Designer babies - the first step towards destruction

In yet another example of things that can be done, but shouldn't, I offer the recent revelation that babies can now be made to order. Or at least one fertility clinic is touting that as its sales pitch.

Some may question the predictability and efficiency of the claims of this fertility clinic, but I don't think that matters. The question is not can it be done now or not, but if it should be done at all. I stand firmly against the idea. It's an abomination at every turn.

Basically what is being offered is the ability to choose the hair and eye color of an unborn child. Now that the cat is out of the bag, the next logical step is someone offering to guarantee the genetic purity of a child. Or that they can ensure that the child is superior to other kids in various criteria.

Sound familiar? It sounds exactly like the misbegotten warped and repugnant ideals of the Nazi Party.

As we have moved forward with out ability to alter genes and manipulate stem cells we have moved closer to giving some fool the potential to try to create a 'master race'. The fact that we don't understand all the things we can manipulate, nor their long-term repercussions on humanity has not hindered some scientist from trying anyway. The line between science fiction and outright insanity is getting more blurred by the day.

If we can pre-select the eyes and hair of a child, why not their color? Or their height? Maybe give them a better aptitude for learning, or art. Hell, why not design the child to be a fantastic scientist or business leader. Of course this will cost money. So only a very narrow group of people in the world will have this option. Until one day the Government (any government) decides to help out the poorer part of its nation.

Yep, then we get government sanctioned changes. Of course they might also slip in a tendency to be less intelligent, or more servile, or weaker. Not like the common person will ever understand enough to know if it's being done. Not like governments have never experimented on the populace (various Nazi experiments on Jews in WWII and the Tuskegee Experiments in the U.S. as just 2 examples of this in the last 60 years).

But this is all fiction, I'm just being extreme. Just like being able to pick the eye color of your kids was, until someone found a way to do it.

Yet there is another side to this dilemma. We don't know what the hell we are doing. Yes someone can figure out a way to change this or that. But we don't know why nature doesn't make that same choice.

Perhaps in giving the masses red hair (as an example) we are also dropping the ability to fight off a strain of the flu, or some other disease that right now affects no one. Suddenly a minor bacteria that has existed as long as we have becomes a life threatening foe to the prolonged existence of humanity.

Maybe we will activate recessive genes we have yet to identify and understand, that cause these manipulated beings to die of heart attacks or brain aneurysms by the time they hit 30. Or that they become infertile after age 25. Or that their kids will have these problems.

Let's go further into the science fiction that does not exist today, yet. Why not mass produce these kids to create armies. Something like a cross between the clones in Star Wars and the troops of Soldier. Unfeeling, barely human, super creatures that have one purpose - and that no one cares about because they aren't human. Until the day they care. Or something goes wrong.

All of these options are probable. In fact they all might happen together, or one after another. And worse things are equally possible. Why not remove the ability of any race you dislike from being able to procreate. Why not eliminate any child not up to the standards of the day. Don't consider that you could be destroying, or preventing, a genius like George Washington Carver, Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking because of their looks, weaknesses or ethnic backgrounds.

Yes it all sounds like a bad dream. I'm just ranting about nothing. It will never happen. Just like no one ever tried to make human clones - oh wait, they have. Well, its not like we have ever made a drug that turns out to be deadly to the user because we did not know what could happen down the road - oh wait, we have. Well at least mankind has never created anything that was supposed to be beneficial that has been turned into a weapon of mass destruction - need I say it again, we have.

The only difference between sci-fi and reality is time and effort. Given the stakes of determining the progeny of the human race, effort is not a question.

This is not something we should do. This is something that must be banned. No matter how innocent it seems today, the result in the future will only harbor pain to us all. And I say again

"Just because we can do a thing, does not mean we must."

History Channel and world end - 3.19.2007.2

Continued from Part 1...

The scarier thought is that there will be an accident that creates a plague to make the Black Death (bubonic plague) look like having sniffles. The odds of this are massively increasing each day if you ask me. If you wonder how, it’s simple. Cloning and genetically modified foods and animals.

