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The Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 4,726 American adults and asked them about gene editing to prevent diseases in babies, brain chip implants for improved cognition, and synthetic blood for enhanced physical abilities. A majority of Americans said they were "somewhat" or "very" worried about these three developments. 48% said they would use gene editing to prevent diseases in their own babies, while 50% said they would not:
Whatever appeal these ideas may have, they also raise fundamental questions about what it means to be human. From the earliest days of civilization, people have sought to better their condition through the use of tools, medications, surgeries and other therapies. But as new scientific and technological breakthroughs arise, so do questions about whether such developments move beyond limits set by God, nature or reason. Thus, this research is aimed in part at understanding where, if at all, the public might "draw the line" on human enhancements and the possibilities they could bring to society.
The developments are not far off from becoming a clinical reality; for example, the NHS will begin giving small transfusions of artificial/synthetic blood to 20 healthy people in 2017.
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Pew also collected feedback from focus group participants. Here are three of the responses:
"I just think that there's that place where you're going beyond healthy, you're going to super strength or computer [chip] thinking, [then] I think that's unnatural. So to me it would just be like the – if I just had to change a gene in my body so I wouldn't have diabetes and I wouldn't pass it on to my kids, sure, I would do that. ... But I don't ... have to go beyond that to be the super great, to get to the highest level just because I have a computer chip in my brain. I think that being healthy, productive, good quality of life is where I would draw the line."
– 50-year-old Hispanic woman in Phoenix
[...] "If it starts to sound Hitler-like, [trying to create] a perfect specimen of man and woman ... then people who are not perfect might be treated badly."
– 59-year-old white woman in Atlanta
[...] "I think God has given a doctor the talents to fix us. ... I think he has given these people the talents to do so. I don't think it is the doctors or medical gurus [trying] to play God."
– 44-year-old white mainline Protestant man in Birmingham, Ala.
Finally, you may be interested in this Jan. 2016 poll by STAT-Harvard. It found that 65% of respondents believed that "changing the genes of unborn babies to reduce their risk of developing certain serious diseases" should be illegal.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by quintessence on Thursday July 28 2016, @03:32AM
How big of an enhancement are we talking about? 10% greater intellect/strength? Yeah, you can keep it. 20%? 30%? 70%? When you start getting into nearly a different species, I think it makes the decision that much more difficult.
I wonder how the people cheerleading this feel about things like breast/penis augmentation surgeries and the like.
Sam Harris pointed out the context matters greatly. A large portion of Americans support something like bringing Down's babies and the like to normal intelligence, but extending beyond normal intelligence is met with more reticence.
I think there is an unspoken existential dread to all this in not wanting to loose your sense of identity (you even see it with lottery winners who rank winning equivalently to people who have lost a limb long-term), to where reversibility is the difference between college people doing Adderall to improve their grade and jumping headlong into the unknown.
Not to mention the experiments with breeding silver foxes makes clear we don't have a good grasp of the interplay in gene expression. If other people want to be the guinea pigs however, more power to them.
It's not only a question of what you gain, but what you loose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @05:09AM
I wonder how the people cheerleading this feel about things like breast/penis augmentation surgeries and the like.
Go for it. I don't care.