Technology has always been made to make our lives easier, efficient, faster, and entertaining, making the quality of life a secondary concern for companies sealing it to the public. Regardless of how much technology has changed our daily life, the quality of life has not seemed to have changed very much. Yes, people with painful or deadly conditions can find relief with current day medication, but what about fulfillment. One can say we have better access to information and ideas because of the internet, allowing individuals to research and seek the meaning of life and happiness on their own. Other advancements in everyday life like smartphones, smart TVs, and Smart home devices don’t help people find fulfillment in the same way a long walk in the woods could. Not be cliche, but happiness has always been found within. Coming to the potential of CRISPR and the manipulation of the human genome, I am actually very excited to see what kinds of thing science could with this new tech. My only concern is how it would be advertised to the public, if making a custom baby would be acceptable for parents like the child-to-be as described by Lee Silver (Harris 2016). To do something reckless as performing risky undertested genome alterations for the sake of making a child more attractive, smarter, or athletic is pointless. You are not making someone’s life better by making them genetically different person for true fulfillment has to be earned by everyone. The most frighting thing that could possibly come out of this technology would be the acceptance of the idea that a more genetically perfect person would promote a happier life, for it simply wouldn’t be true in the long run.
When it comes to using CRISPR on humans, the most useful purpose for this technology would be to remove or change inherited dispositions to diseases like cancer, Lou Gehrig disease, or heart disease. Removing suffering would be worth the risk of unknown side effects that may come from this tech, hopefully making the baby born with the CRISPR technology more likely to be consenting.
Hi Anthony,
First off, I really enjoyed you title, it was very original! Also, the first part of your post was very relatable, and you set the stage for the rest of your post very well. With this being said, I agree that the potential of CRISPR is very exciting and will advance the genome science we know now, but I’m not as concerned about the advertising of it. Rather, I think how disproportionally this will be available to people will be the problem. For example, this technology will obviously be very expensive, so the people that are already in power and control most of the wealth and property, will then be able to pass that on to their future generations to ensure their success. In other words, I feel the disproportionate opportunities that will be passed on to future generations is a huge problem. What do you think?