Is eugenics really all that bad? (On an individual level)

Orangeade said:
People are stupid.

The whole ideal of CRISPR, eugenics is problematic because it's rooted in time. Say we breed out (could be contentious and say a number of things) certain traits now.......we are not sure of the impact further down the line.

Also the complexities of how things interoperate could easily mean that we inadvertently fix one thing and banjax things for later.

We are too young as a species to be playing around with this yet. But hey ho the change is coming anyway.
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It's the human way. I was going to say "modern human way", but then I thought that what's modern is the scale rather than the issue itself. Fire, farming and writing come to mind as ancient examples of the same issue - the knowledge and power to do something that has profound effects without complete knowledge of what those effects will be.

I think it's possible that a certain level of knowledge/technology somewhere around humanity's current level might be the filter (or one of the filters) in the great filter hypothesis regarding Fermi's paradox.
 
GR63 said:
I think for me you are zeroing in on the issue. What is an "acceptable" condition to "de-select" a fetus??
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Surely anything is acceptable.

The current standard in most developed countries is that women can abort before X weeks for any reason… could just be “bad timing in my career” etc… Checking for traits shouldn’t generally change that.

It’s an individual choice, if you’re actually trying for a baby then you probs will be less likely to abort for trivial reasons as there is an (opportunity) cost to doing so, end up wasting months more time etc… By default it has to be something significant enough to the person that they’d want to abort and start over.

Less so for embryo selection though, you’re inevitably getting rid of some of those anyway.
 
Orangeade said:
People are stupid.

The whole ideal of CRISPR, eugenics is problematic because it's rooted in time. Say we breed out (could be contentious and say a number of things) certain traits now.......we are not sure of the impact further down the line.

Also the complexities of how things interoperate could easily mean that we inadvertently fix one thing and banjax things for later.

We are too young as a species to be playing around with this yet. But hey ho the change is coming anyway.
Click to expand...


But we aren't gonna change 100% of humanity only a tiny percentage

If we ****** something up theres still the entire 3rd world to fall back on
 
Tefal said:
You're not alowed the results of a medical test because of your race?


You really don't see that as an issue?
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Oh that.. it was 26 years ago and my wife was the one entitled to feel discriminated and she wasn't that bothered, thankfully
 
Tefal said:
But we aren't gonna change 100% of humanity only a tiny percentage

If we ****** something up theres still the entire 3rd world to fall back on
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No, once it starts it cascades. Unless you stop any mutations from entering the gene pool it will be a permanent change in humanity. Hence the huge outrage when China guy did the HIV modifications
 
Orangeade said:
No, once it starts it cascades. Unless you stop any mutations from entering the gene pool it will be a permanent change in humanity. Hence the huge outrage when China guy did the HIV modifications
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Sorry, what mods for HIV?
 
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