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Biotech Science

The Rights of GM Humans 768

Posted by michael from the mickey-mouse-olympics dept.
An anonymous submitter writes "Some of the powers that be -- not just talking heads -- go on record about our genetically enhanced future in this Village Voice article. The anti-doping watchdogs of the Olympics say they'll ban GM athletes, and even athletes who have a grandparent with an enhanced germ-line. Would Ivy League schools slap a quota on these people to fend off the enraged parents of the "normal majority?" Imagine how a politician would fare if it became known she'd been tweaked in utero. Human history is rife with aristocide and mob attacks on perceived elites. Today lawmakers and regulators are eager to ban the technologies that would be needed to create a new breed of intellectually and physically superior people. But who's willing to stand up for the rights of this future generation? Environmentalists already deride GM crops as "frankenfood," so how far behind could the demonization of GM people be?"
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The Rights of GM Humans More

The Rights of GM Humans

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  • find a former olympic swimmer, handicapped through an unfortunate accident...

    pay him money, take his identity, go to gattaca.

  • Does Star Trek teach us nothing! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Zygote-IC- ( 512412 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:28AM (#5798424) Homepage
    One word:
    Khan

    • Or even worse... the constantly annoying Julian Bashir!

    • One More word:
      Bosheer

    • Re:Does Star Trek teach us nothing! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nounderscores ( 246517 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:34AM (#5799011)
      Come on. It doesn't matter what "we" learn or if science fiction teaches "us" anything. The bottom line is that some nations will ban the technology, and other nations will endorse it to some degree. In the offchance that everybody outlaws the technology... the old saying goes that only outlaws will have it.

      The bottom line is that some people eat the apple of knowledge. If they die, then we move on. If it turns them into gods, then those who do not endorse the technolgy will have to battle uphill against a technically superior foe.

      Just look at gunpowder and steam engines. People used to think that gunpowder should be used in fireworks and steam engines disturbed the spirits of the dead.

      Then trainloads of troops began to cross the british empire and her ships ruled the waves.

      Of course if the spirits of the dead were really offended they would have sabotaged the steam engines and britain would have ended up like kahn... all bitter and superweapon having, but defeated by the other folks.

      Really, technology not about right and wrong. It's about power.

      Has buffy season 7 taught you nothing?
  • Whats wrong with improving upon our faults? Other than the obvious christian responce. The Human genetic code is not sacred, IMHO. Maybe Humans will be tweeked, sorta like we tweek our computers. Overclocking the Human brain? Interesting.
    • Somehow I think our understanding of genetics and the way humans develope is too small for any of this to be fruitful in the near future. Thinking ahead, if we could alter our genetic code(ie. create enhanced humans) really we would only be starting back up the process we stopped. The way I see it, through society humans have slowly stopped natural selection from occuring within our own population. The last major occurance of natural selection in humans that I recall was during the Black Plague in Europe. Only people who produced a certain protein on their immune cells(I have forgotten its name) were able to survive the plague. So now the survivors all carried that gene, which helped them and their offspring be immune to similar diseases to the plague. This happens in nature all the time, but in humans it doesn't seem to happen much anymore. Diseases are not always a bad thing, in the long run they are often helpful in preserving a species.

      • Higher levels of natural selection at play (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Tired_Blood ( 582679 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @11:23AM (#5800205)
        I agree that medicine and social programs have tampered with the standard notion of natural selection. But humans should also be observed on a higher level of Darwinian selection. Instead of just looking at survival of the fittest WITHIN a species, humans have shown that it is necessary to also look at survival of the fittest OF ALL species. Without this perspective, it is easy to get lost on the question of why humans have succeeded AT ALL. We should therefore look at humans with a point of view of the community rather than the individual. Without the community, humans would never have come to dominate.

        One may argue that humans are successful because they are intelligent. Intelligence goes only so far - it's the knowledge that is passed on that is more important. Otherwise, we'd have people reinventing the wheel every generation, and never get to the point of building upon that to even make a cart.

        Getting back on topic: Your conclusion on the result of the Black Plague is problematic. If the survivors passed on the gene in question, then why were there so many occurrances of the Plague in the same location over the centuries? Paris just kept getting hit with it into the turn of the 20th century.

        I would instead prefer to look at WHY plagues occur and what stops them from re-occurring.

        Given the necessity of humans to depend on each other, the tendency is toward denser populations. Conditions within any population produces an environment conducive to any other species willing to adapt. The Black Plague is an example of a special case. It took a while for humans, in general, to adapt to this threat.

        One of the 'faults' of humans was to develop cities in identical ways. In particular, I'm thinking of waste disposal - just dump your trash in the trench in the middle of the street and let the rain carry it to the river. Since so many cities had this environment, a single species of parasite can easily infect multiple cities. (NOTE: since this is a geek forum - extend this to computer viruses with everyone using one OS).

        You could attack this problem in one of two ways: (a) let individual natural selection take its course or (b) adapt the cities. Until just recently, the approach was (a). Once humans began to adapt as a whole (mandate washing hands before surgery, better waste disposal, water treatment, use of quarantine, etc) then there was less of a strain on the population density of the city. Each of these activities create their own problems, but such is the game of adapting.

        Diseases are not always a bad thing, in the long run they are often helpful in preserving a species.

        The species would be preserved WITHOUT disease, so I fail to see how having disease helps in preserving the species. Perhaps you could argue that disease acts as a "necessary evil" to produce a "greater good", but since the disease species are inclined to adapt to immunity it's a never-ending battle.


        On the topic of GM-humans, I can see using this IF AND ONLY IF human existence would cease without it, including the loss of human interdependence (without which humans could not succeed). I don't see this happening anytime soon, but this would be another way that humanity would adapt to a threat. The oddity is that the result would no longer be "human" - what is being saved is civilization.
        • Another reason the plagues continued was simple genetics. My plague example was intensionally sparse on details, because like you pointed out there were a variety of factors involved. But the genes responsible for immunity came in two forms, 1) you got sick but still lived or 2) you never got the plague. people in group (1) probably only had one immunity gene, while the people in (2) had two immunity genes. Therefore, not every child born of plague survivors would carry the immunity, thus allowing the continued risk of infections. But on the whole, the european gene pool was significantly affected by the plague.

          As far as community, many animals have highly social structures(communities) like wolves, bees, whales, yet these animals still abide by selective pressures. By the way, many of the most intelligent creatures on earth form communities, and it doesn't seem coincidental. The two probably go hand in hand, or in effect they are mutually inclusive. Which would leave me to think that if left to run its course, we may be just the first species to achieve sentience on this planet.

          These topics are just too deep, sometimes I think I should keep my mouth shut.
        • On the topic of GM-humans, I can see using this IF AND ONLY IF human existence would cease without it

          So.. your saying that we should not attempt to GM humans until some super virus comes along and starts decimating the population, and *then* we should start trying to get some GM babies going? Whos going to take care of them after everybody dies?

