From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Sun Apr 28 2002 - 16:00:23 MDT
James Hughes writes:
> The Center for Genetics and Society are a new bioLuddite organization
> specifically focused on raising the alarm about human genetic
> enhancement, i.e. they are our specific political opposite. This is the
> primer they have pulled together:
>
> http://www.genetics-and-society.org/resources/cgs/newtechs.pdf
At the talk I attended last week, Greg Stock made an interesting
point about germ line engineering. One of his quotes in this document
mentions it as well. He suggested that germ line engineering was not
such a good idea, not because of any fears of making humans obsolete,
but because the engineering changes would be obsolete by the time the
next generation came along.
He said that it was possible to do genetic engineering in the pre-
embryonic stage such as adding a new chromosome, and arranging that the
new 'some would self-destruct in the germ cells of the new organism.
This would then leave a "clean slate" for the next generation to work
their magic on, which would be ~20 years more advanced. Just like you
wouldn't want to use a 20 year old computer today, you wouldn't want 20
year old genetic enhancements 75 years from now.
Hal
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