Do-it-yourself genetics - Scary?

[OhZone]

I fear the home made mutants won't be cute women with expanding boobs! lulz


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...686_dna26.html

[Kagamaru]

Glowing Tattoos? Hot damn.


Well, what are you gonna do? You can't stop people from doing this to pursue simple curiosity. Though I do suspect there might be a new form of biological warfare to come from it, as WELL as many positive outcomes. It's what always happens.

I'm with the group expecting medical disasters from this. If you advance the technology a bit, all it takes is one particularly gifted nutcase to unleash a supervirus. I actually gave passing mention to amateur biotech being banned for that reason in the first part of the story I'm writing now.

[kingofheights]

Originally Posted by OhZone

I fear the home made mutants won't be cute women with expanding boobs! lulz


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...686_dna26.html

complete idiots. i doubt anything good will come of this. Its one thing to tinker with computers but computers viruses don't infect humans......
It should be banned and it probably will be when it backfires assuming we survive. People ALWAYS under estimate the danger this can cause its not like the past where if something was damaged it could be reversed this is changing life its self and it fits my view that we will destory ourselves because of our arrogance that's there nothing we can't do. Can you vouch for every person who uses this technology.... nope. Point proven.

The models from the avian flu scare demonstrated pretty clearly what this will look like if it goes horribly wrong. Worst case scenario, none of the precautions work, and billions die. That said, the computer analogy is fairly good. As millions of people write new code, thousands of *expletive* write malicious code, and by and large, the millions come out ahead by writing fixes to stop the exploits. Yes, a lot of people may die in the process, but it's a lot harder to crack down on something before it causes a disaster. People aren't going to cooperate willingly when they think they can cure cancer in their garage and don't believe your predictions of doom, and these will be run underground where there's less regulation if a misguided law tried to put a stop to it.

As much as I hate to put it this way, we need a disaster before we can prevent a disaster.

[kingofheights]

Originally Posted by Illun

The models from the avian flu scare demonstrated pretty clearly what this will look like if it goes horribly wrong. Worst case scenario, none of the precautions work, and billions die. That said, the computer analogy is fairly good. As millions of people write new code, thousands of *expletive* write malicious code, and by and large, the millions come out ahead by writing fixes to stop the exploits. Yes, a lot of people may die in the process, but it's a lot harder to crack down on something before it causes a disaster. People aren't going to cooperate willingly when they think they can cure cancer in their garage and don't believe your predictions of doom, and these will be run underground where there's less regulation if a misguided law tried to put a stop to it.

As much as I hate to put it this way, we need a disaster before we can prevent a disaster.

Sadly the last part of your message is very very true. No one takes anything seriously until something horrible happens.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Meh, people cry "the sky is falling" every time someone tries something new and how many times has anything ever come of it?

Remember when our genetically engineered killer bees were going to sting us all to death? I'm still waiting...

[lampy]

Just what the people on these boards need. /sarcasm.

Originally Posted by Lord T Hawkeye

Meh, people cry "the sky is falling" every time someone tries something new and how many times has anything ever come of it?

Remember when our genetically engineered killer bees were going to sting us all to death? I'm still waiting...

And several people in southern states have died from them. The killer bees have been fought back through considerable effort, that's why you're still waiting. The concern is who dies while things sort themselves out, not that we're all going to die. It's worth pointing out, though, that some scenarios do lead to us all dying, and it's because people are cautious about new developments that we've not gone down more dangerous paths.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

[Hooded_Miracle]

OH GOD.

Killer Bee's.

I researched on them a tiny, tiny bit. Miniscule, really. Anyway, I'm quite terrified of them. >_>

Anyway, I'll read the article later. Just noting. >_>;

[kingofheights]

Originally Posted by Illun

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Thank you finally someone with a brain!
If bernie madoff can screw people out of 50 billion dollars and ruining people's lives without giving a rats ass. Then there is certainly someone out there thinking of hurting us. Not to mention the type of people who might try eugenic research oh boy....... its going to be one fucked up century. Gattaca here we come!

For a eugenics-based society to take hold like in Gattaca, you have to have government sponsorship. We have enough cautionary tales like Gattaca to forestall that until it has a grassroots movement behind it of people like these garage geneticists tinkering with themselves and more professional operations doing more standard procedures on the willing among the masses. As slowly as government moves with this sort of thing, I'm not worried about a Gattaca in the next century. By the time we got to that point, society would have changed enough to find that acceptable, and it wouldn't have the meaning it does today. The part of eugenics that scares me isn't the social structure or even the supermen/god complex aspect of it, but that it leads to narrowing of the gene pool. While it may need chlorine now, if you narrow it too much, a species doesn't differentiate enough anymore and you're essentially cloning, with all the inherent long-term problems associated with that. (See Stargate's Asgard for a simplified example.)