Gregory Stock's DNA

Here are some excerpts from "Redesigning Humans" written in 2002 by Gregory Stock, former director of UCLA’s Program on Medicine, Technology and Society:

Future parents … will be able to select their children’s [genetic] modules from an expanding common library of enhancements. (p. 192)

People’s genetics would become a manifestation of their parents’ values and predilections. (p. 191)

[There will be] a genetic bazaar where all parents can obtain equivalent talents and potentials for their children. (p. 190)

Rare, special attributes such as photographic memory or extraordinary athletic ability may become both more extreme and more commonplace. (p. 193)

Once we can fashion our children’s biological predispositions, many cultural and personal influences will feed directly into biology. (p. 194)

Future sources of parental dissatisfaction are easy to predict. Some parents will forego germinal choice technology and end up wishing they had used it. (p. 148)

If such interventions become commonplace, the result will be revolutionary, because it will be a major step toward equalizing life’s possibilities. (p. 190)

Provision of free universal access to … [germinal choice technology (GCT)] would align better with our ideals of equal opportunity for children and might be surprisingly affordable. (p. 186)

The gifted of today ultimately may not welcome such a leveling, because it would diminish the edge their children enjoy and make society very competitive, even for the best endowed. (p. 190)

Strong voices will oppose [germinal choice technology (GCT)], but most of the warnings … will come from people with the most to lose – the well-endowed elite. (p. 190)

Critics like Leon Kass … aren’t worried that this technology will fail, but that it will succeed, and succeed gloriously ... [and] tear the fabric of our society. (p. 12)

Policymakers sometimes mistakenly think that they have a choice about whether germinal technologies will come into being. They do not. (p. 172)

Prohibitions are easy political gestures. But once GCT arrives, enforcement will be nearly impossible. (p. 166)

Government abuse is what we must fear, not germinal choice technology (GCT). (p. 199)

Direct human germline manipulations may still be a decade or two away, but methods of choosing specific genes in an embryo are in use today to prevent disease. (p. 2)

Artificial chromosomes … might allow cheap enhancement for the many. (p. 186)

The arrival of safe, reliable germline technology will signal the beginning of human self-design. (p. 3)

Comments

[Gina]

Can you open up the genetic link in an adult brain if a father was a math genius..yet you are a child that does not have the skills?