life these days and it is a reason to pursue by itself, so this may by far be more dangerous than any disease that was aimed to be cured by this treatment in the first place.

2- As you Kathy mentioned before, human biology is extremely complex, and chances are that a lot of people will too often “fix” things with this kind of treatment that will actually seem well fixed, but which cannot be considered “fixed” in a broader context.
For example, consider some embryo is being diagnosed of having a high cancer risk and the doctor considers a promising genetic treatment. Of course it’s good for the child if it ends up having not to worry about cancer later in his life.
BUT the QUESTION is, how did the human being end up being so versatile, sophisticated and beautiful in the first place? Guess what, this is due to evolution, and part of evolution is having some cells randomly mutated, which is part of having cancer. This way, curing all cancer actually may counteract evolution itself, which is a really bad thing.
There are countless other examples of this kind, but the problem with them is, that despite thinking of them, man will probably never find all of them due to the sheer complexity of life and is thus doomed to perform bad “fixes” without knowing their badness when applying those treatments in a big scale.

Is anyone interested in my opinion about genetic engineering and modification?

OMG we were having deepy thoughts today, weren’t we ;D?

foretold

Dammit, last post was too much sciency, NOONE will EVER read or understand it. Maybe I should start writing for a science journal instead of the GBD blog?

Kathy

So are you guys saying that the line should be drawn at health problems? Or that allowing people to screen for health problems will lead to a tumble down a slippery slope, so no screening should be done at all? If there is a high probability that your child will be born with a debilitating disease, which is the ethical thing to do? To bring that child into the world anyway and care for him/her regardless of his/her traits? Or to not bring that child into the world to prevent him/her from suffering?

Kathy

Oh I dunno about that foretold. The GBD peepz will surprise you. I read what you wrote and understood it. Hehe.

I agree about the biodiversity by the way. Maintaining genetic diversity seems to be very important to the survival of a species. Case in point is the cheetah, which has been inbred so much that scientists are worried if they’ll make it.

Eva

Wow, this is really creepy, because we JUST finished watching gattaca in bio class.
My opinion is to leave it up to god, because he controls how a human being is supposed to turn out , not some scientist.

Nina

It needed a while to understand all the English terms and I hope that I’ll understood this correctly… So please correct ME if I got something wrong!

@foretold: I read it too and I think I understood it Very interesting btw!

On the one hand I would draw a line at health, too! But not just to find out if my baby has a down syndrom or a risk for cancer… it should be for more life-threatening reasons like spina difida. I know some people with down syndrom who are happy with their life, very creative and lovely – why should we “erase” that? Just because they are not “standard”? Don’t meet the norm?
And about the cancer risk… maybe you can fix this with a kind of treatment – but in my opinion at the same point something else rises up. Like a switch. Who knows what will happen? Maybe fixing the cancer, the baby will have epilepsy?

Besides no one can fix a risk for everyone. Not either for a “perfect” human. What about crossing the street and getting crashed by a car? Life has so many risks we humans never will be able to erase!

And about the cosmetic traits… that’s just DISGUSTING! Everyone should love his child – no matter what it looks like!

To add something else regarding foretold’s pov: (Bio)diversity is important. Not just for genetic aspects. But just imagine everyone would have the same traits, would totally look like you… how boring! Diversity is important and creates. Why should anyone want to erase that?

Nakisa

I can understand an issue with ‘tends’ in the potential of designer babies, but if a tend happens to be ‘being different from everyone else’ then perhaps, there might be a speedy evolution? Needless to say, in a social setting there does exist a subtle genetic hierarchy such as who runs the fastest in your elementary class, reads the fastest, etc. which brings to light the question of nature vs. nurture along side a weak genome vs. a strong genome (in other words, evolution and biodiversity [also, know that the terms 'strong' and 'weak' are highly subjective])

Technology is, well, a temptation. I think it is human nature to want change due to what their perception of desirability is. So, with this potential it is true that technology is a temptation.

It’s about this time I remember what I read not too long ago:

“How couldst thou forget thine own faults and busy thyself with the faults of others? ”

A perception of aesthetic desirability is due to a recognition of what that individual sees as ‘faults’ in another. Remove this and you are left with happiness.

Nakisa

oops I meant ‘trends’ instead of ‘tends’

Emma-Lu

Fantastic comments you guys! Foretold, Nakisa, Kathy, Kristina, G.. wow! This is the kind of thing that creeps me out. Science attempting to interfere in nature. Why interfere with something so wonderful, mysterious, unpredictable and sometime unresolvable – ie Life. I’d like to add that as terrible as some diseases are and as below-the-belt as the media pressure is….. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Emma-Lu

sometimes* not sometime