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Gene therapy
deaftravis05
Member Posts: 4,885 Arc User
in Ten Forward
Should we allow genetic therapy to set a baseline for abilities for humans? We're not allowed to improve on abilities/attributes that exceed the baseline, but others that drop, we can?
For example, we keep the lowest intelligence quota at 100 points?
consider this; IQ is a number meant to measure people cognitive abilities (intelligence) in relation to their age group. An I.Q between 90 and 110 is considered average; over 120, superior.
Roughly 68% of the population has an IQ between 85 and 115. The average range between 70 and 130, and represents about 95% of the population. A score below 70 may indicate problems in understanding the iQ questions or soem type or retardation, and a score above 130 may indicate intellectual giftedness.
1% of the population has an IQ of 136 or higher.
Mine scores between 138-146. If we could bring the IQ to 100 or above, would things get more simpler? Could we remove the stickers warning that sitting in a washing machine while it runs is not a bright idea?
Thoughts?
For example, we keep the lowest intelligence quota at 100 points?
consider this; IQ is a number meant to measure people cognitive abilities (intelligence) in relation to their age group. An I.Q between 90 and 110 is considered average; over 120, superior.
Roughly 68% of the population has an IQ between 85 and 115. The average range between 70 and 130, and represents about 95% of the population. A score below 70 may indicate problems in understanding the iQ questions or soem type or retardation, and a score above 130 may indicate intellectual giftedness.
1% of the population has an IQ of 136 or higher.
Mine scores between 138-146. If we could bring the IQ to 100 or above, would things get more simpler? Could we remove the stickers warning that sitting in a washing machine while it runs is not a bright idea?
Thoughts?
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One of my race ideas was a civilization that actually had a government bureau dedicated to improving their race with genetic engineering.... and by "improving" I mean making their race into demi-gods.
My character Tsin'xing
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
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'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
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My character Tsin'xing
And what would you do with a patient that turned out to be smarter than the baseline - kill him before he becomes the next Khan? But you don't do anything about anyone in MESA, because they're naturals?
I don't think there should be any limitations that even vaguely go in the direction.
What we need to ensure is that we don't create a two-class system where some people can get genetic enhancements that make them more successful in life, but others have to struggle by because they or their parents couldn't afford genetic enhancements.
And of course, we have to take care that we don't end with negative side effects - not just creating a genocidal superhuman race (or exemplar), but also risks like lowering our genetic diversity. A low genetic diversity can make pandemics particular nasty - no one around anymore that had genetic traits that would make him resistant to the new disease. (We already have this problem in agriculture and livestock beeding, just with using "regular" genetic manipulation tricks, aka breeds. )
Every gene "may" have an upside. Apparently Sickle Cell Anemia makes you less likely to die of Malaria. But it's still considered a detrimental trait.
But most of the genetic faults in livestock and produce are due to the vagaries of the methods used for selecting traits. It's not, for example, the presence of a certain coat color in cows that might make them have hip dysplasia. Usually it's a matter of the accidental introduction of bad genes with good. But in some cases the traits that make something grow faster also make them less disease resistant.
My character Tsin'xing
Having a good friend who's daughter suffers multiple medical issues (the least of which being highly aggressive epilepsy) and who is, by IQ definition 'TRIBBLE', I know how angry she gets when people suggest that her daughter be 'made better'.
Personally, I think every life should have the opportunity to be the best that it can be, and I would actually question if my friend's attitude toward her daughter could be considered 'child abuse', maybe even some derivative of Munchausen By Proxy, but I think there are certInly some parents who would be incensed at the idea of their 'defective' children having to be aligned with what the state sanctions as 'the acceptable norm' (especially as social outlooks and 'criteria' shift, ie what is considered acceptable cholesterol or blood sugar levels change depending on the physician questioned) and it likely would create a dangerous division between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' (as is explored in the amazing movie Gattaca)
With regards 'less warnings' on things, I would like to see a better standard of education which would make such measures unnecessary... A hundred years ago, Greek and Latin were required to graduate school, today, they are considered 'extras', and schools and colleges are teaching remedial English... That says something very frightening to me about the state of, and the dumbing down of, the education of the population via academic indoctrination...
2) The folding of proteins is complex, and seldom regulated by a single gene. Something as simple as eye color seems to be coded in at least three different locations, for instance, and skin color, which you'd think would be easy to spot, is impossible to predict through simple genetic analysis. Intelligence is almost certainly one of those hidden variables, and may wind up linked with a predisposition to things like schizophrenia or autism.
The upshot is that genetically modifying humans to advance specific traits is laden with pitfalls, and will likely not give the results you wanted in the first place. Gene therapies for curing diseases or treating extremely specific disorders is one thing - trying to alter the genome for supposedly benevolent purposes is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, and those fish don't smell very good.
My character Tsin'xing
I think it improved for awhile there, but when we started slapping stickers on warning about the dangers of things that anyone with an ounce of intelligence could figure out on their own... the gene pool started to get polluted.
My character Tsin'xing
Yeah it's a trend now that nobody's allowed to fail...
Joking aside, I guess it's just one of those things...
