Google Executives to Face Trial in Italy
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ProfHawking
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HereComesPete
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Bloody hell. Seems I missed this reading that fanfic anham posted a link to.
Buzz - I think here you are trying to not horse genetic manipulation on anyone, but using pre-conceived ideas about people that i cannot agree with. So I don't fully agree with your points. Who decides what is 'normal'? Where are the criteria that have to be met for this apparent accolade? who decides that someone who is different in some way has to have a shit life? I did think that was quite clear in the choices I offered and the example of prof hawking I used. If we had let him die because he was different then we as a species would be definably worse off.
Fear - 8yo male with a genetic heart defect.
He has an operation to fix this.
He marries a beautiful woman.
Aged 25 he has 0 children and has been through a bitter divorce because in his 25 years the man has grown and trained diligently and become a leading expert on his very own illness, and in his time he has found a way of eradicating the defect and many others like it at the expense of his own personal life.
In that situation his life and the money it cost us advanced us immeasurably as a race, is he worth more now than if he was the happy father of berks situation? Who are we to decide?
The power we possess as humans is not measured in our strength of arms or political ability. It's in the ingenuity that pushes us to question all things.
In terms of genetic manipulation I don't feel the example of pedigree breeds is entirely right. If we look at dogs - we turned one single ancestral creature into a multitude of useful sub species, then we took it too far and bred in bad attributes for our vanity and amusement. I find many of the proud kennel club examples trotted around at dog shows, the ones that wheeze and cannot see, to be disgusting and a damning indictment of how wrong we can be. The genetic diversity is there, but boxed and labelled and all fucked up.
Manipulating genetic code does not automatically mean homogeneity and a single tall powerful uber race race as hitler so feverishly imagined. To change things such as birth defects or congenital conditions you would instead move around the sequencing code that makes up the vast majority of our dna so that the problem never materialised, this wouldn't affect anything other than the specific area targeted, it wouldn't replace anything with a 'superior version' just make the list of codes that produces life a little less buggy.
We would still have all the variances of physical appearance and ability that marks us as individuals, but with extremes and debilitating deformity removed. I know a lot of people would see even that as going too far, but as I see it if we have the ability to alter each embryo's dna then we aren't removing any genetic variance, merely keeping detrimental variances in check. I would hope to see this technology kept away from the hands of profiteers and companies because I don't think removing weaknesses in our genetic code renders us inhuman, rather it is evolution in a more direct and appreciable fashion using the technology we ourselves have created.
Hopefully we've learned our mistakes from breeding animals into grotesqueries and cosmetic alteration most certainly takes us away from being human, and people driven by avarice would most certainly become the show breeders of a human crufts and that idea appals me.
However, if it ever came to a choice of someone lives or dies because of deformity that would possibly affect the greater population then for me it is a non-choice, they live, and we cope and adapt to the problems that arise from this, learning as we go.
Buzz - I think here you are trying to not horse genetic manipulation on anyone, but using pre-conceived ideas about people that i cannot agree with. So I don't fully agree with your points. Who decides what is 'normal'? Where are the criteria that have to be met for this apparent accolade? who decides that someone who is different in some way has to have a shit life? I did think that was quite clear in the choices I offered and the example of prof hawking I used. If we had let him die because he was different then we as a species would be definably worse off.
Fear - 8yo male with a genetic heart defect.
He has an operation to fix this.
He marries a beautiful woman.
Aged 25 he has 0 children and has been through a bitter divorce because in his 25 years the man has grown and trained diligently and become a leading expert on his very own illness, and in his time he has found a way of eradicating the defect and many others like it at the expense of his own personal life.
In that situation his life and the money it cost us advanced us immeasurably as a race, is he worth more now than if he was the happy father of berks situation? Who are we to decide?
The power we possess as humans is not measured in our strength of arms or political ability. It's in the ingenuity that pushes us to question all things.
In terms of genetic manipulation I don't feel the example of pedigree breeds is entirely right. If we look at dogs - we turned one single ancestral creature into a multitude of useful sub species, then we took it too far and bred in bad attributes for our vanity and amusement. I find many of the proud kennel club examples trotted around at dog shows, the ones that wheeze and cannot see, to be disgusting and a damning indictment of how wrong we can be. The genetic diversity is there, but boxed and labelled and all fucked up.
Manipulating genetic code does not automatically mean homogeneity and a single tall powerful uber race race as hitler so feverishly imagined. To change things such as birth defects or congenital conditions you would instead move around the sequencing code that makes up the vast majority of our dna so that the problem never materialised, this wouldn't affect anything other than the specific area targeted, it wouldn't replace anything with a 'superior version' just make the list of codes that produces life a little less buggy.
We would still have all the variances of physical appearance and ability that marks us as individuals, but with extremes and debilitating deformity removed. I know a lot of people would see even that as going too far, but as I see it if we have the ability to alter each embryo's dna then we aren't removing any genetic variance, merely keeping detrimental variances in check. I would hope to see this technology kept away from the hands of profiteers and companies because I don't think removing weaknesses in our genetic code renders us inhuman, rather it is evolution in a more direct and appreciable fashion using the technology we ourselves have created.
Hopefully we've learned our mistakes from breeding animals into grotesqueries and cosmetic alteration most certainly takes us away from being human, and people driven by avarice would most certainly become the show breeders of a human crufts and that idea appals me.
However, if it ever came to a choice of someone lives or dies because of deformity that would possibly affect the greater population then for me it is a non-choice, they live, and we cope and adapt to the problems that arise from this, learning as we go.
Shada wrote:I don't see why you feel the need to be a neutral referee anyway, Dog Pants.
