Recently a writer by the name of Diana P. shared her opinions on the idea of human genetic engineering. To summarize, she found the idea unethical, dangerous, and fraught with possibility for for social schisms. The author refers to genetic engineering as, “...one of the most controversial ideas of all time”, and proceeds to lampoon the idea as an extremely destructive path of human development that could lead to some unspecified massive damage if abused. I find this line of thinking to be highly foolhardy and lacking in reason, foresight, or even hindsight. Such things I will bring up in the following indeterminate amount of text.

Firstly, the initial paragraph, a 'hook' so to speak, is absolutely nothing but attention grabbing fear mongering of an absurd sort. It features a young man racing in a high school track meet who is beaten by a fellow contender in one fourth the time, with said contender presumably being genetically engineered in one way or another to be faster. This fundamentally misunderstands how genetic engineering works. Even assuming a scenario in which the person were altered from an embryo and did not take part in gene therapy, this is an absurd situation that is entirely impossible with our current technology and isn't even in the foreseeable future yet. More importantly, are we going to say that the idea of creating the greatest thing humans can be is a bad thing? The entire point of science and engineering is to create the best world for exactly one group: Humanity. We were cold, so we made fire. We needed tools, so we sharpened rocks. Sharp rocks weren't good enough, so we learned how to refine metals and smith them. The list of times we broke the natural flow of the world for advancement of the species is endless. The assumption that some areas of this are somehow sacred is absurd. Were I to question the ethics of writing about World War Two and the actions of Nazis during said war people would call me insane, they would call me a censor. The idea that science that could save millions of people from hellish existences and give the human race as a whole no fear of those things ever again is being lampooned as a thing to fear and hide from is absolute madness.

Moving swiftly onwards to the second paragraph, it speaks of the world on the verge of a scientific revolution and referring to genetic engineering of humans as 'one of the most controversial ideas of all time', as well as stating vaguely that human genetic engineering is bad, in their opinion. That's, well, to put it bluntly, quite inaccurate. Genetic engineering overall is in fact one of the most controversial ideas of all time, but there is little controversy over human genetic engineering. Overall the scientific community has decided that it's quite unethical and, more importantly, economically unsound, and as such has been mostly abandoned. Going back to the idea that we stand on the verge of a scientific revolution, I cannot argue. We are making leaps and bounds in medicine, astronomy, robotics, and a huge amount of other fields. What is another time that such huge scientific research occurred that shaped the world as we know it? The Renaissance, an era of enlightenment and the clean pursuit of science. Right? Wrong. The Renaissance was an era of grave robbery, unethical experiments, outright plagiarism, and the complete destruction of any morals for the sake of science and the good of the many. Those Renaissance men who created the foundation of science as we know it were cutthroats who realized early that the only way to research the things they wanted to research was to drop ethics for the sake of progress. Of course I'm not suggesting we allow everything to go, but many wish to reap the rewards without plowing the field first and that is simply absurd.

The third paragraph is even more absurd. It states that the ethical dilemmas of human genetic engineering are, in essence, that human genetic engineering is “playing god” and that that is just too much power for the human race. My counterargument is a single word: Domestication. Domestication, for those who don't know, is the process of adapting wild plants and animals for human use. From this, we took wolves and over generations we made them dumber and more subservient. We essentially took wolves as a species and broke them over our knee because it pleased us. We did much the same to the progenitors of cattle, turning them from very wild and dangerous animals to beasts with little to no will or purpose beyond what we wish them to do. The list of species runs on beyond reasonable amounts to count, much less list, but I believe the point has been made. We already “play god”. We do what we want and reap the results. We play a large part in the universe because our species rolled the dice and was lucky enough to win the lottery and be smart enough to do just that, carve out a part of the universe large enough that we could begin to shape our world. Stating that this is the time we “play god” is absurd. Our species was born to play god, we merely filled the role. Had squid or dogs or deer or any other species risen to the occasion, it would be they who would be “playing god”. Our mere existence, our society and technology and all you know and love goes against the basic forces of nature. Prosthetic limbs, antibiotics, organ transplants, blood transfusions, oxygen masks, any form of painkiller, the computer I type this on, the power plants fueling it, and even the clothes I wear are all breaking the natural forces. My problem with this argument is it is so hugely broad and vague that it simply doesn't describe anything. Again, were we to hold everything else we do as a species to this same idea, we would still be living in caves. And to address the closing statement of the paragraph, that we should all simply accept ourselves the way we are, see above. It would simply be repetitive to write a reply to that statement.

