this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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Like Gattaca?
I do not think people have enough information to even do a good job of it, we'd accidentally make everyone prone to some disease and wipe out humanity, we don't have a great track record with selectively breeding plants and animals. So no.
In the way it has been done ever in real life? Oh hell no. Some vague idea that certain people are worth more than others based only on their looks, and a push to make a better world by making them the only model for humanity?
So no. I don't trust people to use it for good, and if it was somehow used for good, would probably still have unintended disastrous consequences.
I would have wrote it in the title buy my idea of eugenics is getting rid of all bad diseases like if they found out a gene caused cancer, or a kid will have heart disease before they are twenty or hell if they will be an addict before they are thirty. Or maybe they can't see right so they edit the gene that prevents them from seeing correctly. Stuff like that not just blonde hair and blue eye.
I don't think of selective gene editing of one person as eugenics and do think we will get that, we have some versions of it for born people already. Editing it out of humanity? No that's probably a bad idea. One of my kids works in genetics and was horrified when I joked about her making designer babies like in Gattaca, so I don't think science thinks it a good idea. Push on one thing, another pops up.
You might enjoy Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis and Patternist books, if you like thinking about this stuff.