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.
I saw an interesting documentary on deaf parents and how when given the opportunity for their own hearing-impaired baby to receive treatment, it's actually a point of debate in the community. I can understand wanting to have something to relate to your kids about, but it strikes me as too much ego.
I consider if I had certain conditions, and found out later my parents had the option but chose otherwise... I'd make peace with it, but part of me would be angry.
I can understand wanting to have something to relate to your kids about, but it strikes me as too much ego.
It's the same "social model of disability" used eg. by the neurodiversity movement. And, frankly, as an autistic person, I can kinda understand that, given that the capital-d Deaf community has its own language, culture, etc.
I spent some time in a pretty big deaf/Hard of Hearing community. There definitely is a stigma with Cochlears, but I think its getting less and less. The important thing about cochlear implants is the earlier you get them, the more your brain adapts. The implants often still go hand in hand with sign language training. Every person I met with a cochlear implant also signed and used an interpreter for class, but most you could talk to normally, just making sure they could read your lips.
It'd be cool to eliminate diseases passed down genetically, but it could take a nose dive into fascist territory real quick. See: Nazis scapegoating Jews on the grounds of eugenics.
Nose dive? This idiot is already talking serious fash shit about "curing" autism. Also, eugenics in practice always works well for the rich and is genocidal for the poor.
Kinda sad that we live in a world where it's easier and more imaginable to just purge people with mental illnesses or physical disabilities than to accommodate them
"If we accommodate you, then we would have to accommodate everyone!!!!"
:yes-comm:
Why wouldn’t I?
(Virgil voice) "CC is a redditor website"
Can I edit myself? I would probably love to improve my metabolism if possible, not by a crazy amount just enough so I could lose a bit of weight faster. I feel like this might be breaking the rules a bit but I thing this might be the most ethical.
Sidenote I think environment might be more useful to alter than the individual genetics. Feel like this if done will be the ultimate in personal responsibility motto, just change your dna.
I don't trust humanity with that kind of power. Suppose you could travel back in time and give people that ability - is there any point in time when it wouldn't be horribly misused? If not, then don't you think people a hundred years in the future would be horrified at us having it?
Beyond that, like, pain is bad, right? But not having pain would be worse, because pain serves an important function in alerting us to danger. There are all sorts of cases where what we think we want is different from what we actually want, or what would be best for us. Your goals when designing a game are fundamentally different than your goals when playing the game. Imagine you're playing Monopoly and you think, "The object of the game is to avoid bankruptcy, so let's add a house rule where the first three times you go bankrupt you get a loan from the bank to stay in." Obviously this would make the game even more drawn out and tedious than it already is, and is a terrible rule. We can see what a bad idea it is because we are capable of stepping away from our assigned motivations as players. But when it comes to the game of
LifeExistence, it becomes difficult if not impossible to set aside the goals that evolution has instilled in us. Are we sure, for example, that extending our lifespans is something that would actually improve the human experience, or are we doing it simply because evolution has instilled in us a fear of death? I don't mean to limit this criticism to that specific example. This idea of "what you think you want isn't always what you actually want, or what's best for you" is something you can observe everywhere. Like, relationships, anyone?All of that is assuming that everyone using it is acting in good faith with a similar value system to yours. If you had to choose between risking a genetic disease, vs risking being born to some QAnon whackjob who altered your genetic code to their specifications, which would you prefer? Or would you leave it in the hands of the US government, because, you know, what could go wrong? You might say, "Oh but it would only be for such and such diseases we all can agree are bad." All right, well how about we table that discussion until you're God Emperor of Humanity because until then you're not the one who's gonna be making that call, are you? Once you throw in profit motives and brainworms all bets are off.
I recommend Eugenics and Other Evils by G. K. Chesterton for further reading. He was a bit of a tradcath weirdo but occasionally cool and imo he was really on point with this, especially considering he was writing at a time when eugenics was all the rage.
