Designer babies is the start. Like I already believe if you're "selecting" something like your baby's gender, you're fuckin Hitler. But then, my roommate was all, "Well what if you could remove the trait for Huntington's that runs in the family?"
So there's clearly a spectrum of ways that genetic engineering could go.
The most interesting case to me is of He Jianku, who reportedly began studying and modifying human embryos. CIA fear disinfo, or Chinese scientists just marching ahead and setting the new standards of the 21st century?
You probably mean well but autism surely does not belong on that list. I’m sorry I am limited right now and cannot provide resources but do try to find serious work by neurodiversity advocates. Combatting ableism as leftists is crucial. I do think that every discussion I have ever heard about disabled people that starts from an abled person’s perspective has already positioned disabled people as inherently inferior by nature. It’s always a matter of just how humanely we should be treated and how far should abled people be willing to go to meet our needs. The premise is just wrong. Not all disability is the same as chronic disease that would suck no matter the material conditions. If the society was designed with autistic people, people with mobility issues, D/deaf people, etc. in mind then there really wouldn’t be such an inherent power imbalance.
Autistic people often consider ourselves to be more impaired by our environment than our difference in neurology. And plenty of autistic people have contributed to society because of our different ways of thinking rather thna in spite of it, in fact it is in spite of our disadvantages in a system meant to benefit neurotypical behavior. Eliminating that variety would, aside from being cruel, have negative consequences for humans as a whole- some of which may be unforseeable. The genes that are associated with autistic traits may also have roles in other things. The classic biology example of why a gene may stick around even if it sometimes leads to organisms to be ill adapted to their environment is that having 2 copies of the gene that grants malaria resistance leads to sickle cell anemia. So even if society decided autistic people are more burdensome than beneficial, it still would be a risk to eliminate us all because we have no idea what we might also be messing with. lol
There are other technical reasons why Huntington’s could potentially be a good candidate for editing out while the other things you listed would not be but it would miss the point to talk about that too much because you could change your examples to be more fitting and the question would still stand.
He Jiankui was risking those twins’ health by experimenting on them. The technology is new, and scientists in his field urged him to not do what he was planning. And it’s even on the wiki page you linked that it’s not even clear he was successful in making them immune to HIV. There’s even a good chance they will suffer other problems later in life, no one knows yet because this has not been done. As an embryo no one could possibly consent to being genetically modified, yet they’re condemned to being a science experiment for their entire life. I am not suggesting embryos have rights themselves but I mean, if you’re 100% intending for the embryo to develop into a living human you have to consider the burden you’d be placing on them.
I wrote a lot here because I hope I can get people to consider that leftists need to have a vision for the future that accounts for everyone. Healthcare, food, housing, etc. as human rights would of course benefit disabled people but a socialist society wouldn’t be a cure for ableism unless disabled people’s needs were considered just as important as abled people’s during the development of that society.
I think the Autism example is interesting, because not all autism is the same. There is a lot of children with autism who suffer from crippling constant anxiety over the smallest stimuli and are completely non-verbal, possibly through to adult hood. This is a case where the child suffers, not just the parents being annoyed their kid is odd.
There is just no way to determine if that autistic child will be a future archivist, mathematician, engineer, or just someone who lives from the worst anxiety one could manage with little ability to communicate it.
I am very prone to sensory overload myself, I can empathize. It is absolutely true autism comes with some pretty rough challenges, I have been through many. For example, I’m at the age where I should be lookign for employment but the interview process just seems impossible, not to mention jobs are all about who you know so autistic people are disadvantaged there. I don’t think I could get hired at a job matching my skill/education level because I am completely unable to make eye contact and sometimes become non-verbal in stressful situations. I think if neurotypicals didn’t see this as a disqualifier I’d be able to prove that I could still be valuable at a job even if I might for example hear chewing one day that hurts my ears so bad I can’t work for hours.
The completely non-verbal thing, I do not have personal experience but non-verbal activists have written that they are frustrated thta they are underestimated constantly. One thing people who work with AAC technology notice is that very irritable and meltdown prone nonverbal people show remarkable improvement when they are given a device that helps them express themselves better. Embracing those differences and normalizing these things instead of insisting on sticking to popular interventions focused on speech could make a world of difference. Being autistic doesn’t have to be all bad, no matte what.
Autistic people are way more frequently abused as children than the general population. Combining that with a difference in communication style that prevents them from expressing how they are being affected, not being able to process the emotions, etc, leads to bad outcomes overall. This is avoidable if you meet us halfway. Studies have found that autistic children’s social skills improve in settings where the other kids are taught to try to see things from their perspective as well. It is tiring for an autistic person to constantly be the one trying to close the communication gap. Assume competence and just interact with us as people. Everyone is complex and needs different understanding, regardless of disability.