          We should all use networked Windows boxes too, until someone releases a super-worm for which we have no defense. AFter that happens, then we can get started wor

      • Re:Improve upon our faults. OCing the Human Brain? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Thing 1 ( 178996 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @11:36AM (#5800352) Journal
        Somehow I think our understanding of genetics and the way humans develope is too small for any of this to be fruitful in the near future.

        Agreed.

        So the question is, what can we do to advance our understanding?

        Experiments. Lots of them. Some will fail, others will not. ("Many will play, few will win?" Hear that (yet again) on the radio yesterday.)

    • Re:Improve upon our faults. OCing the Human Brain? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by guybarr ( 447727 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:50AM (#5798616)
      Whats wrong with improving upon our faults?

      monoculture vulnerability ?

      lack of knowledge ?

      and, most importantly, the ethics of performing experiments in humans ? (after all, there can be no more extreme experiment than tayloring an organism)

      Remember, in order ot improve, you need to learn, and make a lot of mistakes. These poor mistakes will breath, live, love, laugh and hurt. Do you not, as the originating scientist, have an ethical obligation to these resulting future persons ? What will you do, debug and reboot them ?

      I'm not saying this as a christian (I'm not), or as a person who totaly opposes eugenics (I'm not that either) but as a person who believes a measure of ethics is important.
      • How about improving on ourselves?

        Sure, it's questionable to experiment on children not yet born, but what if we could modify adults with new genes? Would that be ok?

        Personally, I'm all for it. I *want* to modify myself, especially since any modifications to me as an adult could be undone if I changed my mind later.

      • Re:Improve upon our faults. OCing the Human Brain? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mrtroy ( 640746 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:54AM (#5799194)
        The first arguement is circular reasoning. First, you are assuming improving our faults will result in a monoculture. This will not happen. If I am having a boy, I may not want something changed on him entirely different than someone else. Making my child's hair a different color will not result in a monoculture whatsoever.

        Lack of knowledge? The very improvements we make may allow for better reasoning, thinking, and memorization.

        Ethics? Too much empahasis is put on poor judgements regarding ethics. Why is GM'ing unethical? Is getting rid of cancer in people through GM unethical? I would say it would be unethical to NOT use this technology.

        This whole post is a troll...
    • On the outset, it does seem like a really, really cool idea to be able to OC the human brain, but stop and think about the social repercussions. Remember how there were always those guy in high school that did amazingly well in their classes, were stars of the basketball team, and never got a pimple? Remember how much you hated them?

      Imagine if their parents were just rich enough to buy that. Instead of nature deciding who's going to be smart, athletic, top of the class (I know environmental factors are
    • Well, there's two ways to look at this issue. In the first case, the Human genetic code is sacred, and those that believe so will continue to run a pure line in the human race. They will come up with the people who look at it in the second case, where it's ok to modify, and have been modified.

      Now to talk about genetically superior people, begs the question of exactly what superior means. Because the reaction of the first, unmodified group when it has to deal with the second, modified group will depend larg
      • Now to talk about genetically superior people, begs the question of exactly what superior means. Because the reaction of the first, unmodified group when it has to deal with the second, modified group will depend largely on this.

        (Transhumanists? WTF? You (and others) gotta lay off the sci-fi) Anyways as I mentioned before, not all genetic modification is inheritable. Gene therapy is one example in clinical trials, right now. I think people in practice have no problem differentiating 'good' changes from
    • Who defines these "faults"? Someone so short minded as to call them faults? Perhaps they have a real purpose.

      To get to a point where we have a genuine grasp of the impact of genetic manipulation of humans (and we have only the smallest inkling of a clue right now), we have to test by trial and error. That means many, many ugly mistakes. How about you start coming up with some accepted ethical policies for dealing with live human "mistakes". Imagine the possibilities for what you could screw up in a pe

      • Re:Improve upon our faults. OCing the Human Brain? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dbrutus ( 71639 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:39AM (#5799051) Homepage
        The current state of affairs is exactly that, a situation where genetic modification technology is so crude that animals like Dolly, when they are viable at all, largely have various genetic defects associated with them.

        Still we have scientists filled with hubris rushing to produce almost certainly defective clones. We can't even get Democrat/Republican mainstream agreement that birthing so many defective humans in experiments is just wrong. They're bickering over the lost economic opportunity of therapeutic cloning.

        There may come a day when we can quickly and without error make clones or gene modifications. At that point we can get into whether human souls need to be carried around in a stock, biological chassis assembled the old fashioned way. We're just not there yet and we need to stop our current crop of frankensteins from creating armies of humans doomed to painful genetic diseases and early death.

    • it won't be faults only (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zogger ( 617870 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:14AM (#5798832) Homepage Journal
      ..remember, the people who make the rules, the global elite, will be wanting an alpha, beta, delta, gamma, epsilon class structured society. Just like they do now but they don't say it out loud. this is the new technofeudalism. This won't be all "goodness". These are the same guys who think massive warfare for profit is good. The same guys that live how and where normal laws don't apply to them, but they apply to you. Suppose they decide that you and your progeny are destined to be the workers in the mines. You going to "vote" your way out of that when they send over their 400 lb warrior class drones with the designed 80 IQ and no pain receptors to persuade you otherwise?

      Look at the problems we have now with "normal" trying to vote for anything or anyone intelligent, who gets elected, what happens with science and politics. Have you stopped ANY of the new surveillance tech and data mining tech from happening? Do we have less TV cameras going up all over, or more? Does the government control you now more than 50 years ago, or less? Miniscule problems like copyright, freedom to mod hardware right now are hotly contested and being fought over, and they are MINOR when you are talking the ability to have genetic superiority over other people, because you are the rulers and control the bulk of the money and politics. Have we as humans stopped any wars from happening in our advanced leetness, or do we just have more sophisticated wars? Do we have more free and open societies, less crime, less political scandal and corruption,as time goes on, or do we seem to have more?

      Looks like "more" to me.

      Now imagine "them" with more advanced tech, more dictatorial power and more laws. Feeling lucky? You really think that with such abilities that the billionaire globalist class is going to make things real nice for you-or for them?

      My thought is, sure, all this gene tech will keep being developed, it will mostly benefit the rulers. They will use it for themselves, and their benefit primarily, exactly the same as they do now.

    • Damn Straight. After all we're casemodding [bmezine.com] the human [rhinoplasty4you.com] body. [orlan.net]

  • great reference site (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ih8apple ( 607271 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:28AM (#5798428)
    Here's [eugenics.net] a great reference site for people who are in favor of eugenics.

    I'm personally not in favor of eugenics, but I also think that we shouldn't discriminate because people born out of a eugenics program will have had nothing to do with the choice of bringing them into the world that way. (Any more than any of us had a choice of which ethnicity or country to belong to or what gender we are.)

