Designer Babies, One Step Closer

The only problem with datamining is that a lot of times it has to be validated in a wet lab. Speaking as someone who worked in a wet lab for a datamining lab I can tell you that the amount of work the bioinformaticists generated was staggering and the ability of the wet lab to verify was much slower in comparison.

INB4 newtypes and Gundams.

I hate the term "Designer Baby" as it completely strawmans the idea of genetic engineering.

Let's face reality. If a parent knows that there is chance that their unborn child could be born with a defect, one that could be a major impediment to their child's own life once born, can one blame them for wanting to mitigate the impact of said defect?

The buck must stop with preventative engineering though, that much is certain. When people decide to change the build, hair color, or whatever of their unborn for no unjustifiable reason then that's when the line has been crossed.

I thought they had already been doing things like eye color?

Glad someone gets it.
But shock titles sway the masses more easily towards the goal of the writer.

They already know that "junk DNA" isn't junk. A lot of it has to do with protein folding and some has a relationship with which gene out of a pair will be expressed.

We will know a LOT more about the genome before we crack "junk DNA" though.

Did you sketch that and your current avi King?

Leon does them.

What do you mean by junk DNA having something to do with protein folding? For DNA to make the translation to protein it would be included in an exon and therefore translated to amino acids. I didn't think anything in an exon is considered junk DNA? Admittedly I work in developmental immunology so there's plenty I don't know about DNA but I was pretty sure that junk DNA wasn't referring to exons.

My fear is that some jerks who have an obsession with controlling others argue "welfare of the child" and demand laws be put in place so that parents are required to genetically manipulate their child. /shudders.

The whole problem I have with this, is that it could quite quickly become a slippery slope. Today we're identifying the gene that causes [insert disease here] but tomorrow we're choosing something cosmetic that gives them an easier life (based on our concepts at the time).

The world should be diverse in my opinion, and genetically engineering children is a scary step toward having the world filled with Goobacks.

Where does this bring us on the genetically engineered catgirl front?

That might be very complicated.

Fact is a lot of genes decode for multiple things at the same time..so like one might decide both the colour of your eyes and how pointy your elbows are(for example). So trying to substitute a human gene with a feline for one thing only might actually cause a terrible cascade effect to the rest of the body.

It was a joke.

You hateful ignorant timesist!

I think it's still worth responding to. Afterall, creating superhumans isn't out of many people's desires.

Glad to see your finally getting it.
Genes provide multiple functions and overlap. Each have switches too that are controlled through multiple other factors, environment , nutrition, etc. with the new research that's happening. And which have been shown with identical twins that have been separated on a simpler bases.
Everything is linked. This can be researched but as for messing around genetically with it safely. It's a no no, because as you've said nothing can be singled out for genetic tampering.
It's a great step forward in finding out how our bodies work and pinpointing how beneficial or bad certain foods, chemicals, environmental changes, are for us on a geological level.
And may I add, (whether your a believer of God or not) how jaw droppingly complex and amazing life is and how so many variables interact.

No you're the one not getting it, and I'm not surprised as you've already shown complete ignorance in any scientific topic. I said the problem is that we don't know everything yet and that is why we're mapping the genome with the effort of scientists from all over the world.

Lol ok so your admitting in your previous post that it Looks near impossible factually as we stand as of now scientifically.
But say I'm ignorant because of your faith that one day they "might" be able to do it.
Thought you didn't belive in blind faith?

I'm saying it's inconsiderate without knowing the function of every gene, but it's absolutely possible to work on once that knowledge is acquired. That isn't faith, we already make genetic manipulation, we know how to perform it.

Um no it's not.
Brace yourself.
There's a strong possibility the knowledge will show us it's impossible. As of now with what we have its pointing toward impossible.
Not that I'm saying the research it's self won't help other avenues, as I've already mentioned.

Oh come on...

You live in the same place where english was conceived! You can do better than that!

That's borderline "chicken little", but I see where you're coming from.

I can't say I'd ever seriously consider having genetic engineering or manipulation done of my children unless we're talking about gene-therapy for some kind of medical impairment, but I also would strongly oppose any legislation on the matter. So long as we remember that there is a cost to manipulating things we do not fully understand and there could be a real price of suffering imposed on a sentient being, I think the future of genetic research and medicine will be mostly positive.

I'm also of the crowd that I'd prefer not to pass my genetic defects on if I knew I had one, there's plenty of children that are already alive and need a good home.

Anyone else getting the "we became such a superior race [through genetic modification] that we lost the ability to reproduce/our genetic code has become unstable" vibe? I'm sure there were some/several game or movie or something that had stuff along those lines.

I don't see why not. It's due to happen eventually. We'll make a bunch of mistakes along the way before we get it right for sure.

This sounds like a bad idea. Going agenst nature who knows what side effects might pop up with the kids born this way.

Yeah, because nature is so kind and makes everyone perfect at birth right

That's the problem really. Once your capable of preventing genetic diseases your also capable of selecting for preferable genes. This relates to making children who are genetically stronger, smarter and just overall "better" then regular children. These kinds of techniques will be expensive initially and for a while afterwards which limits their application to those who can afford them. Wealthy people already have an advantage by sending their children to better schools and providing better nutrition, this would advantage their children even more.

It's going to be interesting watching the social dynamics that will form over this.

Nope because we'll always have stock genetic material frozen on tap. That vibe is created by science fiction writers because they need dramatic tension as part of the back story. A plot of "they discovered unlimited power that enabled them to do great and wonderful things, the end" doesn't sell well so you gotta add some sort of apocalyptic down side in the form of a Pandora's box.

I just feel that I have to mention, for anyone not familiar with eugenics, that there's been a lot of it in the United States before and during WWII. Nazis come to mind easily because of our historical memory (those of us in the United States).

This isn't to bash your post in particular, but I really believe one way to bring a discussion down quickly is to talk about Nazis because we've all already decided how we feel about Nazis. (Therefore what these Chinese researchers did was bad, etc., except it's like mud wrestling)

tl;dr Nazi come to mind right away, but don't have to. Eugenics happened in the States in a big way that we can't justify today.