
Do We have a Moral Duty to Improve the Human Race? - nreece
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/12/enhancing-evolu.html
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mdasen
The author mentions competitive advantage. To be honest, I think that in such
a fundamental case as this, competitive advantage isn't a win. Let's say that
good nutrition increases general aptitude. So, more people are smart competing
with me if nutrition improves. It also means I pay less money supporting
people with bad health. And while I might be competing, it means that better
things are being done.

Let's say that my IQ is 125 and the average is 100. Let's say we find
something that can raise everyone's IQ to 150 except mine. That's a good
thing, even for me. Those people will make production more efficient, create
new and better products, etc. That lowers the cost of the same standard of
living or allows one to pay a constant cost and get a significantly increased
standard of living.

Now, my place in the social hierarchy would change, that's for sure. I guess
people tend to care about that as much if not more than the other things.

In terms of genetically engineering children, I'm less thrilled. The fact is
that biodiversity prevents extinction. Designer genes might, for a while,
provide us with better results, but in the long run it leaves us very, very
vulnerable to catastrophe. So, do we pick ourselves or our species? Parents
will always pick their child over their species. So, all parents with the
means to do so, will eliminate that genetic diversity to the detriment of the
species.

We're even seeing it today with parents refusing vaccinations. They work off
the principle that everyone else is vaccinated so my child won't get those
diseases anyway and I would be terrified if my child got autism (which has
never been proven, but they're nuts anyway). They pick their child over
society. What happens when everyone does that? In the case of vaccines, it
won't happen because once enough people do it, disease will return and parents
will be burring their children. In the case of biodiversity, we might not know
for hundreds or thousands of years.

I wouldn't be so quick to accept this as improving the human race. Improving
individuals: yes (at the cost of loosing the biodiversity that sustains
species). We'd become like the banana - doomed.

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sh1mmer
I think the author's methodology (or at least the article's synopsis of it)
seems a somewhat flawed premise.

Suggesting that we focus less on conventional medicine in order to raise the
bar in other areas neglects the massive waste and allocation in the market
system.

One of the fundamental things that increases lifespan is diet. I've read in
numerous sources the approx life span of humans should be 120 years if they
don't suffer a medical trauma. Now we have the ability to deliver the optimum
diet to achieve that we don't. Instead we subsidize meat until people get fat
heavy diets, etc.

The Macdonalds culture has created a culture where non-nutritious foods are
the cheapest to consumers, despite the real cost of production.

The author can try to justify leeching resource from numerous areas of society
to create "competitive advantage" but until governments remove the impediments
to have healthy food cost less nothing much else we do will mean much.

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rthomas6
I'm just happy we're starting to have this conversation at all.