    • Already turned natural selection on its ear (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SgtChaireBourne ( 457691 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:56AM (#5798665) Homepage
      Youth and health are the two most significant factors in reproductive fitness. Conversely, postponing childraising or reduction of physical or mental health results in a decrease of reproductive fitness. This is probably a non-linear function.

      So how does that turn into a de facto eugenics program?

      Simple, we've already turned natural selection on its ear: mistakes tend to be paid for by third parties. For example, if a contractor builds a house in a flood plain or under an avalanche zone, it's another family that takes the hit not the contractor. Likewise with food shortages and environmental pollution. Or gutting a company's funds.

      And, many of those that are intelligent get higher education. Many of those that get higher education have fewer children later. See the drop in Italy as a case study. Unless this offset is still compensated in some other way, we are currently selecting against intelligence.

      We also weed out combinations of athletic and intelligence my using these individuals in elite military units. Combat delays reproduction or reducing health (death, maiming, PTSD, Gulf War Syndrome, etc.). A draft is more extreme and, over time, selects against able-bodied, reasonably intelligent, law-abiding individuals.

      • We're seeing the beginnings of this, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Dukeofshadows ( 607689 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:35AM (#5799024) Journal
        Already parents can choose the sex of their children with ~90% accuracy by putting sperm in a blender (Y is lighter than X, top sperm = son, bottom sperm = daughter). There are now tests for key genetic diseases that allow for abortion before those kids are born, the same technology could be improved and allowed to test newly fertilized eggs in vivo a la Gattaca. Gattaca is also the most realistic scenario of the ones I've seen since women of reproductive age have several thousand eggs for potential fertilization at once. The immediate problem to genetic augmentation on its own is that the altering one gene may cause severe effects to several others, never mind genes like skin color which are impacted by numerous genes. It'd be nice to have a kid with an IQ of 300 and no heart condition, but if they drool on themselves constantly and have no bladder control is it worth it?

        This also does not take into account that GM kids would be like computers in a way: as soon as one gets made someone is already working on a better one. Every one of these kids is a human being, even if their genes are altered. Look at Bashir out of DS9: he has the traits for some horrible genetic disease and his parents were arrested for genetically augmenting him but the sins of the parent are not the burden of the child. These kids will have to be protected, though the technology and knowledge at this point makes it doubtful that any such children will make an appearence for at least 20 years IMO. Even then, we would probably see "tweaking" of one or two traits instead of designer kids: intelligence increased by 10-20 pts, musculature increased slightly/shave a few seconds off of performance, etc. This is something for lawyers and legislators to ponder, but there are enough desperate parents out there that funding for this will continue. Regardless, I still say 20-30 year before this becomes a widespread issue.

  • Space: A&B (Score:2, Funny)

    by SnuSnu ( 630537 )
    Anyone remember Morgan and Wong's Space: Above and Beyond? I suggest that we all look to that to see how in vitros will be treated in 'normal' human society. Personally, I welcome our new in vitro overlords :D
    • In that show, the reason for the 'nipple necks' was that the 'normal' humans had built an army of AI robots. Unfortunately, the AIs then revolted, and so it was decided that the save the 'normal' humans, that they'd create some quick growing invitros, who'd come out of the pod at age 18 or so, and they'd train them to kill, to 'contain' their other flawed design.

      Then, once the war was over, they didn't have a use for these trained killing machines, who had no other useful traits in society. [reminded me

  • Hemophiliacs? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MBslug ( 547249 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:28AM (#5798430) Homepage
    How will the future consider children who may be cured by simple GM of diseases? My friend's son is a hemophiliac. A genetic modification could save him from an early death and a lifetime of pain. Would this change make him a GM freak? If so, are you saying that he should suffer this disease because God ordained it?

    • Re:Hemophiliacs? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cybermace5 ( 446439 )
      I do not understand people who follow that train of logic.

      For example, some religions refuse blood transfusions; I have heard of cases where a child was dying but the parents were refusing a blood transfusion.

      Diseases are a result of the physical laws we all live by, they are as much a part of our existence as gravity and pointy objects. We can debate whether or not God ordains diseases; but if a cure is available, who are we to say God did not ordain that?

      • Re:Hemophiliacs? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by div_2n ( 525075 )
        I cannot speak for the original poster but I didn't take that to be a religious comment as much as a stab at the train of thought that "if you had to modify your original DNA makeup to achieve it then you are a freak."

        I pose an even more interesting question. What is the difference between a woman that has breast implants to achieve a huge bust as opposed to a baby that was DNA modified to be predisposed to big breasts?

        Does that mean that manipulative surgery is ok but DNA modification isn't?

        • Re:Hemophiliacs? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by 5KVGhost ( 208137 )
          I pose an even more interesting question. What is the difference between a woman that has breast implants to achieve a huge bust as opposed to a baby that was DNA modified to be predisposed to big breasts?

          Does that mean that manipulative surgery is ok but DNA modification isn't?

          No, in means that a consentual medical procedure is ok, but a nonconsentual medical procedure isn't. It doesn't really matter whether it's done with a scapel or via genetic tampering.

          The obvious difference is that the woman who c

    • Re:Hemophiliacs? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AchilleTalon ( 540925 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:44AM (#5798569) Homepage
      Of course, no.

      However, it still left the following question unanswered: "What about the hemophiliacs who has not the chance and/or money to be GM and avoid the pain? Will he be stigmatised in a society where genetic modifications will be routinely applied?"

      Please, note I am not answering yes to my question. However, there is also a bad side to GM. Personnally, I don't have a dogmatic approach to the problem. GM may be good, even great. However, we must also avoid blind enthousiasm for it.

    • Re:Hemophiliacs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bendebecker ( 633126 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:05AM (#5798759) Journal
      It all is a matter of how extensive the modifications are. GM can be used to fix 'genetic defects'. The great danger is: what is your definition of genetic defect? Will there be a future where having looks that aren't at the level of a supermodel be considered a gentic defect? It would be great to cure hemophilia, hereditary forms of cancer, and other such diseases and someone will eventually do so regardless of legality. The bottle can't hold back a genie like this forever, some will inevitably flock to it like sailors to a siren. However, we all now what happened to the sailors who did flock to the sirens.

    • Re:Hemophiliacs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Charm ( 313273 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:15AM (#5798833)
      What if what you think is a bad gene is really a good gene? In the instance of a disease like Sickle Cell Anemia, what is a disease on one hand is also a protection against malaria. Imagine if you had a genetic disease and it was removed. Later on a plague (like SARS) moves through civilisation and you get it because the gene you had removed confered immunity. Bad luck there. Genetics is always a game of dice even if you are GM'd.
      • What if what you think is a bad gene is really a good gene?

        "Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so." -Shakespeare

        As far as making genetic changes to the human body, what and to what degree we alter our DNA is not a matter of "good" or "evil," or "good" or "bad," but rather, are we as intelligent as we think we are? The case you gave creates two mutually exclusive outcomes; the first is to cure sickle cell anemia, but at the risk of becoming more susceptible to malaria; the second vice-vers
    • "...who may be cured..."

