You need not hide anylonger, it was not untill a few years ago that I realised that I could socialise with the rebelous and the cool if I use my intellegance to obsearve and respond acordinglly to there type of people. And we are the the rabelous because we keep saying the age old-question why? what those damned reasearchers want to do is to make us stop asking and make us all happy littlie puppets of a greedy goverment.

For referance I have Aspergers and a fucked up eye-socket (it is no comparison to the annyoance of visual snow, you have my simpithy's Standey Tarrant) that means that I can't join any air-force or go into space in a de-pressured enviroment.

(Those whom are hard-core chistin may take offence to the next paragraph). Fristly I belive that there is no god and was probably birthed to what 1 man could not do, watch all of us and hand out punishment for those who do wrong. Mostly in history god has been an excuse for oppression by kings and queens but god influance has become better with the intoduction of democracy.

Just remmember you can be better then god by doing good, yes thats right one more "o" better. giggity   .

Deserve what? Knowing everything? Being alive? Going to heaven? And it's no one's right to decide who deserves something and who doesn't (except for God). Everyone has flaws and no person is perfect. You make it sound like a person's purpose with a serious flaw is to bring other people without them back to earth and reality. There's enough reality by watching the news. Everyone's purpose is to live their lives the way they see fit.



Do you know God's grand design? Who's to say that genetic manipulation is not a part of it. In my opinion, it is a scary thing that we should be very careful with. It's one thing to try to change after you're born, but modifying genetic code beforehand is more like fabricating a person.

I must of done a good job writing then.



I believe in God?

1)I don't believe in God. I merely studied some people who did in philosophy.
2)God and perfection sort of go together. Its sort of like 2+2=4. The '+' sign means to add, and if it didn't mean that, it would be useless and meaningless. However, the meaning of perfection has been different for different philosophers. I haven't got the section about God in philosophy yet. Ask me about it later.
3)What would a perfect and good entity do different?



If I believed that God existed, I would be glad that he didn't curse me with anything serious, but since I don't believe in him, I don't actually care.



A story on the radio about how folks with Asperger's Syndrome and forums? I would of liked to have listened to it...



I agree with what you saying here. There some things that 'normal' person would never, ever do. The only reason that they would bother, is if they had some unusual reason to do so, which might include being crazy...



*Chuckles*
I was wondering if someone might catch that. I was begining think that peoples minds here were too, well... (for a lack of a better word) stupid for me to bother posting in this thread. I'm glad my suspicions were incorrect.
_________________
*Yawn* I'm going to get some sleep. I'll be back tomorrow.

P.S. My views a somewhere inbetween the two extremes I've presented thus far, like most of you. The two big, major posts I made were because I felt all of us talking about how we agreed was, well... boring.

Wow, never realized there were so many other people with Asperger's here. Or on forums in general. Hullo thar!

But anyways, yes. I think the only defects that should be screenable are life threatening defects. Aspergers is not life-threatening. Autism isn't either. Down Syndrome can be, so I'm iffy on that. But hair color, skin color, etc... shouldn't be touchable. And I would much rather be born the way I am now, with defected eyes and Aspergers and who knows all the other things, than be forced against my will to be predetermined to be someone ELSE'S idea of proper.

I differ with my parents on so many points, I'd be miserable if I was "engineered" to become their idea of correct. Something everyone needs to take into account is that when you mess with an embryo, it's like doing surgery without their consent. You wouldn't perform a sex-change operation on someone without asking, so why would you change their sex pre-birth?

I think this technology should be used for curing terminal diseases only.When a superior race than man, even if it was stemed from man, it would be different. Think about it, if a certain race of people was made that was faster, stronger, taller, more intellegent, and superior reflexes; we would be obsolete. They would begin to think they are superior to us all and start a "specist" war against us. If that race ever began to breed with only superior "humans" they could exterminate us all, especially with all of their upgrades. If you begin to engineer a master race...you're as bad as Hitler.

A super muscular super sensed man can still die by the M-16 or the lazer rifle or whatever!

Yea, but if he is quicker with a gun you are at a disadvantage. He would also have better eyesight than yours(I wasn't reffering to your visual snow). Plus if he gets close to you you aren't gonna be around much longer...

Our numbers are slowly growing. In time, we'll be ready to take over the world. *Insert evil laugh*



Life threating conditions is understanable, but what about conditions that make life very difficult? You can learn to cope with vision problems, but what if life curses you so you can't even tie your own shoes? How about needing assistance so you can just live, let alone anything else?



