68 replies to this topic

[Silver_rose]

I generally follow the line of the wiccan mantra when it comes to discussing the moral implications of scientific studies, which is "as long as ye harm none, do as ye will".

Genetic manipulation has been used as an example a lot in this thread and I wonder if anyone had ever considered that maybe it's actually beneficial and works within the lines of natural selection? We discuss the possibilies of us playing god by tinkering with the "insufficent" (I use qotation marks because with our normal construct of natural selection it is sufficient, I mean, our species still exists, right?) design of our own bodies.

Consider this -
A person is deathly ill, lets say their appendix is on the verge of bursting. Now we would now say "Get them into surgery! It will save their life! Remove the appendix now!" Not so long ago, this sort of procedure would've been considered barbaric and lethal.

So I must ask, if as a species we strive to survive and procreate, if we have reached the stage of being intelligent enough to remove the genetic problems that hold our species back from producing genetically superior offspring, why is that to be considered a bad thing?

[SIlhouette]

As I showed in my scenario the implications aren't clear cut, something that saves your life might be detrimental to your childs. Genetic Manipulation is passed on obviously so then we have to genetically alter the child's genes and then the eventual child's, child's genes and so on.

I am pro genetic manipulation but I dont think we are ready to undertake it is what I am stating. If we release a probe into outer space in the hopes that it will reach our next galaxy over, given advances in travel in the next 20 years we will have a probe that goes faster then the one we released and it will be over taken by this new probe even though it was launched 20 years after it.

Basically we might see something that can remove cancer and so we put this amazing cancer cure into our genes, but then in 20 years time we might find out that it was a bad idea to do so because we then increase the chances of cardio vascular degeneration or neuro degeneration. So now these children that are twenty years old have to live with this because we thought we were doing them a service when they were embryos?

I dont think it will be ready in our lifetime and to be honest I wouldn't want it to be used in my lifetime, but the research into the field can be useful for other studies and practices and we should look into it.

[DaRatmastah]

This is always a difficult subject. Interesting, though, since I'm researching augmentation for my upcoming blogposts on Master Chief and Spartans.

Anyway, my perspective on "lines" is that they will always be crossed by someone, if there is the possibility to cross them. We can try to delay or slow the crossing of these lines, but all it takes is one major war to give people the mindset necessary to cross said lines(see previous posts about WWII and the US Civil War).

As far as genetic augmentation goes, part of me is like, "Ehhh, the idea of 'perfect humans' bothers me..." but that part is typically outweighed by my urge to be able to throw a car, live to be 250, and not get sick ever(while being able to see with eagle vision and move fast enough to dodge bullets).

I guess my superhero fetish is just too strong to resist the siren's call =P

[Matty_poo]

I'm still with those who support genetic modification, but I suppose my vote is a bit off as I'm willing to put myself out there for testing. I agree we shouldn't test on the unwilling, but use me as a guinea pig.

[Affray]

I'm still with those who support genetic modification, but I suppose my vote is a bit off as I'm willing to put myself out there for testing. I agree we shouldn't test on the unwilling, but use me as a guinea pig.

Also, who is to say that we don't evolve these traits later on down the line anyway.
Our genetics are pretty impressive, but flukes happen.
When they are negative flukes sometimes they weed themselves out over vast amounts of time.
So what if we speed up the process by a few hundred generations.
In the end we jump ourselves forward on the evolutionary spectrum without all the waiting around for it to occur naturally.

I am particularly interested in the possibility of increasing our brain size/capacity.
From what most have gathered, out brain size is what allowed us to progress as quickly as we did and become the dominant species on Earth.
So if we can tweak our genetics so that a newborn baby has a larger brain, or even just more synapses present, they could be infinitely smarter than anyone else, and use that brain power to push us even further. Though we would probably be more inclined to achieve that with hardware. It might be easier to figure out how to interface our brain with a memory source (Johnny Mnemonic?) and use all that extra space for faster brain activity/higher capacity for knowledge.

[Matty_poo]

Believe it or not there is already talks of storing our memory digitally. It may be a ways off, but not as far as one might think. We're now living in a world, our parents thought was centuries off and a lot of it, they never even thought of to begin with.

[Calvary]

I would love to have my brain interred in a robot with enough sensory functions that I could continue to enjoy the world, then I would get shuttled off into the depths of space to explore potentially habitable planets.

Also, it would be amazing to have chloroplasts under my wrists, nom nom nom sun light.

