[ExI] Fwd: Dope was Re: state of conflict technology

[William Flynn Wallace]

meant for everyone, Dave

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 1:08 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Dope was Re: state of conflict technology
To: William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>


Did you mean to send this only to me?

On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 1:51 PM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I think we now know how to prevent cystic fibrosis.  Any scientific
> procedure can have unintended complications, but morally I would go ahead
> and prevent it.  Wouldn't you?  And natural selection is so very slow.
> After all, barring some truly impossible event, humans are here to stay.
> Offspring not making it to maturity and not passing on genes is likely to
> do little to extinguish those genes - too many people around with them.  As
> for mutations, I don't know what you are talking about.  I was talking
> about known diseases to eliminate.  bill w
>
> On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 8:20 AM Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 11:52 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> But as you know more than most, we have thousands of diseases or
>>> conditions with some genetic links that we have had for many millennia and
>>> they are still around.  Just waiting for natural selection seems a poor
>>> choice.  I can see a future where everyone will get genetic testing, paid
>>> for in part by the government, since health conditions of children drain a
>>> lot of public funds.  Prevention is always better.  Of course there will be
>>> those who resist such testing and they will be shown that they are paying
>>> the price by the poorer health of their children compared to those tested.
>>>
>>
>> No doubt there are some obvious fixes we could apply, but don't pooh-pooh
>> natural selection: it's done us right so far. There's more we don't know
>> about genetics and epigenetics than we do know, and our "fixes" may turn
>> out to be naive or have unintended consequences. Genetic diversity is good
>> for the species--we never know when a mutation will turn out to be
>> beneficial for some new disease or condition.
>>
>> -Dave
>>
>
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