I was just watching a program on the Discover channel about genetics, seemingly a few years old cause they said the Genome map of humans would be done in 4 years.

Well, i just read it has been completed and over a year ahead of schedule! This is a great step with health benefits the #1 thing to be gained straight away.

The next and perhaps bigger task now is to actually figure out what all the genes actually do!

This also is a step closer to the possibly scary ability of designer humans; choosing what traits you want you baby to have.

Its great in theory; We can create perfect people that will be healthier, live longer, be smarter and in general be better than us ‘old model’ humans.

It will be like a new species in a way and this could be where it starts to cause a problem. There will be the super humans and the normal humans… sure, this shouldn’t be a problem, but bigotry is certainly a possibility and unfortunately likely if the changes are easily apparent. The other thing is this is going to be an expensive task at first. This will leave custom babies to the rich creating an even bigger gap between those who have money and those that don’t.

Before this happens though, there are going to be a lot of discussion about the ‘ethics’ of manipulating humans in such a way; currently, its either illegal or taboo among doctors.

I think we can expect to see and hear about this topic a LOT more now.

Fake LiveJournal mood: Excited!