Engineering a human (why not ?!)

T

Truenemo1889

Registered Senior Member
Does anybody know how long it would take to be actually able to
engineer a human , from the base up , every characteristic . Is it going to happen in the next 10 to 20 years ?



Wouldn't it be great to be able to design your offspring . Personally I think conventional conception is to random . It would be great , if we would able to decide if we want an 'out of this world' human being with awesome potential or an average 'no good' brat that would remain a nobody for the rest of his/her pitiful life . It is sad that many people consider human genetic engineering unethical . I understand that some of those people are concerned of the technology since it isn't fully developed ,but I don't understand those people who oppose because they think that it isn't the humanity's business t
to tamper with nature . I guess if they want to limit themselves , that it is their business . Those people should understand that life is oftentimes tough especially for certain people who weren't as fortunate to be born healthy . HGE could change the way we are and the way we perceive the universe . Many people have given me the impression that
only the best of people are capable of great accomplishments , average
low-life people like me often are not able to realize their dreams . They have little influence on their destiny and eventually are going to remain serial material anyway , it doesn't matter how hard they try to be successfull. Many of those people would probably think differently if they realized how imperfect they are . I don't mean that HGE would be able create totally perfect people , but still ,there could be a more than significant difference between a regular person and an genetically engineered person . Superior people are often better of than the average person . Physically and mentally gifted people have advantage over it has often been that way . I hope that one day (as soon as possible) that Human Genetic Engineering and the other sciences are going to reveal the true(engineered) potential of the human race , and
that I am not going to remain inferior for the rest of otherwise worthless existence .

What do you think?

"BUT THE WORST OF ALL ARE TINY THOUGHTS: TRULY , IT IS BETTER TO
DO EVIL RATHER TO THINK SMALL" -Nietzsche


:mad:
 
Truenemo, Imahamster shares your desire to be MORE than one was born to be. Possibilities aren’t limited to gene engineering. Augmenting human reasoning capabilities through biochip implants and modification of brain chemistry may be possible in the near term.

Even without such capabilities a person has information resources available today that give one powers unimagined by great thinkers of the past. If this hamster doesn’t understand a concept a simple web search yields sites with explanations. This hamster gets access to experts who do understand the concept and will explain it to others. (This hamster might not know whether the latest “breakthrough” is significant but this hamster knows where to go to find out.)

In the past the “best” people had some chance of knowing it all. Today it is not possible for a person to keep up with all that goes on in their own field. A student may run across something on the web that an expert in the area has missed. Often a person has to choose between maintaining expertise in a very narrow field or covering broader areas and being satisfied with more superficial understanding. Science has become a group activity in which every person can contribute.

As to self worth…improving body and mind have little to do with self worth. This hamster has known very accomplished people who at times felt their existence was worthless. A hamster is more important to a hamster than the President, a rock star, an Olympic athlete, or a Nobel Prize winner. One should value one’s own pursuits and accomplishments and not let others dictate one’s worth. In a real sense we are all hamsters living our hamster lives as best we can. (How annoying when a little rodent preaches. Sorry.)
 
Imahamster

thank for your reply . I also think that it would be good to combine
technologies to improve the human race . I understand that certain people people from the past weren't necessarily better off than todays
people , but like mant others , I am not a person from the past , so I need to adapt to the requirements of today .:)
 
Yes I think you didn't:D Welcome to sciforums Truenemo1889 and no harm done.
 
Heres my explaination of The "Engineering an Human (Why not's)"

On the most part it's not what one singular scientist is trying to accomplish, and it's not what the outcome could do for everybody on the face of this planet. It mostly boils down to a Political and Social angle.

There are alot of religions in this world and many of their current leaders frown upon this form of creating a human being. Looking at just Catholics it's known that they frown upon abortion's, so the creation of human from tailoring is equally diabolical.

Admittedly there are some Middle-Eastern religions that have texts written that suggest that mankind was catalysed from such human creation, of course that pushes to the bounderies of ethics and theology as you would end up with all these religions having to possibly bow down to another. So it's better in away that creation is disallowed just from the theology point.

Next you have a bunch of points concerning the human that is created. A few gene corrections and you might find that the person houses a deadlier virus than AIDS, that travel through the Respiratory system. So the Geneticist/Biologist/Scientist is not only frowned upon for building a GM child, but also engineering a BIOHAZARD.

There is then points about what if there is a malformity during this humans creation, do they kill It (him/her), do they have the right to terminate them since they forged life to them?
Again moral questions which will pull questions from religions as well as normal mans perception, Most would say "What do I care, it doesn't effect my life" or "It's a complete abomination".

But why create a Human????

Why not some other lifeform that has never existed upon the planet? They could get away with creating a Sub-Specie not cloned from human DNA, but patched together from the similarity framework that we have in conjunction with a library of other animals. Would that be an abomination? (Wanna see a little gray man?)
 
I think the same way ...

about some of the problems . Somebody on sciforums already said oftentimes but not always , religion has been the cause of great suffering . Just like in the middle ages but not on the same scale it puts us back and partially slows down the advancement of some sciences .I can understand that some politicians are against it , not because they think its diabolical but because it is against the view of the majority of the people he/she are representing .

