Some people have lost the "genetic lottery" in ways that make them dependent on medication. And for some, it may block career options, such as color vision deficiencies.
We should embrace it, instead of painting dystopian scenarios. At least, we shouldn't stop people from fixing problems that they were unfairly born with.
A lot of this "controversial" stuff isn't ie therapeutic cures for sickle cell, a single nucleotide mutation with devastating impact on quality of life.
For some like myself with CDH1(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDH1_(gene)) it means a total gastrectomy is the prophylactic solution to avoiding hereditary diffuse stomach cancer. CDH1 is a more complex mutation than sickle cell.
These technologies are capable of doing more good than harm for society in the near term. The dystopian visions are not without merit, but that's the general rule of thumb for technology in general. A loss of genetic diversity is likely the gravest concern. Some mutations have benefit ie sickle cell vs malaria, but others like CDH1 have mostly been slipping under the evolutionary radar. There are multiple variants of concern and the mutation is just independently occurring across the global human population irrespective of any special heritage. There are other cancers/maladies just like this that medicine has no good solution for. They don't noticeably impede genetic reproduction so it carries from generation to generation.
For now most sane people are not considering germ-line modification. I would expect that to require multiple generations of study to even broach the subject.
as well as "germline editing, in which changes are made to the DNA of an embryo".
The author is concerned by the latter and I think you describe the former.
"The social and political implications of gene editing are also huge unknowns, and unfortunately there’s been scant debate among policy makers and the general public."
There are a lot of genetic defects we can engineer away. There’s a lot of other things that aren’t defects, but social pressure will make people want to engineer them away.
For example, when I was a child, British tabloids were saying “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ finding”: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/08/30/gay-gene-newspapers-19...
(Bonus points as the gay gene didn’t really exist; but as I’m bi, people like that would’ve tried to eradicate me before I was born if they’d had a way to do so).
As I expect my resistance to social pressure to be exactly average until shown otherwise, I sometimes find myself wondering what things I falsely believe to be real defects that would be moral to eradicate.
Of course, it's not like society has any choice - if rival nations are willing to genetically engineer humans, can we afford to fall behind?
I don't see what's so hard about it. When something gets better than it used to be, that's an improvement. Better eyesight, hearing, intelligence, endurance, strength, etc etc - improvements.
I won't get into any argument that "less is more". I don't believe that crap. We shouldn't stop until we find the limits of the universe.
When it comes to differences between people, there are a lot of traits that we should be careful about categorizing as better or worse. Especially if it leads to us essentially eradicating the trait via eugenics.
I don't think we're anywhere near genetic manipulation of human mind, if that's even a real thing. Perhaps we could manipulate behavior driven by hormones, but I don't think we could do too much there without breaking the whole system.
If the negatives subjectively don't outweigh the positives, that's usually considered "deal with the devil" territory and is the kind of thing sci-fi writers love.
You don't need genetic engineering to start fixing the genetic lottery for for most people, just redistribution of wealth.
Once youve fixed that genetic lottery, it gets a lot harder to make a dystopia from solving other genetic lotteries
Gattaca here we come:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
After that, axlotl tanks.
My first concern is that with our current economic system, especially the lack of free health care in the US, this would be basically rolled out to rich people first, so for about 50 years or so rich people would not only be healthier from having access to more and better resources but also they would be now evolving in a healthier direction too. This itself is not a huge problem, but inequality becoming a greater inequality is something to think about and hopefully set it up such that it can be somewhat mitigated or avoided.
My second concern is again with out current economic model,(later after years of it being affordable only to the rich) we would end up rolling it out as for lack of a better term "manufacturing batches" like people would go to a store and choose a popular preset of options from what's available, and that preset would then become more economical and therefor commonplace, which in a lot of ways is like turning our species into a mono-gene-pool, with all the same dangers that come from relying on a single mono-crop (Great example is the potato famine of Ireland vs the Incas who also heavily relied on potatoes but had much more variety like over 300 kinds of potato, while Ireland relied on 1). Biggest concern with this, especially after a pandemic is that if a certain strain of virus hit's just right, and everyone is more the same than they used to be, it could be even more catastrophic than predicted. If we did roll it out in batches (highly likely) we will have entire generations and nations start to look all the same, certain groups wouldn't participate (the very poor, certain religious organizations) and they would likely feel significant persecution (much as poor kids are teased at school today) or at the very least be in-congruent with the greater parts of society, many would become second class citizens (much how Gattica predicted), also those laggards would become holdouts for known genetic diseases and so those who are engineered would rightfully avoid marriage/breeding with them, thus further solidifying the persecution and possibly diverging humanity's evolution.
Both of my concerns are not enough reason to not push forward, but they bring more concerns of distribution, pricing and variation, not of the technology itself. More or less I think we need to push forward scientifically, but we need to also make progress as a society too or else there will arise other problems that come with progress.
Humans are natural, we are part of nature
After all, human ingenuity is a result of natural selection that emerged precisely because it works better.
The Revolutionary Phenotype: The amazing story of how life begins and how it ends
My fear is that extremist groups and governments will use this tech to change children according to their religious or extremist doctrine. Stuff like growing women without clitorises to promote FGM in Islamic countries.
Or an acquaintance of mine with cystic fibrosis, who's been in and out of hospital for the vast majority of her life and knows that she probably won't make it beyond 40; she definitely wouldn't mind if someone fixed those mutations before she was born.