The fourth and fifth paragraphs bring some detail to the idea of these societal problems the author spoke of earlier. Sort of. Ish. If you squint a bit. The fourth is another hook paragraph, so I suppose the hyperbole can be accepted to some degree. However, there is one major flaw in this statement that I simply cannot overlook, and that is the misuse of the word genotype. An organism's genotype is the actual genetic makeup. Were someone genetically engineered to hold muscle mass better than others, to bring up an absurd situation that isn't even possible yet, there would be no way to tell said person had been engineered as such and didn't just get a lucky roll of the genetic dice. It's not as if everyone would walk around with t-shirts that state their genetic modification. The word that I believe the author may have been looking for is phenotype, which is the actual expression of an organism's genotype, or the set of actual observable characteristics of an organism. However, even then this point is simple fear mongering. Discrimination based on phenotype already exists: It's called racism, sexism, and countless other names. Discrimination based on phenotype is nothing new, and again, would not affect people who were genetically engineered unless they went around advertising it, and even then may not affect them. Though again, it is a hook paragraph intended to keep interest, so it can be slightly forgiven. Moving on to the paragraph proper, or the fifth paragraph, there are less forgivable statements. The fifth paragraph begins to bring classism into the mix, pointing out that the rich and powerful would most likely have greater access to this technology than those of lower social classes. This, however, is nothing new. In all of life, the rich have much better chances of surviving and thriving than the poor. It is a fact of capitalism, the man with the most coin is king. What the author is bringing up isn’t a problem of the technology: It’s a problem of the society we live in. But that isn’t the most egregious part of this paragraph, as the author once again brings up this idea that genetic engineering can create people meaningfully beyond natural humans in the near future, which is just not true, though I have already discussed this. Though it is unfortunate that the rich and powerful may see the majority of the positives from this technology, nobody asked who was going to benefit the most from antibiotics or X-rays. I see no reason to treat this scenario any different.

The sixth and seventh, again a hook and a body paragraph, bring up the idea that the technology just isn’t there and that the science is in its infancy, something I can not argue greatly with. We are still learning what can happen when genetic engineering goes wrong, and attempting to figure out how to limit the damage and find out the full effects of alterations is still one of the most important research topics for genetic engineering. However, what the paragraphs go on to discuss is quite mad, but more on that in a moment. The hook this time is actually not bad, bringing up the reasonable point that perhaps humanity isn’t ready for this advance to be widely used. That is actually a topic that is interesting to discuss, assuming we’re discussing alteration of humanity for non medical purposes. However, the author proceeds to dash this actually interesting hook with the following paragraph that states despite the pros of genetic engineering being vast, the technology is neither promising nor reliable, citing that despite seven years since the first gene therapy trial on humans, there have been little results. Let me put this as bluntly as I can. This is science. Sputnik, the first successful attempt to put an object into what we deem to be space, was launched in nineteen fifty seven. The first time a human set foot in space was four years later in nineteen sixty one, and the first time man set foot on a planet other than Earth was in nineteen sixty nine, eight years later than the first time man was in space and twelve years after Sputnik was successfully launched. Does that mean we should have given up on going to space after we couldn’t get a man on the moon for eight years since the last development? The earliest mention of penicillin’s antibiotic capabilities was in eighteen ninety seven by a Frenchman who cured guinea pigs of typhoid. The first time it was recorded to be used to cure a disease in a human? Nineteen thirty. Thirty three years later. Should we have given up on penicillin because it took thirty three years for someone to be cured? Of course not. Science takes time. It takes failure after failure after failure. It takes huge investments of time, money, and manpower. It takes people willing to do their jobs, nay, their duty to the human race regardless of the price to them or their testers. Because they have faith that it was worth the price. Maybe not that decade, or the next, maybe not for thirty three years, but that one day it will have been worth the price. Men and women of science have paid this price since before science as we know it existed, because they always had faith that the sacrifices made would be worth it one day. If they had wanted fast results they could have been merchants or potters or rug makers or soldiers, but instead they chose to put their reputations on the line in the hope that what they were doing would help. Science isn’t about getting a result in seven years. It’s about getting results in thirty three. It’s about introducing a kind of medicine that has saved more people than you could reasonably count twenty one years after you’re buried. The idea that something shouldn’t be tested simply because we we don’t know all about it is not only madness but goes against the very nature of science and spits on the graves of those who came before and payed the price that no one else would pay. This paragraph is the paragraph that truly sealed for me that this was spoken from not simply ignorance of the topic, but of the basic concepts of how science works, as though the author were a blind man describing great paintings of van Gogh.