      Yes, we might be able to cure hemophilia, leukemia, any number of nasty genetic diseases - but those people will still die, eventually.
      Should we consider our finite genetic clock a 'defect'? If we consider that clock not a defect for whatever reason, then how should we consider all these other defects that just stop the clock earlier? I don't pretend to have the answer - and anyone who says they do is full of it - but I would certainly suggest that altering the code of life may aff

  • Sci-Fi prior art (Red Dwarf) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:28AM (#5798433)

    Red Dwarf covered this issue. After the proliferation of genetic enhancements the world sporting bodies stepped in banning genetic enhancement. The response was the creation of Genetic Alternative sports, the Genetic Alternative sports killed normal sports inside a couple of years, of course even that required a few rules:

    After the World Cup new rules had to be created for GAS (Genetic Alternative Sports). Scotland fielded a genetically engineered goal keeper that was 8 foot high and 16 feet across, thereby filling the entire goal. Somehow they still failed to qualify for the second round.

    Joking aside, I'm unsure what would happen in the real word. Sports. We haven't seen a "Narcotics alternative sports" emerge after drug taking was banned, however the critical difference may be in how socially acceptable genetic enhancement is. Whoever makes the decisions is going to have trouble either way though, I can see the headlines now Little Johnny kept out of school sports record books because of asthma treatment..

    • Re:Sci-Fi prior art (Red Dwarf) (Score:4, Interesting)

      by foo fighter ( 151863 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:09AM (#5798786) Homepage
      We haven't seen a "Narcotics alternative sports" emerge after drug taking was banned, however the critical difference may be in how socially acceptable genetic enhancement is.

      You are right: if mind- and body-altering drugs were not stigmatized and prohibition-ized in modern, western society we wouldn't see "clean" humans in any part of life, not to mention sports.

      Why not take crystal meth to make a deadline at work? Why not smoke a joint at coffee-break to take the edge of an especially stressful day? There aren't any good, recent studies I'm aware of that show these actions negatively impact worker productivity. (Nor any that promote it, to be fair.) But these actions are so thouroughly stigmatized that not only would I be fired for them, I'd also probably be jailed as a criminal for altering my own body.

      Now what if I take a course of action that permanently raises my stamina and stress-coping capabilities. Perhaps it's via medically induced genetic mutation or manipulation. It's not hard to draw a line from temporary personal manipulation to permanent personal manipulation and see that not only will the later be stigmatized, but that it will probably be more stigmatized.

      I see it every day in my role as a systems administrator/analyst. People fear change. People don't want to think about change. People don't want to act on change. People tend to respond to change with confusion and anger. Changes of a quasi-magical nature, that is, most anything dealing with cutting-edge science, especially scare people and their brains shut down. People stop thinking rationally and call for the change to be crucified.

      To get people to accept change, other people who can and do think about and act on change need to sell the positives and repeat their (sound-bite-ified) message over and over and over and over until a critical mass of people believe it, whether or not they understand it.

      If the people at the top levels of Government decided to start a two-decade long marketing campaign selling the wonders of personal genetic modification, in two-decades you'd be hard pressed to find an unmodified human. In the same way, if our top leaders sell the fears of personal genetic modification, in two-decades our jails will be full of people who altered their bodies in society unapproved ways.
  • ...like a promo for the new X-men movie? :-)

    -R
  • X-Men 2! Did the MPAA post this, because this is almost the exact same story that the X-Men comics/cartoons/movies have been "covering" for a long time.
  • If genetic modification makes you look anything more like the kids in the picture from that article, then we have nothing to worry about - it won't catch on. On the other hand.. imagine a beowolf cluster of GM-Humans..
  • Isn't this fairly similar to the issues the X-Men have to put up with in the comics and movies? Maybe X-2 will show us that we can all get along.

  • May seem stupid (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:33AM (#5798477) Homepage Journal
    It may seem stupid for me to suggest this, but I will anyway. The new Gundam series (Gundam SEED), which is still on tv in Japan deals directly with this issue. There are coordinators, who are genetically engineered people who are superior to humans in brains and physical ability. There are also normal humans. They are at war with each other after the "Bloody Valentine" massacre. The humans nuked the coordinators space station killing lots of people, so the coordinators put jammers inside the earth to prevent nukes from being used. (don't argue about the science, remember this show has giant robots in it).

    Needless to say the main character is a coordinator who fights to defend a human ship in a giant robot. He is the only one who can pilot the robot, and he just wants to protect his human friends in the ship from getting hurt. Plot ensues.

    In one of the episodes there is a nice montage about the history of the very first coordinator. While greatly exaggerated I think this episode makes a very good answer to this question.

  • Oh brother... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mantrid ( 250133 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:33AM (#5798481) Journal
    Are we really so bored that we have to start human rights crusades for humans that don't even exist yet? And aren't medical records private? If people don't know that you're GM, who's going to tell them? I think there's enough legal precedence against discriminating against people based on just about any aspect of someone to nip any discrimination in the bud.

    In the meantime stop watching so much DS9!

  • X-Men and Women anyone? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ewanrg ( 446949 ) <ewan.granthamNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:33AM (#5798483) Homepage
    Perhaps we're not looking at "mutants" per se, but it seems that this very issue has been covered in some detail both in the X-Men series and in the book Heart of the Comet [aol.com] by David Brin and Gregory Benford.

    Just my .02 worth,
    Ewan

    www.ewanphotos.com

  • "Welcome to McDonalds, would you like some fries with that kid?"

    ~S

  • Superkids are inevitable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by timholman ( 71886 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:36AM (#5798504)
    Would Ivy League schools slap a quota on these people to fend off the enraged parents of the "normal majority?"

    It won't be an issue, because the wealthy and influential (including our politicians) will be the very first in line to have genetically enhanced children.

    It may be trendy to oppose genetic engineering in public, but in private most parents will go to ANY lengths to give their kids a leg up on the competition. Who wouldn't want healthier / smarter / more successful children?

  • Too Much Debate (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TedCheshireAcad ( 311748 ) <ted AT fc DOT rit DOT edu> on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:37AM (#5798512) Homepage
    There would be too much of an ethical debate over something like this when it is applied to something other than disease curing to the benefit of the child.

    Sci-fi movies like Gattaca assume a government that takes no action on something like this; when our government (at least here in the US) is far too conservative and stodgy to allow much leeway in the area of genetically modified children. Just look at the big hulabaloo over stem cell research a few years ago, that's a good premonition as to what kind of policy the US government would take.