[Coconut Man]

My main worry now, having being convinced by you quite a bit, is that mistakes will be made during genetic manipulation surgery that won't show up then, but will affect that person and all of their unborn descendants. Just think about it: 5 or 6 unneeded genes running around from mistakes made taking over humans and causing unseen-before illnesses.....
I'm just paranoid about all the things that can (and will) go wrong, I guess....

[Matty_poo]

My main worry now, having being convinced by you quite a bit, is that mistakes will be made during genetic manipulation surgery that won't show up then, but will affect that person and all of their unborn descendants. Just think about it: 5 or 6 unneeded genes running around from mistakes made taking over humans and causing unseen-before illnesses.....
I'm just paranoid about all the things that can (and will) go wrong, I guess....

What about the polio vaccine? or chemo therapy? These things obviously don't affect our children on a genetic level, but whose to say they wouldn't have affected us negetively down the line? I mean even now there are people who reject the polio vaccine and refuse to use it. Does this mean we should be rid of it? Of course not, but we should learn as much as we can (did) and when we feel that the pieces are in place, then we begin movely slowly to our goal. We can't right out stop genetic modification, like it or not, some countries will do so even if we don't, still we can learn and work at it bit by bit.

[SIlhouette]

Well, I am anti vaccination... The theory is sound but its not what it seems, anyways I will NOT go into that.

The brain size issue is interesting, Ive done a lot of research into neuro science in the past and it seems that we have "more brain then we can use".
What this means is that we can only hold certain synaptic pathways open through constant use, but if you don't use a pathway then it will die and any information, emotion or "matter" past the pathway gets warped by a different pathway becoming the primary way of interfacing with the old "matter".

Basically it is like this, I ring a friend called becky and she makes me happy when i speak to her. I call tom and I become sad, Jeremy makes me excited and steven makes me angry. Simon I do not know very well but I can interface with him through tom, but when tom talks to Simon, Tom becomes absent minded, so instead of making me sad tom makes me cluey.

This is basically how a brain works on the most basic, basic of levels, with each neuron being a different person and the phone calls between them being the synaptic pathways. Now lets say I dont talk to tom so he falls out of my life, the only way I can interact with simon is to use a different friend that might know him. lets say becky, when becky talks to simon the effect is becky becomes intrigued by everything, so when i talk to becky now she just annoys me. So simon has now become warped in how I relate to him.

Sorry about the analogy, I may have pushed it too far but it was fun to write :-D

Anyways, since maintaining these relationships in our brains is already at the limit of what we need, what would be the point of a bigger brain if we couldn't use it. I haven't found a reason why we can't use it only that we can't so if anyone has any sources I would be very interested in learning it.

Of course this is just the current understanding of a lot of streams of neuro science, there are other theories but it seems this one has the biggest following and grounding in perceived fact.

Edit (Add): I just want to say I am on a lot of forums, Its rare that so many intelligent ideas are spread through a forum, and I don't have to dumb down my writing like I usually do. :-D NerdForum is awesome, glad I found it, you all have had very insightful ideas!

[Calvary]

Well that's the first time I've heard anyone say they're anti-vaccination. Thanks for spreading polio, rickets and measles for everyone?

[Matty_poo]

Well that's the first time I've heard anyone say they're anti-vaccination. Thanks for spreading polio, rickets and measles for everyone?

you'd be surprised (saddened probably) by how often I hear people say that they are.

[Bowsette]

Well that's the first time I've heard anyone say they're anti-vaccination. Thanks for spreading polio, rickets and measles for everyone?

Not entirely the same thing, but many Jehovah's Witnesses are against blood transfusions, for religious reasons. Could be the same here?

[Matty_poo]

I know a lot of people here think flu shots are a scam, so I wouldn't even say religion as much as paranoia/ignorance.

[SIlhouette]

Hehe, its actually you guys that spread polio, measles and rickets. You become silent carriers, yes we can become silent carriers also but its far less likely. See what happens is that you are infected with a partial sample of the virus designed to acclimatise the body to it building up an immunity. What happens though is because it is an impartial product, it is more inclined to mutate since its only a perceived bodily threat, so you end up carrying a mutated strain your entire life. It is why the cases of people catching measles multiple times in their life has risen whereas it used to be unheard of.