Take a goddamn side, you coward :D
Right you are then, here's what I think:
Apparently natural selection is breeding women with bigger breasts. It's only vaguely applicable to this argument, but it sounds like a good thing to me and I think it's something we should all be thinking about.
/goes and thinks about breasts
It's probably worth noting that just about all nasty diseases that can genetically inherited are recessive. Pretty much all the ones that actually are dominant sterilise the poor cupcake who inherited it.
Anyway, it's very human to 'interfere' with natural selection. If eugenics was played to 'clense' the human race to whatever the majority power which dictates what makes a good human and what should be removed, then the effects would be so minimal in general proportionality to the human race's history that it would utterly pointless. Unless, of course, that the regime of eugenics lasts so long that true 'advancement' occurs. Otherwise, it's just killing humans to please humans.
Anyway, it's very human to 'interfere' with natural selection. If eugenics was played to 'clense' the human race to whatever the majority power which dictates what makes a good human and what should be removed, then the effects would be so minimal in general proportionality to the human race's history that it would utterly pointless. Unless, of course, that the regime of eugenics lasts so long that true 'advancement' occurs. Otherwise, it's just killing humans to please humans.
8yo male with a genetic heart defect.
He has an operation to fix this.
He marries a beautiful woman.
All his life he can't help feel that black kids for a white couple is more than just one of those things.
Aged 25 he is meeting the president, when all of a sudden ninja smash into the oval office, spraying the room with automatic gunfire clouding the room with spinters and blood. After shouting 'GOD BLESS AMERICA!' our hero hobbles infront of the president, narrowly saving his life by sacrificing his own.
With a tear in his eye, the president declares that this brave man who saved him from the ninja nazi has convinced him that nobody, no matter how severe their pain, will be able to take the easy way out when their own standard of life seems unbearable.
But seriously, wtf 5punk?
He has an operation to fix this.
He marries a beautiful woman.
All his life he can't help feel that black kids for a white couple is more than just one of those things.
Aged 25 he is meeting the president, when all of a sudden ninja smash into the oval office, spraying the room with automatic gunfire clouding the room with spinters and blood. After shouting 'GOD BLESS AMERICA!' our hero hobbles infront of the president, narrowly saving his life by sacrificing his own.
With a tear in his eye, the president declares that this brave man who saved him from the ninja nazi has convinced him that nobody, no matter how severe their pain, will be able to take the easy way out when their own standard of life seems unbearable.
But seriously, wtf 5punk?
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Dr. kitteny berk
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cashy wrote:8yo male with a genetic heart defect.
He has an operation to fix this.
He marries a beautiful woman.
All his life he can't help feel that black kids for a white couple is more than just one of those things.
Aged 25 he is meeting the president, when all of a sudden ninja smash into the oval office, spraying the room with automatic gunfire clouding the room with spinters and blood. After shouting 'GOD BLESS AMERICA!' our hero hobbles infront of the president, narrowly saving his life by sacrificing his own.
With a tear in his eye, the president declares that this brave man who saved him from the ninja nazi has convinced him that nobody, no matter how severe their pain, will be able to take the easy way out when their own standard of life seems unbearable.
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Roman Totale
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Dr. kitteny berk
- Morbo
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buzzmong
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There's 2 loose schools of Eugenics, Positive focuses on the pimping of an Uber Race, which is impossible socially and scientifically, and Negative, which focuses on removing the negative traits.HereComesPete wrote: Manipulating genetic code does not automatically mean homogeneity and a single tall powerful uber race race as hitler so feverishly imagined. To change things such as birth defects or congenital conditions you would instead move around the sequencing code that makes up the vast majority of our dna so that the problem never materialised, this wouldn't affect anything other than the specific area targeted, it wouldn't replace anything with a 'superior version' just make the list of codes that produces life a little less buggy.
We would still have all the variances of physical appearance and ability that marks us as individuals, but with extremes and debilitating deformity removed. I know a lot of people would see even that as going too far, but as I see it if we have the ability to alter each embryo's dna then we aren't removing any genetic variance, merely keeping detrimental variances in check. I would hope to see this technology kept away from the hands of profiteers and companies because I don't think removing weaknesses in our genetic code renders us inhuman, rather it is evolution in a more direct and appreciable fashion using the technology we ourselves have created.
I was proposing the use of negative at a very low level, I think pretty much everyone can agree on certain negative aspects (ie, the genetic heart defect), which is what you've alluded to as well. It would need to be tightly controlled however, but the power it has for fortifying the human race is quite amazing.
Once you remove those extremely negative aspects, everyone gets that chance at a "normal life", I'm defining "normal" in this case as one without major physical defects/problems.
Oh, and when did death come into this? I never mentioned that I'd remove the negative aspects by death, that's very Hitler-esqe, and I would be quite worried if we went down that route as it's just plain wrong when we've got the ability to cure rather than destroy.
Also, wtf cashy?
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HereComesPete
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Buzz I don't want to belong to either of these 'schools' I put forward my opinion as mine alone. If it correlates with the main ideals of a an established thought reality then so be it. I dislike the idea of changing negative aspects of human dna being called negative eugenics and creating a homogeneous master race termed positive, that's arse over tit.
As for when you put forward death, you didn't really, Fear had a rather more direct approach to removing unwanted characteristics and used a mother killing a child (yes it was cats) as a species culling the unfit. I think all the death part of it came from that.
Now I'm off to think about what doggers suggested.
As for when you put forward death, you didn't really, Fear had a rather more direct approach to removing unwanted characteristics and used a mother killing a child (yes it was cats) as a species culling the unfit. I think all the death part of it came from that.
Now I'm off to think about what doggers suggested.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV17GxTh3Mo[/media]
cuuuuuuuuunt, it took years to get that out of my head the first time round!Lateralus wrote:[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV17GxTh3Mo[/media]