    • Re:Too Much Debate (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tgibbs ( 83782 )
      There would be too much of an ethical debate over something like this when it is applied to something other than disease curing to the benefit of the child.
      Ah, but the definition of "disease" is very slippery. For example, suppose that you find that people with a certain allele are stronger. Is giving somebody that allele an enhancement? Or do the ones without the allele suffer from "congenital myasthenia," a genetic disease that should be corrected?
  • When the machines rise to conquer the world genetically engineered humans will be exterminated along with the rest of you... I mean us.
  • We'll all have genetically modified grandchildren who will sweat sunblock SPF 9000.

    I don't see anything wrong with modification, but I can't think of a single group that is doing it that I trust enough to be allowed to do it. As it is now, there isn't even close to enough oversite.

    It's the eternal problem in tech. The people who are doing it are just doing it; that's what we do. The people who should be regulating it and making rational decisions about it don't understand it, and either ignore it or forbid it irrationally.

    Maybe an intelligence test for government? Heh. How about making cluelessness an impeachable offense? "You don't know what the hell you're talking about, therefore you are not competent to make laws concerning it."

    Just my opinion. Heh. My .sig is going to be unusually appropriate.
  • Is what do the GM Humans do when after years and years of dominating the US market, the Toyota and Honda Humans come in and take over?

    Thats what *I'm* worried about.

  • Environmentalists already deride GM crops as "frankenfood"

    Mmmm, Frankenfood.

    If genetically-engineered goods aren't considered true food, then why should genetically-engineered people be considered human? If that's the case, then it isn't really cannibalism to eat them! Yay, more Soylent Green for the rest of us!

    I can't wait to eat a wrestler.

  • Sponsorship (Score:5, Funny)

    by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:40AM (#5798540)
    It will be easy to tell if someone has been genetically modified. The cost of doing this will be so high that the only way you can have your kids 'enhanced' is via corporate sponsorship. Sure he'll be able to multiply 10 digit figures in his head and run faster than any current athlete, but he'll have a tendancy to say 'coke adds life' at odd intervals in the middle of a conversation, and will leave the room if anyone opens a can of pepsi :)

    Oh yeah... and if the human genome is modified so that cigarette smoke is no longer harmful in any way, or is enhanced by it, would smoking then be a bad thing?

    Disclaimer: I don't work for any cola company, and don't even like cola drinks.

  • Gene fetishism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by redragon ( 161901 ) <.moc.cam. .ta. .llennodoc.> on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:41AM (#5798542) Homepage
    The thing that amazes me is that people assume just because we make someone physically "better" than someone that they're going to be an olympic athelete. I just don't buy it. Most of those people work their as*es off to get there. Just because someone has a genetic pre-disposition to being an athelete doesn't make you one.

    Seriously, GATTACA [imdb.com] has an excellent point. "There is no gene for the human spirit." I'd go further, there is no gene for life.

    You must admit, if we could genetically protect our immune systems from AIDS, that it would be a good thing really. But who knows...maybe that new immune system wouldn't work against something else...

  • As mentioned other threads this has been covered in a number of other Sci-Fi series. GELFS in Red Dwarf etc.. Of course we can't forget Khan, prehaps the best Star Trek villian. Taking how hard it was to beat him down and at a high cost prehaps it might be best that we do outlaw this.

    (* Must remeber Star Trek isn't real life :) *)

    Rus
  • Friday was a great book, wasn't it?

    Hey, what if we sent a starship to this star and there was a big ring around it with a buncha humanoid creatures? Wouldn't that be cool?

  • Concerns (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:44AM (#5798572) Journal

    The rights of GM humans might be an issue soon enough, sure. But what I fear most is the fact that we might lose touch with ourselves and create an upper class society of GM humans, with the new lower class being unable to afford the GM in their family. In fact, what might happen if we carry this too far and create a human that can hardly be desribed as a human any longer? Call me a doomsday prophet but this is what I fear most about GM, the division of the human race into several factions. The upper class and lower class, the new humans and the old humans, the superior humans and the lesser humans... Much like what Hitler dreamed of...

    The human genes are one of the few things we should not muck around with too much, except perhaps to remove "bugs" in our genetics which allow for horrible diseases like parkinson and thousands of others. Repairing our DNA? Fine with me, if controlled properly. Enhancing our DNA to give us abilities beyond those of normal humans? No way, imho.



  • I am hung like a nat, you think they will keep me out of porn if I get that fixed?

  • Frankenfood (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Obiwan Kenobi ( 32807 ) <evan@@@misterorange...com> on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:52AM (#5798634) Homepage
    The term Frankenfood is just another useless word by which none of the environmentalists can back up.

    You see, I too thought that they spliced animal and plant genes together to make better producing crops.

    But not so. This is what they would have you believe.

    I'm not Flamebaiting, and I'm not Trolling. I was honestly surprised at what I learned from this episode [sho.com] of this show [sho.com] (which is great, btw), and how the only spliced genes in plants are from other plants.

    Yes, really. Regardless of what Greenpeace would have you believe.

    The environmentalists have made us think that genetically altered food is as bad as can be, and that we should stay away from it. That it's not regulated in any form or fashion. That the food industry runs amok with itself, feeding the world with whatever they can come up with in their Mad Scentist Labs.

    But this is completely false. Any GM food is regulated far more than regular food, and these GM foods can save lives.

    Dr. Borlog, the scientist who invented GM food, has saved an estimated billion lives in third world countries by making less land make more food. His research and development since the 1970's, when it began, is groundbreaking to say the least. And yet there are groups who protest this on a consistent basis. And you never see any of these group's members starving, do you?

    A true tragedy was when an African country decided not to take an American donation of tons of corn because the environmentalists convinced the government of that nation that the genetically altered food was poison. An estimated 25,000 people die every day of starvation, and thousands of innocent people died in that country because of that misinformation.

    Now I'm not for a GATTACA like society, but if we can GM a person so they don't get Downs Syndrome, or Cystic Fibrosis, I'm all for it. Most people are against it for moral reasons, not scientific ones.

    These kinds of arguments hurt others whether they mean to or not.

    • Re:Frankenfood (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vidarh ( 309115 )
      Dr. Borlog, the scientist who invented GM food, has saved an estimated billion lives in third world countries by making less land make more food. His research and development since the 1970's, when it began, is groundbreaking to say the least. And yet there are groups who protest this on a consistent basis. And you never see any of these group's members starving, do you?

      This is bullshit. For decades the worlds food production have been way above amount of food required to feed the worlds population. In th

      • Re:Frankenfood (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Obiwan Kenobi ( 32807 ) <evan@@@misterorange...com> on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:34AM (#5799007) Homepage
        Starvation today isn't caused by lack of food, but lack of food distribution, fuelled among others by IMF policies (IMF has for ages pushed for high revenue crops such as coffee and tobacco instead of food in the 3rd world) and anti dumping measures in the west.

        Add to that that most GM food is sold in the industrialized countries, and your idea of GM food saving lives becomes ridiculous.