And I really didn't want to get into this, I have done a crap ton of research into this and have decided not to partake (Although tetnus shot is a good one to have, the pros of having it far outweigh the cons). Everywhere I go people are pushed into the doctrine of pro immunisation without looking into it. So I hate the debate, do the research yourself and find your own conclusion, I personally don't care what you believe in as long as you have looked into it I am happy. What I do like in most cases is strong debate and discussion on solid theory and I love opposing opinions...

But in this case I have had this debate about 1000 times too many and with people who haven't looked into it, so I must stop now. I am in no way saying you haven't done any research, I am just saying in general this is the case. The last thing I want to do is offend anyone, Everything I have said is absolutely not ad hominem and shouldn't be taken as such.

Edit (add):

The religious reasons behind the blood transfusions is because in the bible, to paraphrase god says "Your body is mine upon creation and upon death shall be handed to me in the same state I gave it to you in". Sort of like a warranty on a laptop, this means that there is no surgery, tattoos, piercings or any body manipulations such as dermal implants.

[Calvary]

Eh I dunno, I think the pro's of immunisation outweigh the cons. I mean, through immunisation we've managed to expel...I think, smallpox? Or was it cowpox? I forget, any way, we've destroyed major diseases through immunisation and on a whole the impact has been a population explosion which is testament to the effectiveness of many immunisation programmes.

[SIlhouette]

God I hate you :-P

Fine lets do this!

If EVERYONE get immunised then it can eradicate a disease from a generational line, but the downside is you become a deffinate carrier and can spread the disease to third world countries or your children who would not have an immunity meaning they would need an immunisation for all these diseases also. Over time new diseases will be born and they would need those immunisations also which means in 1000 years time because people that are weaker links in the gene pool didn't get crossed out in the process of natural selection like they would have (and I am not saying they should have, but Ill get to that later) we end up as a very weak species dependent on hundreds of immunisation treatments which would have been wiped out if we didn't have immunisation.

Immunisations are the only human product with 2x the legal dose of mercury in them, I think the exact product which contains it is thieomasal but I could be wrong. There has been a link between mercury poisoning and autism/retardation in infants, this is also shown in the stats of the ratio of immunised people versus unimmunised people.

Immunisations are created by making a cross contamination into animals, we make a human disease become an animal disease and then use the animals unborn fetus to grow the immunisation. This means not only are we creating new diseases for animals but the product you have building up your immune system is not a real representation of the virus in humans and can cause mutated diseases which are worse then the ones you have an immunity for, it also means that people can still catch the "real" virus and now the "mutated" strain aswell.

All the diseases credited to have been eradicated by immunisations were in heavy decline at the time that immunisations came into medical practice anyways, so basically its like you have spent 30 min trying to kill a creature in an MMO and someone comes in for the killing shot and grabs all the loot.

I will explain why I think tetanus is a good one to be immunised against though, it is a disease which we naturally have very limited defense against, it is carried from horses and is traditionally found on metals which horses have come into contact with (Railways build in the 1800s- early 1900s and even later, nails, old metals and even in soil) It is contracted through the blood stream and when it takes effect can cause lockjaw, death and various other horrid effects.

The reason I stated "would have been crossed out of the gene pool" and not "should" is because maybe we can eradicate diseases using genetic manipulation instead of vaccination. This would wipe the disease out completely, although I dont think the science is ready yet.

I am not completely Anti- Immunisation, but I looked into it after I heard of a few immunisations causing literal deaths in infants where the actual shot was to blame. So I went case by case on all the major diseases with immunisations and I did decide tetanus was worth the cons.

now can we please leave it here? maybe we can talk about genetic manipulation being used instead of immunisations just to get us back on topic :-D

[Calvary]

Well I'll leave it there, but I don't agree with you at all, especially about the autism stuff, my mother works in the field of children's disabilities and she explained to me how that theory was debunked about five years ago.

[SIlhouette]

Fair enough, I respect your opinion, I'm not a change the world kind of guy, I just want to look out for me and my family. I'm happy as long as people research into key issues and then come up with a conclusion, I think its the person that ignorantly got their child immunised and then their child died or the person who ignorantly didn't get their child immunised and the child died is a person that should blame themselves for their entire lives.

But if I dont get my child immunised and that child catches something and dies, at least I did the research and made a decision based on all the evidence at hand. That is all you can ask of someone.

[Calvary]

Well I don't know about that, a dead child is a pretty massive consequence of an opinion based on self-conducted research that goes against the standard modern understanding of chemistry and biology. Not a risk I would ever take.