“Maybe we used too much frog DNA…”
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has said it’s okay for scientists to proceed with work on “genome editing” of human babies, to produce what we might call “designer babies” or “GMO babies” (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/17/genetically-modified-babies-given-go-ahead-by-uk-ethics-body). Or even “Franken-babies.”
Get this: Go ahead, said the council, “if it was in the future child’s interest and did not add to the kinds of inequality that already divide society.”
What? What are they talking about? Are these people quite all there? Like, it’s okay to genetically mess around with a baby as long as it doesn’t make him “better” than others, in some way, any way? Well, if it doesn’t, then why the devil do it? Or maybe for every “improvement” the genetic editors make, they’d have to “dis-improve” the baby somewhere else. “We’re going to make your baby very intelligent, Mrs. Windsor, but we don’t want to leave others feeling that they’re not equal to him–so we’re also going to make him frightfully ugly.”
Really, you wonder about the kind of people we have sitting around up there, making decisions for us. What loony bin did they escape from?
Hello? Hello? Didn’t any of these doofuses ever see Jurassic Park? Messing about with genetics leads to results that are inherently unpredictable. And the dinosaurs get loose and eat you.