Re: [DIYbio] Privately funded designer babies

On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 1:10 PM <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
> But the research money, scant as it is, and the news coverage and hype, all goes towards designer babies instead.
I have to disagree, in this country at least (USA), I've seen more
time and money spent on anti-abortion efforts that seems to be a total
waste. For the same reasons as you mentioned above... that money and
effort and concern, if redirected to education, could alleviate
countless minutes of suffering for children and people. But they
quibble over a few minutes of suffering, and ignore the remaining
lifetime worth of toil that legally may be inflicted.

>
> 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.

I'm not sure how you come to assume "rich people" ignore things
without labs, needles, or degrees. The latest fad is organic food,
which is more expensive, but uses less "modern stuff" (like labs and
needles). There are tons of school aide programs to support poor
students, most of which come from charging a higher tuition fee to...
the rich people (and the people who get caught in the middle).

On top of that, poor people suffer at the hand of the modern medical
system all the time because they lack funds for one thing or another.
Fixing problems at the root-cause, rather than treating symptoms will
be cheaper in the long run.

> 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.

Why wouldn't a capital-intensive business venture be poised to target
people with money? That's like criticizing big corporations or
governments for being required to spur modern electronics. PCs came
30-40 years after the transistor was invented, laypeople weren't the
target market, nor would they have been satisfied throwing their money
at pie-in-the-sky far-off technology. Now you can get a smartphone for
$20 at the local grocery store or pharmacy.


> 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.

Maybe we all just like to commiserate because "society's keeping us down"?

> 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)

That all seems like (bad) correlation and not causation to me. It
could very well be that these smart people simply saw the world in
nearly on the brink of chaos and social implosion, and had to suffer
the majority of their peers being less intelligent and felt
existential loneliness. This pushed them in some way to attempt to do
"great" things they thought would help advance the human condition
toward a better state (or they got exhausted and killed themselves or
buried their depression with various distractions). Or they were just
smart and somehow that *magically* (err, genetically) makes them more
depressed. I tend to believe something closer to the former rather
than the latter.

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