K Sera asks if we are facing the obvious and inevitable future of the next human evolution. Micah brings up the ethics of unleashing a technology upon a tribal humanity. Phill is thinking about Bingo.
Show Notes:
K Sera’s After Thoughts:
- Pax Au Telamanus is a character from Pierce Brown’s Red Rising
- Sera is not a doctor, so her “understanding” of vaccines may be totally garbage. Don’t take medical advice from a podcast! Especially from one that doesn’t fact check very well.
- Playing god with human genetics is a super touchy subject and while I think the potential uses for this technology are amazingly cool, the fact that it almost certainly will be used for unethical purposes is a valid concern. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Unfortunately, humanity has never been good at resisting temptation. My prediction is that this technology will eventually exist as a sophisticated tool regardless of any moral quandaries we have about it now.
I really want this technology to exist. So many people could benefit. We know there are genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, or hemophilia that, with this technology, could be rewritten. Poof. Preventable suffering? Gone. I think, if given the choice, most people would choose to be born without the genetic disease they currently struggle with.
But before that, before we start slicing up our dna, there are definitely ethical baby steps we need to work through with this technology, just like with any new technology we develop. I’m not saying I know every ethical challenge we might face with gene editing, but I definitely think we will have to face them in the future. It’s something we need to consider carefully, and soon. There will absolutely need to be globally enforceable laws governing its use.
Good luck future humans!
Phill’s After Thoughts:
-Well, I didn’t want to get strange about Men’s Rights and abortion in a topic about gene therapy but ultimately if we can’t figure out how we discuss government overreach into autonomy, I don’t know how we can then trust that same government about giving them even more power and control over gene improvements for our society (and by society I mean the future of our humanity). Also I find it weird that “on the other, other, other hand” segment that we don’t address the elephant in the room. What is that elephant? Stay tuned for next week where I will try to never bring it up again.