We don’t understand the basic DNA strand. We have no idea what everything does, or how they are connected. Yet we are actively changing aspects of these chains to create effects we think we want. Scientists may feel very strongly about how correct they are, but they felt just as strong about the world being flat or eggs being bad for you. Science is never written in stone, and we constantly find out that things we absolutely knew a year ago are completely wrong. In the meantime there is an immense volume of things we don’t even know enough to guess about.

Think of it as Russian Roulette, with genes instead of bullets. Nature has spent millions of years to create the right genetic structure, without short term or long-term negative effects. In the last 20 years humans have decided we know better and are messing with what nature has in place. We don’t know what the floor of the ocean looks like, we don’t know when oil in the ground will be used up, we can’t even tell what the weather will be locally with any guarantee. Yet genetically manipulated plants and animals are ok for consumption because our governments say so. (That’s the same governments that can’t balance a budget and regularly mismanage everything they touch – like the post office) So if you think about it, some uber-scientist trying to make a better cow or wheat have a very reasonable chance of making a disease completely without knowledge as a by-product or accident.

But none of these are the #1 issue facing us.

Nope the worst thing facing man today is global warming, or also called global climate change. This is just political garbage. This part of the show had a nice comment by Al Gore, and clips from his movie. They even took a couple of shots at Fox News reporters for questioning if global warming exists. That’s political, not science.

The fact is we have no idea what is going on with the environment. None. Beyond about 1-200 years ago we have no records of the weather. There were none to be had. What was the weather in 1542? No idea is known as fact. General guesses are made based on what was written and what we can understand in the ground, but that’s only a guess. 50,000 years ago? Forget it. Pure guesses based on what we can find. It may be presented as fact but we have no better idea than what killed the dinosaurs. Matter of fact we have better ideas of how many types of dinosaurs existed than the weather.

Continued in Part 3...

How might the Earth end - 3.19.2007.1

I was just watching a program on the History Channel, Last Days On Earth, which mentions the 7 most deadly events that can end life on Earth as we know it. It’s quite interesting. The order in which the events are listed is kind of funny, in that the most political is the most likely. If you ask me, that’s just bull.

Think about it. The chance of the Earth being struck by a large space-born mass is incalculable. The reason being we have no idea what is happening in space. Seriously. There is maybe 1% of the sky being watched at any particular sky on any given day. Not a heck of a lot. If something is coming at us, we wouldn’t even see it, unless we got really lucky and it was really close.

But even if we did, there is virtually nothing we could do about it. Hollywood movies aside, the reality is that we have nothing that could stop a space-born body. Between the mass and speed that an object might have, nuclear missiles would be little better than throwing a pebble at a howitzer shell and expecting it to be deflected or stopped. Any other solution is a pipedream or far outside our current capabilities. Several ideas, like placing a solar parachute to slow/change the trajectory or landing on the object is beyond the technology we have today. In addition it is so severely under-funded that it’s infessible. Suffice to say that a planet killer (an object about 6 miles in dimensions which is not particularly big at all) continues to be exactly that.

A black hole is just not a reality. While they exist and move in space they are noticeable in effect and by sight. They stand out and are incredibly hard to miss. Even with the limited resources we have, it would be noticed. Were one to be close enough to affect the planet, there is nothing we can do about it and death would follow in a decade or less.

The main events leading to our demise are man-made. Or so we are lead to believe. The chance of nuclear war is virtually assured. The ability to make smaller and deadlier weapons, while maintaining the weapons already created, ensures that someone will start to use these weapons. Add to that fact the thought that machines made decades ago maintain many of these weapons, and over time all machines fail. So either by accident or by purpose nuclear weapons are going to change the world.

While nukes are an eventual problem, an unforeseen problem is genetic manipulation. Unlike the plagues of the past, the future problems are most likely going to be man-made. This may be due to a directed action, or through lack of knowledge. The direct action is some madman making disease XYZ and letting it loose. There are more than enough people with the knowledge and facilities available to do so. It’s surprisingly easy enough, microbiology and genetics are taught at virtually every 4-year college and textbooks on the subject are available in every library and the internet. IF anyone thinks someone isn’t working on this now, wake up. Whether its a fanatic or a government agency, dozens of biological weapons have existed since WWI and the number is just growing. Eventually one of them will get out.

Continued in part 2...