There is No Stop Button in the Race for Human Re-Engineering

[The2ndWheel]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0130-25.htm

My daughter is 10. Fast forward 25 years, and she is having her first child - early by the standards of all her friends, but she's keen on "natural". Of course, she did pre- implementation genetic diagnosis, and she and her husband (yes, very old fashioned, they married) had some agonizing days deciding on whether to modify a genetic predisposition to depression and whether to splice in a gene for enhanced intelligence. In the end, they felt they had no option but to give their baby the best possible start in life.

Five years later, my little grand-daughter is starting school. Again her parents have talked over the pros and cons of cognitive enhancement. A pharmcogenetic package is now routinely offered on the NHS after the government decided that, given international competition in the global knowledge economy, there was no option but to ensure the nation's schoolchildren had better powers of memory and concentration. I had my doubts, but I have to admit that my little granddaughter is proving a wonderfully clever creature - a constant source of amazement to me.

My doubts were in part assuaged by the fact that I had already started stronger doses of the same cognitive enhancement drugs. They've helped hugely with my forgetfulness (I'm just hitting my 70s). They are part of a cocktail of drugs I'm now taking to postpone many of the effects of aging. I dithered a bit but in the end there was no option. I'm doing the childcare for all my five grandchildren and I need to be strong and fit for them. My age expectancy is now 110, so the plan is that I can help out a bit with the great grandchildren too.

[lvx35]

1. Wow. Hitler's dream at last realized.

What I fear from all this is not that humans will be engineered, but they will be engineered to conform to some completely retarded ideal, some moron will define intelligence as number crunching (forgetting asthetic) beauty as anorexia in women, and proper facial form as european, discounting the benifits of all the other ways of being. That's what I fear.

[K-W]

2. Thats the problem it wouldnt create a utopia.

Technology will not turn a flawed society into a utopia, it will turn a flawed society into a monstrosity.

And this has become the story of the human race as we develop ever greater technology to warp and destroy our world without ever solving the basic social problems that plague us.