I don't understand why there are "morality issues" with using genetic engineering to perfect the human race to prevent...

>genetic engineering would reduce variation
why doesn't this meme die? besides the point is there is only so much useful variation, deleterious alleles are useless at best. there will never be a scenario where increased cancer risk or mental retardation is beneficial.

That is true in general but won't hold true when we start augmenting our immune systems and expanding their capabilities. It's not hard to see how a population of augments would be better than any natural diverse population.

>there is only so much useful variation
There isn't. Every animal alive today is alive because it was able to survive. It met the standard of the fitness function that composed its ecology.

The fact that it's a meme should tell you all that you need to know about why it won't die: If we allow ourselves to run wild with our desires, we'll all get memed, marketed, manipulated, and social pressured into adopt the same set of "desirable" traits. The fact that you haven't asked what our future desires will be when designer babies come around is evidence about you, not about the rest of us. It's a meme because everyone can see exactly how fickle we really are, and we know exactly what designed babies will be like. It's not a question to the rest of us; there are only so many types of 'upgrades' and 'implants' you can design before you literally run out of ideas. The diversity is not improved by being able to pick and choose, it's lessened.

Diversity is a problem because disease exists. Monocultures are dangerous because disease can evolve to attack one type of crop but leave the rest of the crop unharmed. It's not that the macroscopic traits like atheleticism and empathy are going to be the death of artificial races, it's that the methods of introducing new genes into a gene pool will *NECESSARILY* create monocultural pockets in the gene pool. The moment a virus can evolve to be supereffective against those *GENES* (rather than the traits to which those genes apply) is the moment people like you realize that genetic engineering isn't a faultless miracle factory. Errors aren't just something to handwave here, they will literally be fatal if not handled correctly. You'll have a genocide on your hands faster than you can say "market demand."

Because if it died, we wouldn't be able to effectively spread fear about genetic engineering.

This is the correct answer. The human body and genome are so complex that we cannot hope to fully understand it enough to make modifications.

>Every animal alive today is alive because it was able to survive.
So those who weren't able to didn't have the variation that was necessary proving my point.

>are only so many types of 'upgrades' and 'implants' you can design before you literally run out of ideas
And each design and upgrade adds to the variation that is there.

>Monocultures are dangerous because disease can evolve to attack one type of crop but leave the rest of the crop unharmed.
Because their individual variation tends to be low. Like us all animals have a limit to immunological specificity. Though that probably can be expanded and when it is our individual immunological specificity will be through the roof and this will cease being an issue.

i meant all living things.

It would get pretty boring if everyone looked the same.

Do you think humans can be genetically engineered faster than a virus can?

Pretty silly thing to fearmonger. It's Lysenkoism never died. No wonder China is kicking our asses, as soon as their 180+ IQ babbies are made it'll be game over for the rest of us. Why is the West so retarded nowadays?

Basically this. There is no "roof" to go though here.

Maybe, if we design a systematic way of doing it. Viruses still need time to infect, mutate, infect, muate some more, etc.

But the point is we wouldn't have to, if we removed the natural limit to the number of HLA variants we can have at any time, each of us as individuals would be able to deal with that many more viruses. Also there is no guarantee as of now that we have all the alleles necessary to deal with any viruses in the future. So really our best bet to dealing with pandemics is to ramp up the bio engg.

*wouldn't have to necessarily

>Viruses still need time to infect, mutate, infect, muate some more, etc.

You're discounting the obvious problem, which is a genetically engineered virus.

Ok, well no risk no reward. This goes for so much research. Think if we never developed nuclear technologies. No MRIs, no nuclear reactors, no radiation therapy, etc.

>removed the natural limit to the number of HLA variants
1. Can gene manipulation actually do this/do you have a reason to believe gene manipulation can actually do this?
2. What is the natural function of that limitation if it is a removable trait? In other words, why didn't the natural genetic variance of the population select for that already?
3. How would this affect our immune system and if it causes our body to attack itself then what good was all the science that led up to it?

We'll never know if we don't try.

And we still get fucked in the eye socket every once in a while for trying to do that.

Yeah so fucked, the West is undergoing mass starvation. You do realize if we didn't engineer crops billions would starve right?

This discussion is pointless. Why make a race of superhumans who are genetically superior that will one day inherit the Earth from us, when you could make a bunch of robots instead? Robots would be even more physically perfect.

Or better make'em cyborgs. Best of both worlds.

why does it have to be either or? Human machine hybrids are where its at. A computer augmented human is better than a computer or a human.

>You do realize if we didn't engineer crops billions would starve right?

Cool, you realize if there were billions of less people we wouldn't face any of these existential crises we do now?

FLESH IS WEAK

That's not the food's fault. That's the parents for not knowing when to keep it in their pants.

It absolutely boggles the mind how people can take issue with the idea of "genetically modifying" certain organisms like plants and vegetables while ignoring the fact that domestication is literally a long-con version of genetic modification.

And as someone who's (tried) doing extensive research on the subject, it seems that literally every objection on the internet ultimately boils down to the "playing god" card. Which is absolutely ludicrous.

I would not be surprised if it was the same thing with less conservative genomics. But as said, it is worth being cautious when it comes to humans. We can't afford to be careless with our species.

>We can't afford to be careless with our species.
What world do you live on? We're careless as hell with ourselves and it doesn't affect the GDP at all.

There is no gene for the human spirit. Just remember that guys.

It isn't, there are just the religious people who call it playing god. Of course, I'm sure back in Jonas Salk's day people said he was playing god.

That plus, it sounds a little bit like eugenics, which has a dirty history (even though the problems were really only with negative eugenics - sterilizing/killing those who were 'genetically inferior').

I can't tell if that's irony or not, but I just noticed that OP used the word "perfect."

I'm not going to say anything else.