The year is 2060. The United States Senate is sponsored by ExxonMobilShellCorp and the executive throne is still occupied by CEO Trump, our 114-year-old dictator with the youthful vigor of a lion cub thanks to a full head transplant and GMO anti-aging serums. Times are dark in these United States circa 2060: Despite decades of warning, humanity has completely failed to curb carbon emissions, the White House is now ocean-front, and MTV still doesn’t play music videos. In a last-ditch effort to save the world from ourselves, we’ve resorted to something that was previously both illegal and impossible: human engineering.
At least, this is the world as imagined by S. Matthew Liao, a bioethicist who in 2012 published a paper on a “new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which involves biomedical modifications of humans so that they can mitigate and/or adapt to climate change,” according to the abstract.
In other words, he’s talking about fucking with our bodies so we stop fucking with the planet.
http://grist.org/living/can-we-cope-with-climate-change-by-genetically-engineering-people/
While the majority—49%—were opposed to genetic engineering of babies, 41% remained in favor, with 10% undecided.
http://inhabitat.com/the-designer-baby-debate-should-we-allow-genetic-engineering-of-babies-in-the-us/
Scientists, philosophers and science fiction authors have been discussing designer babies since the 1930s. However, the issues they have been discussing have remained theoretical because of the difficulty in getting genes to do what they want. The new technology of genome editing, known as CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), which makes possible precise modifications of the genetics of organisms, changes things dramatically. Genetic modification of humans now looks all too possible.
Researchers and corporations are rushing to investigate — and hopefully exploit — the potential of this new technology to modify human beings genetically.
http://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/opinion/comment/genetically-engineering-humans-a-step-too-far/20069421.article
Of course, the flipside of that is that less ethical scientists might already be doing this basic research anyway. The tools are there and relatively easy to use; all that we can really do is decide how we want to use them.
http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2015/09/embryos-genetic-engineering/
using cognitive enhancement to decrease the number of babies each person has
perhaps decrease someone’s testosterone. But those hormones have all kinds of effects, and can change people in really profound ways beyond making them a little more amenable to negotiating.
http://gizmodo.com/meanwhile-in-the-future-to-stop-climate-change-we-mus-1733583113
DARPA, the research branch of the Department of Defense, awarded a $32 million contract to the Broad Institute at MIT this week to research genetic engineering with “medical, industrial, and agricultural applications” that are too expensive for private industries.
DARPA’s interest in genetic engineering dates back at least to 2010, when it budgeted $6 million for BioDesign, which aimed to eliminate “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” Imagined products included cells that could live forever and bacteria that could be killed off instantaneously.
In 2014, research funded by DARPA produced genetically modified blood cells that could deliver various toxin-neutralizing antibodies, which soldiers could receive through a blood transfusion, which might trigger fewer autoimmune responses than other forms of drug delivery.
The new DARPA contract is geared towards more general research, with work aimed at expediting and streamlining the methods by which scientists sequence and analyze genomes instead of finding specific solutions.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1773968-the-pentagon-is-throwing-more-money-into-genetic-engineering/