Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Genetic Engineering of Humans
by
guybrushthreepwood
on 12/12/2018, 18:39:57 UTC
Anyway, there have been some interesting stories in the news about He Jiankui, a Chinese researcher who claims to have created two humans who were genetically engineered.  Then he disappeared...

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/dec/02/marc-a-thiessen-gene-editing-is-here-its-an-enormo/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/he-jiankui-missing-crispr-gene-edited-babies_us_5c0641a0e4b0cd916faf700c

Who is this guy and where's the proof? Might as well have claimed to have invented a time machine.

I think this is actually a serious issue and not one where we can say just let people do what they want as there is seriously ethical issues here. Would you want to be one of these new genetic freaks? What happens when things go wrong and people turn out horrendously deformed or ill? What if these super-intelligent people are also super-evil or despicable. Sounds like it could be some sort of real life X-Men type situation. I'm not saying genetic engineering is bad, but it certainly can be. I'm sure we'll make lots of good progress with it like eradicating illnesses and diseases but some states or powers are obviously going to use it for their own nefarious purposes and science fiction-like weapons and so forth.