At 08:36 PM 7/7/03 -0400, Stormwalker wrote: > >> What's wrong with voluntary eugenics? The invention of agriculture >> started a policy of negative eugenics that culminates with the >> industrial welfare state paying stupids to breed, while others chose >> birth control. And banning somatic or germ line fixes to diseases, if >> you can do them, is as compassionate as banning insulin. Which isn't
>> even a fix, just a workaround. > > I was thinking of eugenics where something was forced upon others, > which I do not think is desirable. Hey, I oppose *anything* which is forced upon others, even if *I* deem it as "good". > The invention of agriculture has not yet culminated. It gave/gives > people time to do other things. Yeah, like raise armies, feed bureaucraps, etc. Still, I don't hold it against the farmers. Besides, the dominant cultures are descendants of farmers. See the writings of Jared Diamond. > Good luck banning germ lines :) > >> If a germ line fix has an unintended side effect, you either undo it >> (revert back to being inclined towards diabetes, if this is preferable >> to the side effect, say) or you debug or patch it. Current & historical >> medicine is filled with such things for mere *temporary* meds that >> don't cure anything. > > Reverting may or not be possible. The products of some germ line > may like what they are and wil lnot revert, no matter what other > folks think. Well, if they *like* it, only violent coercion would cause reversion. I was thinking something like, the diabetes-fix package causes premature death or something bothersome like that. Obviously the "service pack 6 nasal spray" needs to refuse to install on folks without the proper prior install. Also it needs to avoid spurious installation on folks who don't want it ---maybe you have to take a snort of some antibiotic combo at the same time to activate it, which is a current technique used for turning on inserted genes. Later