I am not afraid of medicine or technology as some sort of irrational Luddite, but just as the evidence suggests that we should reserve antibiotics only for serious cases of proven bacterial or fungal infection and not hand them out willy-nilly (or conversely, that hyper-sanitizing our environments and bodies and sheltering ourselves may actually make our immune system MORE likely to go haywire instead of helping us), I think genetic manipulation should be approached with the same great caution because the potential for severe unintended consequences pointed out upthread is so high. This is not just an ethical matter but a practical one: as pointed out before, I think we need to maintain maximum genetic diversity and only remove the most deleterious things...and this may even mean thinking twice, in the case of serious autosomal recessive conditions, about completely excising them from the gene pool in cases where having ONE copy of the gene may be useful and TWO is harmful (but repairing it if someone does get two copies, so they can live a healthy life). Additionally, I am even leery of the potential effects of pushing our lifespans too far, both from the social perspective (potentially explosive population growth beyond the resources of the planet, inability for young people to get jobs, etc.), and even a possible emotional/spiritual perspective (whether our psychologies are capable of handling extreme lifespans without losing our grip on reality and morality). I would be quite content with simply being able to age more gracefully.
Additionally, we also need to avoid modifying the genetic code simply to make ourselves comfortable or to conform. We are uncomfortable with difference by nature, but there are times we really need to suck it up and deal with it, such as with cognitive and neurodiversity. Some conditions labeled as learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders do require modified education and may mean that certain jobs are better for those individuals than others, but we tamper with our cognitive diversity VERY much at our own risk as a species. This is an area in which the sum of us--people of all walks of life, cultures, and neurologies, both majority and minority--is VERY much greater than that of our parts. There is nothing worse in a crisis than homogeneity within a group. Heterogeneity may have its benefits but we NEED some disorder and disruption to keep from all running over the same cliff.
But then my philosophical approach to a LOT of things in life tends to be to ride the very edge of chaos, intervening only the minimum amount to stop a complete explosion.
The only area where I think Star Trek got it wrong was in how individuals, once they WERE augmented, were treated. While for the purposes of that universe, I can buy the premise that the majority of individuals whose intellects were enhanced beyond the human norm, it was psychologically harmful, I cannot buy a system that doesn't judge each individual by their own morals and acts. Action against an Augment (or to protect a damaged Augment from dangerous "normals," in Patrick's case) should be strictly evidence-based, not taken without basis.
Even if Bashir represented a minority of Augments, punishing HIM and making HIM live in fear, when he has shown he is no more flawed psychologically than the typical person, and that overall he is a good man, is in my mind completely inexcusable. I DID agree with punishing his parents for their actions, but not with the way it was used as an indirect way to punish Bashir. He was too young to have any say in what his parents did to him; therefore he cannot be in any way accountable for their actions, only his.
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Why government persecution? IRL, people would do it if they could. Not everyone, but enough to make those who didn't feel inferior... which takes us back to the previous paragraph.... So there are consequences for choosing to do it. But, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people wouldn't care and would do it anyways even if it meant going to prison.... like Bashir's parents.
Honestly I think the Feds pretty much had to do inquisition style witch hunts to weed out augments, simply because there was no other way to stop people from doing it.
Which is why my Reglavorkians have the bioengineering committee. It exists to facilitate the process in a constructive way by doing research into which genes are safe to have in the general population as well as making that available to the common man. So committee-authorized work tends to be boring and safe, but it does have a punch. But.... It's not the entire gene pool. There's a variety of things from various sources, and some of the most powerful Reglavorkians have these atypical traits.
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My character Tsin'xing
Or, for that matter, the Moties in Niven and Pournelle's The Mote In God's Eye and The Gripping Hand, who've been selectively bred and gengineered for their roles in society to the extent that a full Motie colony could easily wind up overcoming the entire Empire of Man. Their Engineers are instinctive tinkerers, assisted by the barely-sapient Watchmakers; the Mediators can talk anyone into anything, and learn to read body language so well they can figure out secrets you never knew you had; and the Warriors - well, when humans first saw a statue of a Warrior, the Mediators passed it off as a mythical demon, and it wasn't hard to convince the humans of that. The one thing they could never get a handle on was the breeding cycle - each member of the species has to give birth once every two local years or die of hormonal and enzymatic imbalances. And until the first Imperial expedition arrived at the Mote, they didn't have interstellar travel, due to some rather complex issues of stellar cartography, which was the only reason humanity still existed at that point.
Casually playing with the genome can lead to great things - or terrible things, or even extinction, and sometimes it's hard to know which would be worse.
My character Tsin'xing
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
As for how they learn, they learn in their own specialty at a rate that leaves us poor humans in the dust - but mostly, at least for classes like Engineer and Farmer, it's instinctive, bred and designed into them over unknowable Cycles. (Every so often, on the order of centuries or millennia depending, they reach the point where all usable resources have been used, and society collapses into all-out war. Then the survivors rebuild, learn about the old Cycles (sometimes through museums maintained in empty areas), rise again, reach their end, and collapse. They have a myth-figure, Crazy Eddie, who strives to break the cycle, but they believe he is foolish and doomed to lose.) And of course classes like Meats don't have to learn anything, they just have to make more Meats so there'll be something - or someone - to eat after the next collapse... Mediators are crossbred from Engineers and Masters; they're sterile mules, so they usually die around the age of 25, but they also think, speak, and act dramatically faster than humans, which sort of makes up for it. This, of course, feeds into the conclusion of The Gripping Hand, so I won't spoil it for you. Let's just say, in the words of the Mediator known to Humans as Jock, that the horse learned to sing.
Genetics are scary in their possibilities, imagine a genetically altered soldier genetically programmed not to question only to obey orders, that is a terrifying possibility
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
It seems easier to just build a drone that doesn't question orders. We at least now how to program computers. Still terrifying, of cours,e if you consider that a decent automatically operating drone that follows orders is no less complex than, say, Star Trek Online, and we know the kind of glitches, bugs, crashes and lag problems that game has.
Skynet type possibilities
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius