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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Gene editing

dimanche 6 août 2017 à 02:00

Gene editing could someday make possible the choice of improved traits for human babies. I don't see anything wrong with that, a priori; but if enhancement is available only to rich parents, they will use it to cement their families' domination of society.

This can't happen very soon. Many experiments would be needed to develop a technology so reliable that people would willingly use it on their children, outside of avoiding a bad disease. Then people would arrive at the difficult question of which genes are preferable for their children, which often begs the question, "better for what?"

Even determining whether a given combination of genes will have some horrible result is not easy. In general, it would require an advanced understanding of how various specific human alleles interact.