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Keyword is natural though. It's one thing to push science to it's limits. It's another entirely to delve into eugenics. It's pretty understandable and a defaul

Keyword is natural though. It's one thing to push science to it's limits. It's another entirely to delve into eugenics. It's pretty understandable and a default position to advocate for it, but it could be a slippery slope, and will definitely push the politics towards engineered babies over natural ones.

Snail_Commando 12y ago
For what it's worth, I wasn't advocating anything. I was just pointing out that cloning occurs every day. I was also hoping to highlight that deliberately cloned people are essentially the same as 'randomly/naturally' cloned people. A hypothetical clone (in the popular connotation of the word) of myself is essentially identical to my hypothetical identical twin sibling, the distinction is that the hypothetical clone is born after me, and was 'deliberately conceived.' Declaring one to be 'natural' and one to be 'unnatural' is unkind. And arguably, bigoted. (I'm speaking generally, not accusing you of doing this.) The hypothetical clone will still be a human being in every sense of the word. I suppose you could call them the 'deliberates', but are they more 'deliberate' than those born of copulation or old fashioned, 20th century artificial insemination? Would identical twins be considered as a higher caste than the 'deliberates'? Also, what percentage 'clone' do you have to be to be considered a 'clone'? (After all, each 'normal' person only differs from one another in one nucleotide out of every thousand.) Can we replace our damaged organs from those bio-printed of our own DNA? How will this limit proteomic engineering? If we engineer a protein that confers some immunity or cure to an affliction, would we have to deliver it like we do 'artificial' insulin? Or could we "cut the middleman" and edit in a 'copy' of the engineered gene that yields the engineered protein? Might that put the entire genome over some arbitrary 'clone' threshold? Do we wait until the genetic immunity randomly/selectively occurs in nature? Or do we stay 'organic'? Genomic engineering and artificial genomic reproduction will certainly be the debate of the 21st century. The two fields might engender the next major civil rights movement.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
mitochondrion 12y ago
What about eliminating allergies, Alzheimer's, and cancer? How about increasing the intelligence of the human species? Do we want to give our children better opportunities? Forget superficial stuff like blond hair and blue eyes, we're talking about the possibility of having guaranteed super-healthy, super-happy, super-smart children.
- throwaway7808 12y ago
  I don't think you can have both - super-happy and super-smart. But otherwise, yes. I see no problems with you creating super-smart children that will be able to wipe out all the stupid ones. Who knows, maybe this is the only way to save humanity from AI menace ;)
- DougWebb 12y ago
  That's all been doable for a long time, using controlled breeding. We do it all the time with animals; look what we've done to dogs. The only difference genetic engineering brings is how quickly it can be done. But that's eugenics, and it's been rejected as immoral by pretty much everyone. A big part of the problem, I think, is that a custom-engineered child is a lot more expensive to create than a natural random-chance child, and therefore eugenics only produces super-humans for the rich and powerful, who will become even more rich and powerful by breeding themselves into master race that enslaves everyone else. Eugenics can't upgrade all of humanity directly because natural breeding, being cheaper, is also much more common. So the vast majority of inferior humans will always outnumber the eugenics-produced super-humans. That's where the enslavement comes in; the super-humans will have to use their inherited wealth and power to make sure they retain control because they can't out-breed everyone else. The other possibility, and the only way the super-humans can replace the normals, is to kill off all of the normals either directly or by making them infertile. That's even worse than enslavement. No matter how you look at it, eugenics has a bad outcome if it's not available to everyone at the same time. And if it was available to everyone, we wouldn't call it eugenics. We'd call it 'medicine', 'vaccination', 'pre- and post-natal care', and 'preventative care'.
  - Snail_Commando 12y ago

Snail_Commando 12y ago

For what it's worth, I wasn't advocating anything. I was just pointing out that cloning occurs every day. I was also hoping to highlight that deliberately cloned people are essentially the same as 'randomly/naturally' cloned people. A hypothetical clone (in the popular connotation of the word) of myself is essentially identical to my hypothetical identical twin sibling, the distinction is that the hypothetical clone is born after me, and was 'deliberately conceived.' Declaring one to be 'natural' and one to be 'unnatural' is unkind. And arguably, bigoted. (I'm speaking generally, not accusing you of doing this.) The hypothetical clone will still be a human being in every sense of the word. I suppose you could call them the 'deliberates', but are they more 'deliberate' than those born of copulation or old fashioned, 20th century artificial insemination? Would identical twins be considered as a higher caste than the 'deliberates'? Also, what percentage 'clone' do you have to be to be considered a 'clone'? (After all, each 'normal' person only differs from one another in one nucleotide out of every thousand.) Can we replace our damaged organs from those bio-printed of our own DNA? How will this limit proteomic engineering? If we engineer a protein that confers some immunity or cure to an affliction, would we have to deliver it like we do 'artificial' insulin? Or could we "cut the middleman" and edit in a 'copy' of the engineered gene that yields the engineered protein? Might that put the entire genome over some arbitrary 'clone' threshold? Do we wait until the genetic immunity randomly/selectively occurs in nature? Or do we stay 'organic'? Genomic engineering and artificial genomic reproduction will certainly be the debate of the 21st century. The two fields might engender the next major civil rights movement.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

mitochondrion 12y ago

What about eliminating allergies, Alzheimer's, and cancer? How about increasing the intelligence of the human species? Do we want to give our children better opportunities? Forget superficial stuff like blond hair and blue eyes, we're talking about the possibility of having guaranteed super-healthy, super-happy, super-smart children.

throwaway7808 12y ago
I don't think you can have both - super-happy and super-smart. But otherwise, yes. I see no problems with you creating super-smart children that will be able to wipe out all the stupid ones. Who knows, maybe this is the only way to save humanity from AI menace ;)
DougWebb 12y ago
That's all been doable for a long time, using controlled breeding. We do it all the time with animals; look what we've done to dogs. The only difference genetic engineering brings is how quickly it can be done. But that's eugenics, and it's been rejected as immoral by pretty much everyone. A big part of the problem, I think, is that a custom-engineered child is a lot more expensive to create than a natural random-chance child, and therefore eugenics only produces super-humans for the rich and powerful, who will become even more rich and powerful by breeding themselves into master race that enslaves everyone else. Eugenics can't upgrade all of humanity directly because natural breeding, being cheaper, is also much more common. So the vast majority of inferior humans will always outnumber the eugenics-produced super-humans. That's where the enslavement comes in; the super-humans will have to use their inherited wealth and power to make sure they retain control because they can't out-breed everyone else. The other possibility, and the only way the super-humans can replace the normals, is to kill off all of the normals either directly or by making them infertile. That's even worse than enslavement. No matter how you look at it, eugenics has a bad outcome if it's not available to everyone at the same time. And if it was available to everyone, we wouldn't call it eugenics. We'd call it 'medicine', 'vaccination', 'pre- and post-natal care', and 'preventative care'.
- Snail_Commando 12y ago