Reply #2: I think Watson,... [View All]

[Kutjara]

like many scientists, pay too little attention to the political dimensions of their work. While this is good in many ways, it also leads to mistaken thinking of the kind he demonstrates here.

In an open and egalitarian society, free of religious and bigotry, racial and sexual intolerance and nationalistic hubris, there might (just might) be a case for genetic engineering of people. This would, of course, presuppose that it is within any given human being's capabilities to know what would make a human 'better.' The law of unintended consequences virtually guarantees that this will never be the case, however.

But that's beside the point. The cold fact is that the human race is so blinded by its parochial concerns and so adamant that whatever it happens to believe at a particular moment is Absolute Truth, that any reengineered humans would, inevitably, be engineered to a political agenda.

Does homosexuality have a genetic component? Edit it out. Are some people genetically predisposed to be slackers? Let's make everyone a worker bee. Is there a genetic basis for religious faith? Switch that gene on in everyone.

We are not mature enough as a species to even contemplate genetic engineering on that scale. So we'll no doubt end up doing it within a decade.