sarmchain
2nd February 2010, 02:07
i found this on wikipedia i was wondoring your thoughts
Molecular Biologist Lee M. Silver believes that unlike Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where a totalitarian government controls all of the genetic enhancements ( they actually use eugenics and not genetics) in society, the use of gene therapy to design children will be spread through what he calls “free market eugenics” . Wealthy families will opt to design their child with genetic advantages because other families are doing so, and everybody wants to provide their newborn child with the best opportunities in life, with a leg up on the competition. The greatest fear for Silver is that we will design so many children with germline gene therapy, that the families wealthy enough to design their children, will pass down these enhanced traits to future generations. This gene therapy will obviously cost money, and the less wealthy families will be left to procreate naturally, and introduce their children into the world disadvantaged from their first breath.
The impact on society will be a new alignment of classes, no longer will we separate people by their ethnic differences, the new division will be between what Silver calls ‘the naturals’ and ‘the GenRich’, or genetically enhanced. The major worry here is that the ‘genetic gulf’ between these two classes will become so wide that humans will become separate species
Molecular Biologist Lee M. Silver believes that unlike Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where a totalitarian government controls all of the genetic enhancements ( they actually use eugenics and not genetics) in society, the use of gene therapy to design children will be spread through what he calls “free market eugenics” . Wealthy families will opt to design their child with genetic advantages because other families are doing so, and everybody wants to provide their newborn child with the best opportunities in life, with a leg up on the competition. The greatest fear for Silver is that we will design so many children with germline gene therapy, that the families wealthy enough to design their children, will pass down these enhanced traits to future generations. This gene therapy will obviously cost money, and the less wealthy families will be left to procreate naturally, and introduce their children into the world disadvantaged from their first breath.
The impact on society will be a new alignment of classes, no longer will we separate people by their ethnic differences, the new division will be between what Silver calls ‘the naturals’ and ‘the GenRich’, or genetically enhanced. The major worry here is that the ‘genetic gulf’ between these two classes will become so wide that humans will become separate species