        Don't you understand you just nulled your own argument? GM food is saving lives because the excess found in industrialized nations is not being distributed. This means that if we can get the local farmers in troubled areas to use GM crops, then they will produce more food for their family and surrounding areas. Then the trouble (and money required) to move all this extra food around won't be required.

        That extra 130% isn't getting where it is needed because of greed and politics. So we can make 200% more than what's needed, but if it can't get to starving people its all for naut.

        Zimbabwe has always been one of the largest food exporters in Africa. A large part of their market is the EU and other countries that have strict rules on import on GM food. If any of the imported grain had been replanted in Zimbabwe, it would have been a disaster for the countries food export as they would have faced severe restrictions on export to a wide range of countries.

        Again, the argument collapses on itself. That food would've saved thousands of lives but, on account of greed and politics, was denied. Even if it was later accepted, people died in its delay. And that is not acceptable in my book.

    • and how the only spliced genes in plants are from other plants

      At least one form of GM food was formed by splicing bacterial genes into corn (bacteria, despite what you may have been taught in high school, are NOT considered plants). The corn had genes from Bacillus thueringensis spliced into it, to make it toxic to insect larvae such as corn borers. A later study showed that pollen from such corn, when dusted on milkweed leaves, was toxic to monarch butterfly larvae (note that it is not known whether corn

    • Re:Frankenfood (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nosher ( 574322 )
      I'm fairly neutral about all this stuff, but I would still question a couple of your assumptions: just exactly where does a resistance to glyphosate (a widely used herbicide made by a certain famously litigous megacorp) occur in nature? For 'tis this gene that was inserted into Bt Corn making it impervious to this weedkiller. That's something a whole level above regular cross breeding as it works by the insertion of more-or-less artificial genetic code. Also, most of these crops never make it anywhere near

  • When did we decide "no more progress?" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kombat ( 93720 ) <kevin@swanweddingphotography.com> on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:54AM (#5798649)
    For thousands of years, the whole point of human existence was to perpetuate and improve both quality and quantity of life. Every hospital, every ultrasound, every drug and every anti-smoking poster exists solely to increase our lifespans and improve our quality of life. So why all of a sudden are people saying "No" to taking this quest to the gene level?

    My sister-in-law has her masters in biology and is persuing another masters in genetic counselling. Curiously, she feels differently than I do about this. I believe that if we have the knowledge and the power to identify a Parkinson's, cancer, MS, Autistic, Down's, Lou Gehrig's, or a thousand other markers in our zygote's genetic code, and to eliminate that threat, then who in their right mind *wouldn't* do it? Why *wouldn't* you want your child to not have to go through the agony of being deaf or suffering through their twilight years consumed in the sad cloud of Alzheimer's?

    She, on the other hand, believes that we shouldn't meddle, because if we do as I just described, it's a small step to handing prospective parents a form, letting them choose their baby's sex, hair colour, height, etc. I say, "so what?" Once again, why *wouldn't* you want to let people choose what their children will look like? The child has to have SOME eye colour, it's going to be either brown or blue or green or something ANYWAY, so what's the harm in letting the parents pick?

    "We shouldn't be playing God," they say. But aren't we already? Haven't we been playing God since we started artificially extending peoples' lives through drugs and machines? Aren't contraceptive drugs "Playing God?" Aren't C-section births "Playing God?" Why do people accept all of those unnatural interventions, but draw the line at the next logical improvement of life?

    I believe that if society can eliminate those horrible genetic diseases from our gene pool, along with reducing obesity and the violent tendencies that produce dangerous criminals (yes, physiological links have been shown), then the sooner society will improve. Yes, it might suck for those of us who are already here and can't re-write our genetic code, but this is not without precedent. Do we deny cancer treatment to everyone, just because there are people who are beyond treatment? Since they won't survive cancer, then no one should? It's ridiculous.

    Science, medicine, and arguably society as a whole exist for the sole purpose of improving life. Evolving. I believe if we're at the threshold of these discoveries, that bring such amazing promises to our children and grandchildren, then it'd be counter to all the progress we've made so far in the last few centuries to stop now. We owe it to our children to use our knowledge to improve their lives. That's WHY technology exists.

    You can't say in-vitro fertilization and abortion are OK, but genetic manipulation is not. It's hypocritical.

    • Re:When did we decide "no more progress?" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hetairoi ( 63927 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:52AM (#5799170) Homepage
      There are tons of questions here, and I think that's more why many scientists are lobbying to have restrictions on GM of anything, much less humans. What if a child is found to have some disease while in the womb, and doctors perform GM and fix the disease, but the modification also CAUSES the child to have MS? Think about it, how many times have you made a minor change to some code that couldn't possibly affect anything else only to find that it blows out everything else?

      Even with the advancements in science and medicine this century much of what doctors do is guesswork. Now think about how each computer out there has a different setup, different video cards, different processors, you have to understand everything about that system to diagnose a problem. Many doctors out there are pretty clueless as it is, imagine if everyone that came in for a physical had all sorts of minor differences. I could see a major problem with doctors misdiagnosing problems simply because they didn't know that John Doe had a GM'd liver.

      AS far as how society will react to GM humans, I think it will depend on how much of a modification is done and why. If someone is modified to be 8 feet tall so they can play basketball, many people will see this as wrong. But someone modified to correct a disease or deformity I think would be accepted. Of course, you will always have that group that screams about 'purity' and 'God didn't intend these people to live' but that's really nothing new. It's all an individual perspective.

      I'm not really against genetic modification and I think modifying my kids to be basketball players would be great (on the other hand, my kids might have objections), but I do think there are far too many unanswered questions and far too many things that we don't understand yet to start modifying and re-engineering people. The potential benefits outweigh the potential dangers in my opinion (not that I even have 1/100th of the information that I would need to really make that call).

      Before diving headlong into something that could be enormously destructive to an individual, a society and an ecosystem I think there should be much much more research and understanding.

      This is just my individual perspective, feel free to deviate.

    • She, on the other hand, believes that we shouldn't meddle, because if we do as I just described, it's a small step to handing prospective parents a form, letting them choose their baby's sex, hair colour, height, etc. I say, "so what?

      She's right - a common problem with scientific advances is to underestimate the magnitude of 2nd and 3rd order (unintended) effects. Humans are notoriously bad at foresight beyond the simplest predictions. The problem is that (we) science-minded types run into is that we

    • When did we decide "Progress is God?" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DeadScreenSky ( 666442 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @10:26AM (#5799530)
      For thousands of years, the whole point of human existence was to perpetuate and improve both quality and quantity of life. Says who? I am serious. Your basic assumption is flawed. There is no real evidence of this. Regardless of that, many MANY MANY people would disagree with your asssumption, for many different reasons. I myself would take issue with the idea that boosting quantity of life is even remotely positively connected to improving quality. It seems to me that history has shown it to be the opposite, that an increase in population generally leads to a decrease in quality of life. We can't have both. Not everyone is a Progress Junkie like you, and many of us don't trust people that are to make ethical decisions for everyone else. You obviously don't have the perspective or historical background to speak with authority on issues like this. I am not suggesting you can't say what you want to (please do!), but you have to understand that the rest of us are being perfectly sensible in ignoring your advice. (I am also not suggesting that I am the authority on these subjects, but I am not suggesting that everyone should go along with what I believe, either.)

