Moderator Jamie Metzl is joined by George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Columbia University bioethicist Robert Klitzman, New York Stem Cell Foundation Co-Founder and CEO Susan Solomon, and Princeton Professor of Molecular Biology and Public Policy Lee Silver to discuss the opportunities and challenges of human genetic engineering, among the most important issues of the coming millennia.
Here's a link in case the embedded player doesn't work: http://92yondemand.org/homo-sapiens-2-0-genetic-enhancement-future-humanity/#sthash.YuscIir9.dpuf
More from Jamie Metzl.
These people are delusional, and by that I mean clinically psychotic. They are also batshit stupid about evolution and are committed to anti-scientific teleological views of the evolutionary process. They think that they themselves are the top of the evolutionary ladder and that they themselves are the goal of evolution. JMJ. Teilhard de Chardin was much better at this. Evolution works by adaptation to the current environment and has no goal.
ReplyDeleteThe dream of eugenics will not die. In the 1930's Margaret Sanger and other Progressives worked to eliminate (i.e., reduce to zero in number) blacks, Jews and underclass whites. Planned Parenthood continues the project. These guys are fellow travelers. Literal Nazis.
One is reminded of the Singularity and of all the batshit crazies who believe in it.
So what? Is it wrong to eradicate disease and enhance the human? I agree that murder in the name of improving the human race is evil. But are they advocating that?
ReplyDeleteBut I oppose their disregard for human embyros. Killing humans in the womb is wrong.
ReplyDeleteRobert Wright wrote a really good book called Non-Zero which argues that evolution tends towards increased complexity because of basic game theory math. This doesn't mean that evolution had to happen the way it did, but rather that things like intelligence occupy stable peaks on the evolutionary landscape.
ReplyDeleteAnother way of stating this is that there are most likely other intelligent species out in the universe, because there are huge evolutionary advantages to being able to understand and manipulate your environment.
Somewhat off-topic, but here's an interesting article on declining(!) heritable g in western societies:
ReplyDeletehttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3c4TxciNeJZN0I0NzAzVU0zeDQ/view
I'm not an expert, but this seems plausible. Curious if others have more informed analyses.