The creation of another species could be quite interesting , but this probably would be seen as the creation of a sub-human or an master race . And we know how many think about something like that . :(

I know that human genetic engineering could be challenging , but if we
work hard enough , we could work out the flaws over a certain period of time . We could probably do humanity a favor (At least i hope so ).:(



p.s. thx for the reply Stryder and Avatar.
 
But if smone really wants to get on with human genetic, he would surely make (has made?) a lab complex in Tobago island or in the middle of Kongo, or smwhere else where it is poorly inhabited and with no laws concerning genetics.

About superhumans:D
I think tht it is inreversable. Now tht we now of genetics sooner or latter the technology will be used to create a "perfect" human(gotta be careful not to make greys instead).
The only problem tht is see is social(I expect researchers not to fail and present an error free work;) ), it is tht some will be way better thn others. I suggest 2 solutions.
1) all newborns on earth are geneticly upgraded, if their parents agree
2) no enchanted abilities or super powers, only the improvement of immune system and such.
Personally prefer the first solution better.
 
Great idea ...

but maybe it would better if go all the way ,so we can find out
what we are going to be capable of .:cool:
 
This isn’t only about newborns. The technology to change an adult’s genetic material exists today and is being improved rapidly. This is not some SciFi future concept. Researchers have already genetically strengthened mouse muscles and increased rat intelligence. (The muscle research was done to help people with Muscular Dystrophy. The “intelligence” research is to aid Alzheimer patients.)
 
I would have n-thing against to acquire some extra intelligence myself. not tht I'm stupid, but extra 500% of brain power would come in handy:D
 
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Heres a little more to my "Creating some other lifeform" portion.

Imagine that Humanity get's to the point of exploring relativity travel, transversing not just space but time. The first occupant of such craft would be something alive and genetic to make sure that it could survive the transition through breaking/forming what ever rules it takes to get where it goes.

No offense Imahamster, But I wouldn't want to load a Rodent, Monkey or dog on board or even a human being. I say this because imagine your relative calculations are slightly off and your "creature" crashes in a fire ball that catalyses life on this planet. Would you want to find out that our entire specie had evolved from the decaying carcass of something like a dog?

Afterall, if geneticists could create a humanoid clone, then they could merge it's brain capacity with that of a computer. Some of you would say that this would create a genetic puppet, but a whole host of doctors thoughts and expertise could coelsce into a single being that could go out and do an experiment that is planned in advanced.

The creators of such a genetic "Clone" being (with no sexual organs) could be a number of renound scientists, and if it catalysed life on this planet, At least we'd known that we had created the lifeform that was sent rather than it being a lab-test animal picked at random.

I would not say that something like this would be to create a master race, but what rights would you adopt for such a creature??

Afterall they wouldn't follow the same course as Darwins Natural Evolution, does that mean we grant them new rules? or adjust the ones we have now?

Even saying that, there are people in the world mistreated everyday far worse than that of animals and less is said and heard of it than that of someone creating a Human in a lab.
 
Stryder, this hamster is crushed. You don’t want a new world to evolve from decaying smooshed hamster? Sigh. (Dreams of a hamster dynasty fading…) That decaying hamster represents four billion years of evolution. Sure sending a “humanoid clone” computer hybrid might shave a few million years off the planet’s development but compared to four billion years that’s really not much. Surely the pride of descending from hamster innards outweighs a slight jump up the evolutionary ladder.

(Worrying about the rights of a fertilized egg cell when billions of humans have few rights does seem absurd. Ah well, hamsters aren’t any more rational than humans.).
 
I appologise Imahamster I might have been a little harsh, due to my logical assumption of your omnipresence. Undoubtably I'm probably wrong to assume that you know who I am [IRL], of course if you did you'd know my nature is that spawned from your Benevolent collegues (Again this relative to you being one of whom I think you might be!)

Of course there was a small joking response that I hasten to add, but not to make a spectacle of Imahamster, but do you have any relatives in "Tales from the Riverbank"?

Sorry couldn't resist asking ;)
 
If only this hamster did have a little omnipresence. This hamster knows little of the online Stryder and none about the “real” Stryder. What this hamster has seen of Stryder is interesting. (That’s a hamster compliment.)

Hmmm… "Tales from the Riverbank"? Google says kid’s show in England during the ‘60’s with a character “Hammy the Hamster”. Nope, this hamster springs from a long line of short research hamsters. No celebrities fell from the family tree.
 
I don't think we will be 'engineering' a human any time soon. I think it will take us quite some time to understand the complexities of the human genome before we are at a stage where we can truly 'engineer' a human. Given all of the possible combinations of our genes, it will be a difficult task to identify the combinations of genes that will need to be modified to produce the characteristics we desire.

Think about it. If I modify 'this' gene sequence then I may get a blond child, but I may have also introduced a tendency towards heart disease. If I modify 'that' gene sequence, then I may created a smarter child who is now a total sociopath and a cold-blooded killer.

I think it will be more like 'mix and matching' a human being at first with a lot of potential mistakes and disasters and this brings to mind all of the ethical questions surrounding this type of research.
 
"Relativity" travel would be an extremely bad idea...none of us knows what the consequenses would be. For example if someone went back and killed Hitler the the population would be (catastrophic) large and we would loose the knowlede we gained in the World wars...the UN...the NATO.

It can't be allowed to happen.

Assasin001
 
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