As a Transhumanist, my #1 goal in life is to have kids who are as awesome as possible. How I raise them will have some influence on this, but it's not enough; I want them to be genetically awesome, too. Two changes that they'd all get would be an over-expressed NR2B gene for enhanced intelligence and a fully repaired gulonolactone oxidase gene for the ability to synthesize vitamin C from glucose. Other probable changes include an over-expressed PEPCK-C gene for increased athletic performance and longevity, full metabolic pathways for all eight B vitamins (yes, they're numbered up through 12, but there are really only 8 of them), and tetrachromacy. Do you believe that this sort of enhancement should be legal? Why or why not? (now watch the logical fallacies spew forth from the "don't f*ck with god/nature" crowd...)
Illegal. Primarily because we don't know the secondary effects of those changes in genetic code. There may be a reason they evolved that way.
Because it was slightly better at breeding than other genes or because natural selection can't improve something, such as heart muscle. There was no natural selection reason to make the heart muscle regenerate like other tissue after injury because if it was injured you died. Why not "fix" that?
..and you see no moral hazard in this at all? Like the rich having genetically enhanced children while common people are left out in the cold with "normal" kids and then the genetically enhanced people form an arrogant, dictatorial political class that oppresses the regular humans? Stuff like that? You would just give humans one more reason to divide amongst themselves and fight.
There may be a reason heart muscle can't regenerate. My guess is cancer. Heart cancer is almost nonexistent.
Before modern medicine if your heart was injured you died. There was nothing to select as you died before it could regenerate.
you make a point. This would result in two different classes "enhanced" and "normal". I can't say for sure if people would end up being divided in the two different classes but the risk would be there.
I would be in favor of good genetic modification on humans. But certainly not experimental or detrimental modification. The only purpose of such modification should be for the benefit of the child. There is plenty of potential for abuse, so such modification should be strictly regulated and controlled.
Im already inferior to many other people some people are already better then others. Preventing the existence of more superior people just to make sure your kind fairs better seems petty. Making it a right to be able to enhance your offspring seems like a better option than banning all improvements all together.
The rich are already pretty arrogant. I don't think genetic engineering will add to that much. But to me, it seems a rather basic civil right that parents should be able to give their children any advantage they can. I don't think the rich will be able to hold on to their fancy genes anyway. They've always gone bang crazy with lower class chicks and will no doubt continue to do so, leaving their enhanced DNA for free all over town. So things will even out.
The point of this topic is so an intelligent Negro can expose ignorant white people for their own ignorance. 1. Human genetics is a LONG way away from being mastered. 2. We already know that white Americans are ethnically ignorant. so... there's really no point to this topic other than what I first stated.
You think too small. My kids are going to be injected with self-aware nanobots that will continually upgrade and repair their physiological structure until the day that technology will allow them to upload their brains into cyborg bodies. Oh, and the nanobots will erase the word awesome from their vocabularies.
You're humoring this guy and I'M supposed to be the Troll?! Keep injecting your progeny with nanobots, my friend...they're gonna need them.
You might want to remember two things about human evolution. First, it occurred in a very different context from modern society. For example, the obesity epidemic in America is largely secondary to our drive to store calories for hard times so we don't die of starvation, but with a consistent overabundance of food this is maladaptive in modern society. Second, evolution's only "goal" can be to maximize viable offspring who have more viable offspring, not to maximize functioning except as a means to that end. While most people want to have kids, that's generally not all they want from life. So evolution's result is not a perfect one from our perspective. It's just better than what we can do, for now. But if we don't tinker with it, we'll never transcend it. Now, as to unintended consequences, that's certainly a concern, but we already allow people who are likely to have genetically defective baby to reproduce, and we don't have more than a lifetime to wait for study results, so I don't see why not try to do something we think will be beneficial and document any problematic consequences as they come. If anything, it would detract from it, because instead of being able to pretend like it was a fair competition that they won, they will have even more evidence that they had advantages to begin with. If only within my lifetime, but probably not.
I believe there should be a government ethics panel that should decide which genetic modifications should be legally allowed. But currently genetic modification of humans is just not feasible, and current methods that involve a retrovirus carry the risk of cancer.
Advance in human cloning discovery... Embryonic stem cells: Advance in medical human cloning 15 May 2013 - Human cloning has been used to produce early embryos, marking a "significant step" for medicine, say US scientists.
I am 100% opposed to transhumanism and think it should be banned world-wide. Transhumanism and eugenics started with the Third Reich and should have died with them.