Remember that episode of Star Trek with the grups? The planet with the immortal children, but full of infectious diseases that kill anyone over the age of puberty?
It's starting. Here. Now. Getting rid of gliomas is a good thing, but where does it end? And can we control it?
Now, insert absolutely any new technology where the... is a good thing, but where does it end? And can we control it?
Let me know when you find something that doesn't fit in there. And, allow me to answer those questions for you: It doesn't end, whatever it is, and it cannot be controlled. Like everything else, you just have to hope that it'll be put to good uses.
Re:Pointless Question
ziggy on 2003-05-08T14:28:04
Perhaps.You could have said something similar about the industrial revolution, the rise of the train or the automobile, space exploration or even civilian aviation. In each of those cases, we went forward because we could only see the good, but today we have perfect hindsight and see both the good and the bad. And we would be wise to learn from those experiences instead of blindlly repeating them in the name of "progress".
Maybe the issue with hacking genes is that we've seen so many of the possible downsides through science fiction that we're not prepared to pay those prices to realize the possible upsides. I don't think anyone questions hacking yeast to make human insulin or soil bacteria to digest toxic materials. But when you start to create viruses (especially when SARS is poised to become a permanent part of human society), it's a little scarier. After all, you can cut off the food supply to a yeast colony or create inhospitable conditions for some bacteria. But you can't kill a virus...
Re:Pointless Question
chaoticset on 2003-05-14T14:00:09
...just like you can't kill an idea. No, you can't "kill" a virus per se -- but if it's too virulent, it'll tend to prevent its own spread.Simply put, you're concerned that humans will somehow create something lethal and destroy ourselves. Nature's been trying to do this for millenia and been failing. We may do better, but I seriously doubt we could exterminate ourselves at this point.
There's always something. I know a slight germophobe, and I started explaining what I knew about slaughterhouses to him once; it made him physically ill. He knows about it, he just chooses not to think about it when he eats, say, a hamburger.
Biological tampering is the same way -- it's disturbing, sure, but accidents happen with anything. Science is, by its very nature, going to carry the risk that some screwup will cause a huge problem. (Ever read about the possibly apocryphal story that the Manhattan Project scientists weren't sure if the bomb would set off the atmosphere in a chain reaction? If I remember my reading correctly, Feynman said they sat down and calculated how long it would take for the ignition to reach the other side of the Earth if it happened, and I think they came up with something remarkably low, several minutes.)
To sum up: "It's science, it's as nice as it's going to be, and don't worry about it. Ethics are arbitrary and pointless."