The final paragraph, a quick conclusion to the piece, says that though it is a part of human nature to wish to improve ourselves and become more, perhaps there are things we should not change. This statement is something I’ve covered before already in my fourth paragraph, but to reiterate, it is absurd to make statements that we’re taking it too far now and now alone. We broke the dog for our own personal gain, we tore the Earth asunder because it pleased us. Mountains obstructed us, so we cut away the mountains. We were cold, so we cut wood and burned it. We got tired of burning wood, so we harnessed what is essentially the same force used to create lightning to keep warm. We took a fundamental force of the universe, magnetism, and turned it into an oddity for children. The human race has survived by accepting changes that benefit the furthering of the species and spurning those that are contrary to that goal. Genetic engineering has many legitimate dangers that the author hasn’t even given lip service to, choosing instead to favor vague statements on how genetically engineering humans is generally bad without substance, backing, or sense. The concept of discrimination dependant on genotype is impossible, and discrimination due to phenotype already exists. Classism has existed and always will exist, genetic engineering won’t cause it and if it does exacerbate it, it will be a drop in the bucket. The ethical dilemmas are no different to the ethical dilemmas of domesticating animals with little to lose and everything to gain. Genetic engineering can not create superheroes, despite what television and cinema may say, the idea of doing anything meaningful to improve human function above the average through genetic engineering is such a pipe dream it’s widely considered a mad man’s field. Science is not a game one plays in an hour and gets a reward for. A scientific discovery can take half a decade, or it can take thirty three years to finally be useful. The argument that the science is young and not yet fully developed is simply more reason to continue testing it so we may master it.

The human race has come a long way. We came down from the trees, developed fire, tools, societies. We found the animals wanting, and so we forged them over generations into what we wanted. We saw the land lacking, so we made it what we wanted it to be. The human species rolled the dice and won the chance to break every rule, to profit like no species before had. We were handed a gift that we used vigorously to make ourselves more than we could ever have dreamed of being before and cushion those who could not be as much as the rest. Ever since man stood hunched over a bundle of sticks and struck two stones together until the sticks were bathed in orange light, humanity was on a road to greatness we could not step off. We still walk that road, and we most likely forever will. That road comes fraught with costs, the price of greatness, that brave souls throughout our history have payed so all may benefit. Now, we stand upon the precipice of one of the greatest opportunities to advance us at our most fundamental level only to have those who have no respect for the investment it takes for these things and just want results now, those with no respect for those who made those investments, for those who poured and still pour blood sweat and tears into their work, those who risk everything for the betterment of our species, tell those brave enough to pay the price that they are power hungry and go against the very laws of nature we were born to bend till they break. The highest honor and boon a species can earn is the right to make the rules and never fear the universe. We stand on the path to that honor, obstructed in our journey to greatness only by time and fools who would have us abandon the greatest thing a species can be, the latter a group that should not be suffered for a moment. This writer, and those who support the shoddily written article and ignorant opinions enclosed within it, are just a few of those fools. Let us suffer them no further.