I can't shake the feeling that cancer (as in the mechanism of runaway limitless cell growth) serves some kind of an obscure hidden biological purpose and shit's gonna go south in unpredictable ways if we, like, eliminate the ability for the body to make cancers.
Ok let's straighten some shit out
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Gene editing to remove uncommon problems is OK. If like, 40 or 50% of the population has that gene, your kid can have that gene. As long as the procedure is safe, you should be able to have kids without giving them fuckin parkinsons
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Giving your kid black or red or... oh fuck, blonde hair is probably unnecessary and/or risky depending on how developed the tech is at a given point, and it's pretty fucking dumb. But the problem with Hitler was the murder, not the blonde fetish.
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Did you just give your kid super strength? .... Nah. No way. Go to fucking jail. You don't get to see your kid ever. We should also sterilize your kid if we can't reverse it, and provide them with free IVF for life if they ever want it, cause they didn't do anything wrong.
We can't go having Nazis who actually are superior. Nuh uh. I've watched enough Star Trek bitch
I unironically want transhumanists with super strength that sounds radass
If like, 40 or 50% of the population has that gene, your kid can have that gene.
Simple way to prevent the "white blueblonde" scenario from happening: take the logical converse of this
Only if <5% people in all populations have the gene, THEN you can get the gene altered. That way nobody can edit eye color etc. but you can still fix parkinsons cystic fibrosis sickle cell etc
Ah yes, basing it on removing the gene should be important.
Come to think of it, it should be both ways: only remove rare genes that substantially hurt, and only add genes that are common.
and only add genes that are common.
that's just designer babies though.
Yeah but who the fuck cares. 2 blonde people can fuck
You could also add a restriction where the gene has to be in some of your zygotes, or in the zygotes of someone in your lineage, however this would only allow some diseases to be cured and not others.
Could be approved list of diseases only, with the same 40 or 50 percent restriction as part of the basis, so people can't define "unable to leap like a gazelle" as a disease
Yeah but who the fuck cares. 2 blonde people can fuck
I was just making sure. My instinct was that most on here are against designer babies. Because it could lead to loads of people choosing to be "white".
You could also add a restriction where the gene has to be in some of your zygotes, or in the zygotes of someone in your lineage
You can find virtually all phenotypic genes in virtually all groups of people. The difference is frequencies.
Yeah I would never do a designer baby, but I'm more thinking about what should be illegal, and that doesn't qualify (assuming future technology where it's safe). I will relentlessly mock people for doing it though, like seriously just have a goddamn kid.
Also yeah I wouldn't allow people to pick like, genes that arent anywhere in their family, but if some of their sperm is blonde kids, who cares
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Crazy thought: what if liberals start editing their kids to be more genetically similar to American Indians or something. Like the opposite of genocide but still clearly kind of fucked up.
I dunno I feel like on the one hand kids should have a right not to be born with genetic diseases but on the other hand of course what does and does not count as a genetic disease is going to be insanely political. If they figure out how to select for autism, even if it's looked down on in polite society, what will end up happening is that wealthy people will do it 100% of the time and all remaining nuerodivergent people will end up in the lower economic class, further exacerbating the social ills that follow those groups around.
But just because it will disproportionately help the wealthy and by exclusion harm the poor doesn't mean it would be a net negative for society. Running water at one point in time was exclusively the domain of the wealthy, and look at us now. Definitely don't do it.
Crazy thought: what if liberals start editing their kids to be more genetically similar to American Indians or something.
that's actually impossible due to the way ancestry works. gene editing will target a few or at best a few dozen SNPs.
Ancestral genetic differences are in the tens of millions.
You can definitely edit a child to be white, or light hair/eyed, or Black etc, because these things are determined by a tiny handful of genes. But you absolutely can't edit a child to be more European or more African, that's physically impossible unless we gain the ability to change MILLIONS of letters of code in a human very precisely with zero off target effects.
Also daily reminder that genetic Europeans went extinct during the bronze age, and what you see now are essentially Middle Eastern Mestizos.