  • Genetic elite? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kinnell ( 607819 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @08:59AM (#5798706)

    People always go on about how genetic engineering will result in a elite group consisting of only those rich enough to afford the treatment. Can someone explain why the treatment will be so expensive that only the rich can afford it? Surely a retro virus that enhances one person will work on everybody? And since when were virii hard to mass produce? Sure, a group of rich people could try and keep it away from the general public, but in the long term this would be practically impossible, given the potential profit for anyone sneaky enough to leak it to the black market. I just don't get the maths. Economies of scale would result in much higher profits by selling cheap to everybody than by selling at a high price to a select group.

    IANAG but this seems like luddite nonsense to me.

  • By what right? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PMuse ( 320639 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:01AM (#5798719)
    All humans are humans.

    This must be one of our fundamental principles as genetic manipulation becomes available. If we deny the humanity of anyone based on the method by which they were born, we'll find ourselves in a mess right quick. For instance, we'll have people arguing that they own clones of themselves, that they can control the lives and labor of such clones, and that they can harvest such clones for spare parts. We'll have people arguing that athletics or college admissions or whatever should be handicapped according to one's genes.

    Let us not go there. We already have precedent for how we should treat humans born by new methods. Babies born a few months after their fathers have died are considered human. Babies born with no known father are considered human. Babies born by ceasarian section are considered human. Babies whose gestation takes place in a jar rather than a woman should be considered human. Babies conceived by artificial insemination are considered human. Babies whose DNA comes from only one parent should be considered human. Babies whose DNA has been manipulated should be considered human.

    Genetic manipulation is coming. Though many nations may ban it, it will still take place in other locations. If we label those offspring as anything other than "human", we just start a new race war. And for no good reason.

    • Re:By what right? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by praksys ( 246544 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:40AM (#5799067)
      All humans are humans.

      No one could disagree with that (it's a tautology), but plenty of people will start asking about what, exactly, a human is. Actually I think that enhanced humans will have no problems. A real problem will arise with those cases where genetic modification (either intentionally or unintentionally) produces a significantly disabled individual. If you wind up with an individual who has some natural human DNA, and some modified DNA, and is about as smart as a chimp (they already share most of our DNA), then you have a real problem. Even harder would be a case where a chimp genome is modified with some human DNA, to produce something that is smarter than the average chimp, but significantly less smart than the average human.

      Now personally I would, in every case, prefer to expand the scope of human rights to include such cases, but you can bet that some people will want to go the other way.

  • how real, how soon? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nanojath ( 265940 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:03AM (#5798738) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how real this is, and how soon. My instinct tells me that it is a non-issue and likely to remain one for a long time. First, just being, say, exceptionally tall or having a high lean-muscle mass does not an olympic or professional class athlete make. I think that defining, on the genome level, what it is that pushes a person from merely a good athlete to that very rare world class status will be very, very difficult. Second, this is not going to be the priority for research. Curing genetically based illness is. Although jumping the gun and passing overly broad restrictions on modifications that don't even exist yet could end up screwing someone just because they, say, got the cure for MS that allowed them to be an athlete in the first place. There is only one sensible approach - wait to see what actually happens and then deal with specific modifications on a one to one basis. Anything else would basically be like saying, okay, Olympic Athletes are banned from consuming anything but organic produce and pure water because, you know, it's not fair to use performance enhancing drugs. Non-issue.

  • Scew the GM humans... (Score:3, Funny)

    by docbrown42 ( 535974 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:15AM (#5798839) Homepage
    ...what about the Ford humans, the Dodge humans, and we can't forget about thos "import" humans from Honda, Nissan, etc. What about them?

  • This Won't Happen for 50 Years (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Salis ( 52373 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:28AM (#5798953) Journal
    I think scientists grossly overexaggerate the usefulness of the Human genome sequencing project. So you know the sequence of the genome.

    We still have to find all of the coding portions of the genome and separate them from non-coding portions.

    We still have to find a way to infer the structure and function of a protein from its sequence.

    We still have to find a method to engineer proteins systematically and by design. (No guess and check..)

    We still have to find a method to model and simulate how multiple proteins and genes interact in order to give us the behavior of the entire system. There are no genes that do one thing or provide one attribute. They all contribute to the behavior of the system, but not linearly and usually unpredictably.

    We still have to find a way to alter human DNA successfully, without triggering the immune response too much, and without causing cancer.

    We still have a LONG way to go before we see genetically modified humans.

    I'd say we'll see many more GM foods and animals long before some guy feels he can get it right on the first try. But that's what engineering is all about...knowing exactly what is going to happen when you create something so that it _will_ work on the first try. (How many buildings collapse spontaneously?)

    Not until we understand the complex interactions (and there's a LOT of them) in the body will we be able to engineer biological systems with a supremely high degree of aforeknowledge.

    Salis

  • A new Slashdot interview: Chris Claremont? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thud2000 ( 249529 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:39AM (#5799050)
    A lot of people have been commenting here about similarities between the GM issues described in the article and the good old X-Men. How about a Slashdot interview with the guy who has probably thought more about these issues than anybody else outside academia over the last 25 or so years ... veteran X-Men writer Chris Claremont? Or if not Claremont, maybe Grant Morrison. I think either would have some real insights here.

    I mean sure, a big chunk of the comic stories are standard superhero fare, but especially in Claremont's original run on X-Men these themes were returned to again and again. And again. And again....

  • Furry community (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:39AM (#5799054) Homepage Journal
    I was thinking about this once - consider:

    1) The body modification crowd - the carbon units running around with bolts/pins/rings through every body part they can pierce. In the extreme, there are folks like the snake man and the cat man, who are getting surgery to look like, well, a snake-man and a cat-man (dude)!

    2) The furry crowd - folks who fantasize about being anthropomorphic animals.

    Now enter GM. Given a sufficent level of understanding of genetics, what is to prevent somebody from modifying themselves to be an antropomorphic wolf or whatnot?

    Now consider the other side of the coin - there will be folks who tweak their pets - at first to cure things like hip displascia, but also to make the animal a better companion (we've been doing this for millenia - consider recent studies that show that dogs are better at reading human body language than wolves, even when the wolf was raised from a puppy by humans).

    Now consider some of the ludicrous laws that used to exist in places like South Africa - determining who is "white" and who is "black" by ancestry.

    We might very well end up with a situation in which two individuals, indistinguishable by inspection, are accorded different rights, because one is a anthropomorphic wolf (a wolf made to look human) and one is a lupopomorphic man (a man made to look like a wolf).

