A few decades ago it was the stuff of science fiction. Now it begins to approach reality.

John Harris, professor of bioethics at the University of Manchester School of Law and a member of the British Human Genetics Commission argues the case for enhancing the human species in his 2007 book, "Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People."

For a hostile discussion on the book see:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article2622232.ece

Quote:

>>If it is right to save life, Harris says, it is right to postpone death ad infinitum by stemming the flow of diseases that carry us to the grave. We should engineer ourselves to be free of such curses as cancer and dementia, instead of believing that they are acceptable inevitabilities of human life. And we should make any such technology available as soon as we can, EVEN IF IT MEANS THE HUMAN RACE INITIALLY SPLITTING INTO THE STRONG, CLEVER, BEAUTIFUL, IMMORTAL HAVES AND THE DUMBER, DISEASE-RIDDEN HAVE-NOTS.>>

(Emphasis added)

Michael J. Sandel, professor of government at Harvard University and erstwhile member of the president's Council on Bioethics argues the contra case in "The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering"

See:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SANPRO.html

My guess is that we will indeed try and enhance the human species as John Harris suggests. Given the option of having enhanced children, the wealthy will take it regardless of expense.

Sandel may make a good ethical argument but he will be ignored.

The human race will split into "the strong, clever, beautiful, immortal haves and the dumber, disease-ridden have-nots." Eventually the "haves" and "have nots" may diverge into two distinct species.

It will have to happen because we are saving babies that would otherwise have died.Survival of the fittest does not strengthen our gene pool as in the past.Just a generation ago people had many children and many miscarriages.Today we save one at all costs.Genetic engineering will be our only way out or our species will eventually become geneticly dysfunctional.

Parents or the State playing god with our genes raises a legal nightmare.

no eventually about it, slm, within the lifetime of young people, babies will be born with such capabilities that they will supplant homo sap.

and a good thing. current leadership (actually mastership, they don't lead, save to disaster) can not save us from inherited overpopulation.

but the prospect of undirected culling (you know, four horsemen) might ruin the technology needed to produce homo superior.

young people are going to have an interesting life. perhaps not long, but definitely interesting.

Stevenlmeyer – “The human race will split into "the strong, clever, beautiful, immortal haves and the dumber, disease-ridden have-nots." Eventually the "haves" and "have nots" may diverge into two distinct species.”

This wont happen because eventually the technology will become so cheap everybody will be able to afford it. Sure like everything it will be only the rich who can afford it but after probably a maximum of ten years almost everyone will be able to afford it.

I think we will see humans slowly genetically engineered and have things added to the body to make it work better. There will be an uproar at first but because it will happen so slowly people will hardly notice! In a way we have already started with such things as pace makers and hip replacements.

We are just at the beginning of the bio tech age!

Steven, you truly are the Michael Crichton of OLO :)

It’s been tried before .

Natural selection is the only process that can successfully improve a species .

The trick is allowing natural selection to operate .