Umm... how do you know that you wouldn't be "engineered" to be not miserable?

Have you seen the movie Gattaca??? There is no gene for the human spirit. Oppressed and outraged by the superiors we could use our rage and hatred to give us a huge morale advantage. Raw hatred and willingness to fight is probably one of the best attributes a warrior can have. Just look at Braveheart. Outnumbered and out-teched by knights, they proceed to kick some English butt. Why do you think the war in Iraq goes ill? We are America and we have superior technology. But these terrorists maniacs aren't afraid to die; to them, death is actually a bonus. What you are describing above wouldn't happen if I had anything to say about it.

I think this is something to be worried about , but something we have no real control over
This issue is real, we have the basic technolgy, this tech will be used. are we as Mr and Mrs voters going to stop te super powerful from doing what they chose.

I think that the human super rich in the decades to come will use any technology available for their improvement no matter what the ethical cost to the masses.

Of course, you are 100% right.

All those damn Hollywood idiots will be the first to clone themselves for spare body parts.

I hope I'm not correct ever.

But lets face it you are. Evil will abound and dark days will lie ahead.

Aye, if this stuff DOES happen, I'm sure the rich will most likely be the ones to put it into power as Marcus Cardiff said. They an always BUY votes right?...come to think of it, if the super races rebell it would be quite ironic don't you think?

Haha... nice one

So if you had the chance to engineer your next (or first) child, then how would you make he or she turn out?

Well, the time in question is in the future for me...it depends on the situation at hand.

The only people that can stop this evil are hackers, all of the information on gentic modifiction is sorted in some super-compters all around the world, if hackers suddenly deside to destroy this information stored in those supercomputers the researchers will spend anthoer 3 decades to retrevie such infromation, I just hope they do.  

hell no, why would you want to in the frist place?, which parent whould do that, ohh wait I fergot about the greedy !#@$#@@%%#!!@!##$%#$##$@@!!@#$$@#$!@!!#@#$$ rich arse !@##$%%@#%^@! mather !@$%ers.

In four billion years (actually less, but I'll leave that to the astroboys), the Earth will be uninhabitable. Somewhat later than that, entropy and universal expansion will have proceeded to the point where living on other worlds will be difficult to ipossible as well. Good or evil, it will all end eventually.

Best to concentrate on doing what you believe is right. The future will tend to itself.

*Yawn* I don't feel like letting this post die just quite yet.

1) Why would the super race rebel?
If the super race is that good, wouldn't it be us trying to rebel. Lets face it, if the super rich and powerful were the ones to have their children augmented, then wouldn't those children inherit their 'parents' money and power? So not only would there be the next generation of rich and powerful, but they would most likely be even more rich and powerful, because of their augmented abilities. So why would they rebel against a system that they are in control of?

2) Why would having your children augmented be a bad thing?
Many of you that have posted here have expressed a distaste for any genetic modifications beyond what would be needed to deal with diseases, and such. The problem that many of you have is that you don't like the idea of someone chosing to make you someone different than you are now, which is sort of stupid when you think about it. When you are born, your parents try to teach you somethings, and try to mold you into a person. They give you books, and toys (trucks for boys, barbies for girls) to try to mold you into something that society considers acceptable. In this case boys into workers, and girls into wives (and with all of the stuff that barbies come with) that spend money on five or six pairs of shoes that they would never wear, among other things.

Then you go to school, where they teach you things such as that democracy is without question, the best form of government, and make any attempt to question it sound absurd. They also teach you things that you have freedom of speach, but yet they also do things that supresses your desire to act freely, such teaching you science and math. They tell you, and may even prove to you, that they are right, any thing else is wrong, thus suppressing attempts think for yourself.

Then there is TV. You don't have shows that teaches you about other forms of government, well only to the extent as to 'show' why democracy is best. Anything that opposes the government is shown as evil, such as the 'greedy' businessman, 'corrupt' politician (not very democratic), or the foriegn power (Nazi, Soviet, and now Terrorist) that is trying to destroy America. They however, never try to show how another point of view as possibly being good. The Facist government of Nazi Germany, although blamed a lot of problems on the Jews, was quite adept at rebuilding Germany to the point where it could start WW II, which is quite the political feat, considering how bad off Germany was.