    Imagine the legal mess that will be!

  • General Motors Employees Are People, Too (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dfiant ( 13407 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @09:46AM (#5799127)
    Okay, so I don't know any, but gosh darnit, I'll fight to the death for their rights! But don't you think it's going a little too far to classify these people as superhuman? I mean, if they were, would I have just had to pay $500 to get my car fixed this weekend? Honestly!

    (Hooray acronym clash!)

  • Thinking these things through (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mwood ( 25379 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @10:23AM (#5799491)
    If any of these GM traits are dominant, eventually the whole population will get the mods for free from their parents, meaning that (a) the companies doing them need to make all the money they want up front, and (b) eventually NO ONE will be eligible to compete in the Olympics.

    Think about it.

  • Genetic Engineering (Score:4, Funny)

    by tekrat ( 242117 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @10:33AM (#5799616) Homepage Journal
    Genetic Engineering:
    "GE, we bring good things to life!"

    *rimshot*
    I hadda do the joke. Don't ban me from Slashdot!

  • Flip Side (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @10:39AM (#5799685) Homepage Journal

    I'm in the middle of reading Francis Fukuyama's Our PostHuman Future which I bought a week ago. It deals with exactly this subject, how biotechnology will affect our fundamental human nature and what the implications of this might be for politics. (Politics seems a lesser issue in some ways to me than the possible changes to human nature. Imagine "humans" bred and conditioned specifically to serve perfectly a dictator.)

    The obvious "solution" to the problem of regular people feeling jealous or betrayed about a wealthy class that breeds itself into a position of superiority is to breed the regular people (or to drug them) into not feeling so jealous or betrayed.

    As our understanding of human behavior improves, this may be introduced gradually.

    IMHO, it has already started in some ways. I see most of my fellow citizens letting their minds be sotted with various drugs (alcohol, chief among them) and watching television constantly to become indoctrinated into some kind of culture based on raw emotions, sex, violence, and whatever other levers and buttons their minds expose to the world.

    Our society's experience up to this point with self medication and with setting up hierarchies to govern society has been fraught with all kinds of problems. If we haven't been able to deal with those problems effectively, then it's probable we won't deal very well with the power of self-modification on the scale that future biotechnology permits.

  • Reality Check (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shotfeel ( 235240 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @10:40AM (#5799703)
    Lets take a step back a do a reality check.

    First, some basic genetics. It rare for a single gene (protein) to have a single function, and its rare for a given trait, say height or intelligence, to be governed by a single gene.

    Also consider that we all know there are trade-offs and optimizations that have to take place in engineering, including genetic engineering.

    So let's say you find a gene where one form predisposes the person to have a higher intelligence (say a more sensitive neurotransmitter receptor). So you put that form into a bunch of test babies and see what happens.

    Maybe nothing happens.

    Maybe they have an IQ that's 20 points higher on average than the general population.

    Maybe the also show an increased incidence of manic depression, or epilepsy, or....

    Back to the drawing board, lets try again. We found a gene we can modify to give a child super-strength.

    Cool!

    Funny how so many of them are completely debilitated by pulled or torn ligaments and tendons, and the occasional broken bone that couldn't handle the extra stess imposed by the super-muscles.

    So much for super strength, they end up super cripples.

    I'm trying to make a couple points here. First, it will take several generations just to test any given genetic manipulation, more to figure out how the requisite panel of genes will have to be modified to give an overall superior human.

    Second, you can't just modify one gene and make an overall better human. There are trade-offs and unexpected consequences. Just because you have the parts manual doesn't mean you know how things work.

    The one area where genetic manipulation can pretty much be guaranteed to be productive is in curing genetic diseases, where we know the gene, and we can change it back to "normal".

    As for "Frankenbabies", any of you want to volunteer your kids for testing?

  • Relax (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gray ( 5042 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @10:47AM (#5799782)
    You'll notice the lack of bioengineered animals running around the lab.

    A super smart/strong mouse isn't something the microbiology scene can whip up just yet, and they fry mice like popcorn.

    Doing the same thing with humans is a ways off and immeasurably more difficult as you can't flip baby humans over and chop out their spinal cord on a whim to check out your handiwork.

  • Previously, in Fiction (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dasunt ( 249686 ) on Thursday April 24, 2003 @11:15AM (#5800109)

    In Heinlein's "Beyond this Horizon", in addition to the typical gun-toting libertarian utopia, there was a rather interesting approach to Eugenics.

    Basically, instead of creating new genes, couples would go to the genetic engineer when they wanted a child, and their child would be created from the best possible combination of their genes. If the father had one gene for diabetes, and another non-diabetic gene, the non-diabetic gene would be choosen for his offspring. If the mother had one gene for flat feet, and another gene for a normal arched foot, only the arched gene would be choosen for her offspring.

    Now, this is an interesting approach, and one that has several benefits going for it. First of all, you aren't introducing new genes to the germ line - you are only maximizing the genes that are there. Second, its a harder policy to criticize - Its easy to pass a law against giving people new genes, its harder to pass a law preventing a mother from giving her son Tay-Sachs disease.

  • Too simplified a response (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ra5pu7in ( 603513 ) <ra5pu7in@@@gmail...com> on Thursday April 24, 2003 @12:37PM (#5800975) Journal

    This issue ties to prejudice and segregation, class distinctions, and the Haves vs. the Have-Nots. Presumably anyone who has been modified will be more capable in some way - making them the better choice for jobs, college, sports, whatever areas that improvement affects. This means you, or your children, or your grandchildren, could be denied opportunities because someone who wouldn't have appeared naturally would exist and be better in some way. These are the fears that drive bans of GM humans.

    I think groups like the Olympic committee should be more hesitant about banning all GM humans outright. What if the modification was to remove a predisposition for epilepsy? The athletic ability would be completely unchanged, though the individual may not have been able to compete had the GM not taken place.

    Also, I can think of less threatening forms of GM: ending male pattern baldness, removing recessive genes for diseases and deformities (like a cleft palate), completely aesthetic modifications (removal of genes for moles or excessive body hair).

    So much of sci-fi is an expression of our fears of the worst that could be produced. What we should learn from Star Trek and Gattaca and others is not that we shouldn't try - but that we need to consider all the possible ramifications in advance instead of just hoping it will all work out.

    There are valid issues that will come about if GM becomes feasible. First of all, the unknown quantity of side effects. Will we know until a couple generations later whether removing a recessive gene for male pattern baldness worked and whether it had any unexpected side effects - such as hairy feet? Second, the expense of such treatments. Either treatment is only available to those who can afford it (great mix to create civil unrest and revolution) or subsidized clinics would have to exist (raising our taxes). Third, there will be prejudice and irrational reactions in both directions - that is pretty much a given. There are many more issues, but at least we are considering them now rather than later.

    (Random, completely OT thought - could GM be used to alter racial characteristics? Carking?)

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