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Comment by albertTJames | Hacker News Reader

Ethics questions need to be raised now, and guidelines have to be decided. The future of humanity is in gene editing. It should not depends on the lazyness of law makers and outrage of godfearing creatures to decide the fate of humanity. It is time we take our evolution into our own hands.

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Most agree that it is unethical to purposely have a disabled/diseased child if it possible to not have a nondisabled one. In that case, I think it is quite ethical for this technology to be used on those with debilitating genetic defects. We’re in no rush to allow any genome editing other than that.

That some people are too vain to adopt is not a good enough justification. It is a foundational point of ethics that medical experimentation must be voluntary.

> We’re in no rush to allow any genome editing other than that.

china in particular does not have the west's historical scruples wrt genetic editing and eugenics. i think this 'debate' will last about as long as it takes for the first generation of modded chinese children with two or three SDs on the mean to be brought into the world.

I don't think you can make a very strong argument for the "west's historical scruples wrt genetic editing and eugenics" when you look at the prevalence of convenience abortions and the history of eugenics in America.

The west has been very anti-eugenics for over half a century at this point, but I agree it isn't very historical. That being said, there's a big difference between genetic editing and abortions of fetuses with genetic disorders (which is what I assume you mean by "convenience abortions").

A lot of people are scared of GMOs, even if it's just a simple alteration to a plant. I doubt that genetic modification of people will begin in the west without significant outcry and pushback.

what i meant was along the lines of, "we thought eugenics was good until the nazis did it, and now we think it's bad"

Hmm. Including myself, anyone with an IQ less than 2.5 sigmas above average, or with strong enough emotions to make bad decisions that contradict correct analyses, or with not enough ambition to want to attempt anything useful with their high IQ in the first place ... is thusly "debilitated" and should have been allowed genetic engineering.

That sounds like a top-down policy of required gene editing, which is a strawperson.

Actually medical ethics struggles with this question. The right of deaf parents to have deaf children so that they can understand deaf culture is a major case study. Here's one article, the ethics community hasn't answered this one as far as I understand (there are many more recent articles). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/deaf-parents-could...

So you're saying the world would hands-down be a better place if we could eliminate kids with Down syndrome? Where do you draw the line between that and not wanting your kid to have to deal with gender dysphoria or same-gender attraction in our current political climate? Should parents have the option of eliminating that too?

Sure, you can argue that homosexuality isn't an undesirable defect, but does Trump's victory in the recent US election make you feel like the people regulating this in the future really aren't going to see it that way? What is it you're optimizing for in eliminating mental defects that you're confident couldn't also be objectively be applied to other things this group would find appalling?

I agree. If it's put on hold until too late, it's really likely rash decisions will be made. It's almost as if we aren't learning from SciFi films.

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