I feel pretty simply, I feel a sense of sadness at the kinds of 21st century problems my kids and their kids are going to have to deal with.
At some point in the next 25 years I expect there to be a 'procedure' available, which consists of cultivating a persons stem cells from their bone marrow, using a genetic editing technique to add and/or delete and/or "correct" certain genetic sequences, and then to have a "bone marrow transplant" which is simply killing off your existing bone marrow stem cells and replacing them with the edited ones.
It will be touted as a durable cure for genetic disease and marketed underground to people of means who are looking for an edge in their chosen profession.
There will be lawsuits over people who have their their genetic sequences "appropriated" by a third party to re-sell as a product, and patent litigation on gene sequences that makes much of today's trolls seem quaint in comparison.
I expect to see dog shows and horse races ban "genetically modified" contestants. I expect to see lawsuits around the labeling of beef and chicken about being genetically modified (yes some of this is already happening).
The world will be profoundly different on the far side of generalized understanding of genetics and the means to manipulate them. At least as different as it has become pre-internet+computer to post internet+computer.
How is that something to be sad about? In case your kids miss out and feel jealous? Surely if yours kids have only an average intelligence, you'll still be happy for them despite the fact that they probably can't achieve as much success as their most successful peers in any intellectual field.
Your attitude sounds like my Dad's attitude of being sad that my generation doesn't believe in God anymore or his own Dad's unhappiness at him for not being a proper loyal soldier in the Navy. It's tempting to believe that our own generation has the ultimate peak of right behavior and any change is for the worse, but it's also arrogant and repeatedly proven to be wrong.
This comment recalled for me the Bill Cosby joke which goes, "When I was a teen, I couldn't believe how stupid my Dad was. When my kids were teens I couldn't believe how much my Dad had learned between then and now." :-)
I didn't appreciate the wisdom in that joke until my kids were teens. The sadness comes from the expectation of the painful times between the onset of the technology and the eventual successful integration of that technology into our lives. For me, I live in Silicon Valley which has more superfund cleanup sites than pretty much anywhere because the chip companies dumped a lot of toxic chemicals that later turned out to be carcinogens into the ground. People I know, some well, some only by association, were harmed by that. It was part of the "learning curve" of developing semiconductors which have so changed everyone's lives. That the chips are a net good is, in my opinion, pretty clear. However, the "learning" of the superfund cleanup was painful.
Bespoke genetic manipulation will have similar "growing pains" and those pains will kill people, cause generalized harm, and likely a catastrophe or two. And once we've gone through that and understand the risks and challenges in a more fundamental way, then people will be enjoying the benefits and the risks will be contained by legislation or some other oversight.
While they're dying from genetic manipulation, they'll be surviving more diseases, car crashes, etc. The net safety will surely be better for your kids' and grandkids' generations than your own.
If you don't have any genetically-afflicted ailments, hell if you're still a healthy 18-35 year old, then I'd say maybe layoff on the moralizing about the some imagined pure beauty of letting "nature" take it's course with the human species.
Presumably you have seen the movie "Gattica", if not I can recommend it.
Imagine that we figure out the genetic sequence for total memory recall. It isn't an "illness" it is a feature that some people have. And perhaps the procedure costs $2M to have it done. Further assume that is a price that "upper middle class" people can afford to have it done for their kids. Now you have thousands of kids who are artificially "better" for jobs than unmodified kids. How do the unmodified kids compete?
It is just a hypothetical of course, there are dozens of things that appear to be genetic that give people an advantage over their peers. Unequal access to such things has always been a force for stratification in the world.
At some point in the next 25 years I expect there to be a 'procedure' available, which consists of cultivating a persons stem cells from their bone marrow, using a genetic editing technique to add and/or delete and/or "correct" certain genetic sequences, and then to have a "bone marrow transplant" which is simply killing off your existing bone marrow stem cells and replacing them with the edited ones.
It will be touted as a durable cure for genetic disease and marketed underground to people of means who are looking for an edge in their chosen profession.
There will be lawsuits over people who have their their genetic sequences "appropriated" by a third party to re-sell as a product, and patent litigation on gene sequences that makes much of today's trolls seem quaint in comparison.
I expect to see dog shows and horse races ban "genetically modified" contestants. I expect to see lawsuits around the labeling of beef and chicken about being genetically modified (yes some of this is already happening).
The world will be profoundly different on the far side of generalized understanding of genetics and the means to manipulate them. At least as different as it has become pre-internet+computer to post internet+computer.