At 01:15 PM 7/7/03 -0400, Stormwalker wrote:
On Mon, 7 Jul 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Interesting, thanks. Even a brother's daughter could be refused.
The BRCA genes are only transmitted through the mother, but there are many others that go through both lines.
Could you explain how this could be? Any gene has a chance of continuing unless its on the father's Y he has only daughters. (Patrilineal surnames behave like this. I believe there's a "Cohen"-surname related gene set.) (Mitochondrial chromos of course are matrilineal always. For clones they come from the surrogate.) Males can always keep any maternal gene going, even if its not expressed.
Unintended side effects are all but guaranteed :( The tinkering will resemble eugenics at the building block level. Eliminating genetic diseases will be great, but introducing other things might not be, just as eliminating some things might be bad.
What's wrong with voluntary eugenics? The invention of agriculture started a policy of negative eugenics that culminates with the industrial welfare state paying stupids to breed, while others chose birth control. And banning somatic or germ line fixes to diseases, if you can do them, is as compassionate as banning insulin. Which isn't even a fix, just a workaround. If a germ line fix has an unintended side effect, you either undo it (revert back to being inclined towards diabetes, if this is preferable to the side effect, say) or you debug or patch it. Current & historical medicine is filled with such things for mere *temporary* meds that don't cure anything. "This nasal spray contains a vector with Service Pack 6 for the germ-line diabetes package installed by your grandfather" :-)