Friday, June 20, 2003
The End of Humanity... Again...
Just read this article about the possible pitfalls of human genetic engineering (See: Oriononline.org). It would be easy to dismiss the article by calling it Ludditism, or sci-fi paranoia. Indeed, many of the points Bill Mckibben makes are overstated, and come straight from the movie Gattica. However, it's a good read, and it raises genuine questions about the consequences of creating modified children. What I admire, is that his arguments are not moral in nature, but practical... the one which I found both amusing and horrifying is the idea that children will become outdated, like old copies of Windows, when more advanced children are produced later.
I seem to find these end of the world articles. I seek them out, scratch my head and bemoan our fate. Back in high school I used to feel like I should have been born a hundred years earlier (or twenty years earlier when I was listening to Bob Dylan or The Beatles); but now I feel like this turn of the century is the last of the old world. Children will ask me what the old world was like, and depending on the configuration of the new, I will be either bitter or nostaligic... perhaps both. The system could crash, the USA could devolve into a fascist state, we could blunder our way into a Brave New World of isolation and primary colored furniture, we could enter into a third world war and live with the consequences of a limited nuclear exchange on health and the environment, the ice caps could melt, the rich could retreat into bubble domes where they genetically enhance thier children... any or all these things could happen. All I know is that the world of twenty years from now will seem as alien as our world would have to the Victorians.
Moral Relativism Meter:
Genetic enhancement of embryos = bad
Bionic enhancement of me = good
Gay Marriage = good = Canada
Sex outside of marriage = good
The fact that I am not getting sex = bad
