Ask Slashdot: What Are the Most Dangerous Lines of Scientific Inquiry? 456
gbrumfiel writes "The battle over whether to publish research into mutant bird flu got editors over at Nature News thinking about other potentially dangerous lines of scientific inquiry. They came up with a non-definitive list of four technologies with the potential to do great good or great harm:
Laser isotope enrichment: great for making medical isotopes or nuclear weapons. Brain scanning: can help locked-in patients to communicate or a police state to read minds. Geoengineering: could lessen the effects of climate change or undermine the political will to fight it. Genetic screening of embryos: could spot genetic disorders in the womb or lead to a brave new world of baby selection.
What would Slashdotters add to the list?"
Screening embryos already happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I live, certain ethnic minorities (actually, taken together they are actually a majority) are notorious for screening embryos for gender. Then they abort the females until a male is born first. It's become such an issue that it's now illegal to specify an embryo's gender until the window for legal abortion has passed (I don't remember how many weeks/months that is).
If you're white, the doctor will still tell you if you ask though.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking of Sci-Fi, the lead female character (Mira) in the book "Evolution's Darling [kirkusreviews.com]" is an assassin who targets scientists that have been judged by Mira's AI-overlords as being too close to making undesirable discoveries.
For instance, one of her past targets included a researcher working on teleportation (which they calculate will lead to the collapse of civilization), and much of the story involves her mission to assassinate a rogue AI who has developed a method of making perfect copies of AI minds. All for the protection of society of course.
The worst of worst-case outcomes (Score:4, Interesting)
There would be ethical and humanitarian applications for it, but mere death and pain would be hard pressed to compete with the potential damage of perfect propaganda. If some combination of psychology, hypnosis, drugs in the water, drugs in the drugs, or whatnot made it possible to get people to believe anything you said, that could be the end of all freedom forever.
Re:Religious experiments (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nothing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Tasp... (Score:5, Interesting)
Successfully making a tasp or droud [wikimedia.org] would probably lead to the end of humanity in a generation or so. At least the end of any non-stone-age parts.
Re:Nanotechnology (Score:2, Interesting)