Then there are friends. They are people who are just as brain washed as you are. So well in fact, that if you were to ask them a question about democracy or something, that they repeat what they brain washed to think. Such examples might be, "Its the best form of government.", or "We are free to do what ever we want." (what you want is probally what they were brain washed to want), etc.

Suffice to say, there are a lot of forces that have an effect on who we are. How would augmenting our children be any different? By the way, if you do value these things, maybe you should engineer your children to express such things more. Then again, the desire for freedom might be the cause of the augment rebellian.

________________
If I encourage any of you to think, I recommend that you take some philosophy so you can learn to think better.

Hey, from someone with genetics experience:

It's esentially scientific ethical code to not clone humans, or alter thier genetics in a non-therapuetic way. (ie - pre birth). That's like super taboo.



Shadow Master - DNA info is public. Go google it. There are entire libraries of many different organisms and their entire code. It's not hidden or secret or some conspiracy. Seriously, I used to do genetics research. I did everything online from looking up DNA sequences to designing primers. We're not out to get you

One thing people forget with Desginer babies is that there is adifference between screening and altering.

We can currently screen. Remove genes for a second. What do you think an Ultra sound is? We're looking to make sure the baby is healthy. Genetic screening has the same functionality. We look for genetic problems (trisomy, sickle cell, etc). If it is found that you have a gene that is linked to a certian disease, we can be sure to check for that disease and hopefully catch it before it becomes serious.

Gene therapy is different. That's the part where you alter a person's genetics. We are still studying that. Most studies focus on replacing damaged genes with new ones.
And when I say still looking at it, its more like we have ideas of how we could do it, but we can't really get anything to work well.

What people don't get (and for the most part it is not widely known) is that there is a difference between ones genes and ones environment. Our existence, everything from gender to occupation is defined socially. Genes do one thing (I'm keeping it simple). They code for proteins. Proteins are chemicals. They react with other chemicals or catalyze reactions. There aren't genes that code for social behaviors and norms. There isn't a success gene, or a good father gene. The majority of our genes are identical. Hemoglobin is Hemoglobin, the same in everyone. At our level of technology, we can only replace a gene with another. We can't make a super gene or build one from scratch.

Desiging children won't take off, because there aren't enough options. We're all really not that different.


PS kesselring - What exactly do you research? I used to do research on protein interaction durring meosis (specifically in the recombination of the chromosomes). I did the background genetics foot work (YaY PCR!!)

That's the point I was trying to subtly make. What's the really all that different from manipulating genes to make a child smarter before birth, than having your child be very focused on education? They're both parents deciding how their child should turn out. Deciding when your child is 2 that they are a great singer and your going to make that their focus in life is pretty much the same as turning on some "singer" gene before their born.



Using me as an example, my parents are very inactive spending most days working and watching tv. My dad is a programmer so there was always computers in my life. I turned out not athletic (don't exercise), BS in CS and MS in CE, not many outdoor activities, too much gaming, little overweight/high blood pressure/probably get type 2 diabetes, etc. So I feel I pretty much matched my environment. Which always baffles me that my older brother is a Archaeologist/Anthropologist who only uses computers since he has to, much more active, traveled the world, etc. Completely different than me but only two years apart.

I just want to avoid a doomed mankind by segregating us into the haves and have not's and keeping a cliff between them, that would be taking a step back to bloody middle ages except it will be forever harder to break with new renessionce.





I not going to say that us Autistic are better then nero's but I reakon that I and Writhy have hit the nail on the head. Thy brothers we are future by setting our emional shield walls and severe left-brian tendencies we can change the world by asking the question why? (even nero's can by asking). I myself was oppressed by the system when I was in grade 1 I said that 1 + 1 = 11 because I studyed roman numerals before the other numeral system. disgrunteled by always being told "I was wrong" I made my own system based on basic geomertical shapes and was 12c's system which if used I think would give whole numbers for curves, atom weights and phyic's culculations, but after a lenthy battle of the minds I gave in   and my young body caved in on social pressures. I just have one message for you, if tell you anything you can't do. If they bully you into subbision it is because they fear the power of your mind. Go and PROVE them wrong.

It is only the fool that douts and questions the power of the mind.

See with your your thrid eye and not the two in front of you.

Signed The Master of Shadow, King of exlie.

P.S:

Don't dout the power of hackers ether.

Are you serious? These powers (except maybe the Soviets) are evil!! Yes, the Nazi regime was efficient at gaining power. They were also efficient at killing 6 million Jews. To say anything but that the Nazi regime is pure evil is ludicrous.