At 03:59 PM 7/7/03 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:

There are some things where nearly everyone will agree a genetic fix is desirable - for example, suceptibility to heart disease, cancer, dental caries, and myopia. Other 'vanity' fixes seem pretty harmless - being tall, busty, or having a well-stuffed package.

Its when we get to 'fixes' to behaviour and personality that things start to get very hairy.

Although your examples are important, anyone who has or has known someone with depression, schizophrenia, or ADD [1] will argue that *subjectively unpleasant* mental ills are as worth fixing as bad teeth. If not more so. I fear that those in

power will use genetic engineering as they have used every other tool at their disposal - weapons, states, laws, and governments - to maintain their position at the expense of the overall welfare of the species, by allowing improvements only to their own descendents, while requiring changes to those out of power which make it harder for them to change their status.

Agreed, as with the rest of your post. There are real horrorshow future possibilities. One more point. What is "adaptive" depends on your environment. As I try to explain to my more pigmented wife (it comes up because my 3.8 year old is in the "why" phase) while I'd get skin cancer in tropical zones, she'd get rickets in more northerly areas. Extrapolate to personality properties like "inhibition" (recently shown to be persistant from 2 to 20 year olds ie genetic) "aggression", etc. [1] Please don't lets start the flame about chemical coercion in mandatory youth education camps. Real ADD fucks people up. Which is not to say that M.Y.E.C. are well designed nor that ADD treatments are abused.