Re: [DIYbio] Privately funded designer babies

There are tried-and-tested ways to make babies more intelligent and socially successful: give money to poor parents, helping to alleviate poverty and its associated symptoms, addiction, pollution, and violence.

With the wealth that society has accumulated over the last few centuries, we could afford to roll out a programme in virtually any "developed" nation to ensure a minimum standard of early life for virtually all citizens, collectively raising the societal IQ and EQ by double-digit scores.

Imagine living in a society that was double-digits more intelligent and socially competent than what you have now. That's what we've been able to achieve now, for decades.

But the research money, scant as it is, and the news coverage and hype, all goes towards designer babies instead.

And why is that? Because the target audience is not "society", for whom a solution without labs, needles, or expensive degrees is already available and ignored. The audience is "rich people" like you and I, who could conceivably, though possibly with some significant economic discomfort, afford a service to jab our embryos full of superpowerz. And, afford to care for them if/when they turn out to suffer serious, life-long debilities as a result.

Heck, even if you succeeded in making the classic "designer baby" which was avg. 20 IQ points higher than baseline and suffered no obvious side-effects, you're still facing a problem we haven't actually resolved yet after centuries of trying: intelligent people seem to be more prone to depression and becoming ineffectually existential*. It would be far preferable to boost a person's EQ, but there's no quick fix for that.

That's the ethical issue I would _hope_ inspires other scientists to reject this. Of course, you could be right: it could just be "cowardice" (a calculated desire not to be harassed in exchange for money) or government regulation on speculative, unproven research on future citizens.

...sorry. A bit crabby this evening, and worn out on this stuff.

* https://www.learning-mind.com/intelligence-and-depression/ (Probably the "cure" is a few more centuries of philosophy combined with the end of the modern overwork-culture, which drags everyone down)

February 13, 2019 8:13 PM, "Nathan McCorkle" <nmz787@gmail.com> wrote:

> Has anyone here seen this article?
>
> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612838/the-transhumanist-diy-designer-baby-funded-with-bitcoin
>
> It seems most of the ethicists rejecting this are working under a
> government-funding framework, and since the government has a funding
> ban on this sort of work, their guidelines waterfall from there.
>
> I haven't found any good rebuttals that are specifically from a
> private/industrial standpoint, at least in terms of technicalities.
> Perosnally, at this point, I'm pro-choice on utilizing such a
> technique... And I wonder if these ethicists/scientists who are
> rejecting such ideas are simply worried about harassment ala abortion
> clinic personnel, and losing their government welfare funding stream.
>
> --
> -Nathan
>
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