At 08:36 PM 7/7/03 -0400, Stormwalker wrote:

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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

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you can do them, is as compassionate as banning insulin. Which isn't

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even a fix, just a workaround.

I was thinking of eugenics where something was forced upon others, which I do not think is desirable.

Hey, I oppose *anything* which is forced upon others, even if *I* deem it as "good".

The invention of agriculture has not yet culminated. It gave/gives people time to do other things.

Good luck banning germ lines :)

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If a germ line fix has an unintended side effect, you either undo it (revert back to being inclined towards diabetes, if this is

Yeah, like raise armies, feed bureaucraps, etc. Still, I don't hold it against the farmers. Besides, the dominant cultures are descendants of farmers. See the writings of Jared Diamond. preferable

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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.

Reverting may or not be possible. The products of some germ line may like what they are and wil lnot revert, no matter what other folks think.

Well, if they *like* it, only violent coercion would cause reversion. I was thinking something like, the diabetes-fix package causes premature death or something bothersome like that. Obviously the "service pack 6 nasal spray" needs to refuse to install on folks without the proper prior install. Also it needs to avoid spurious installation on folks who don't want it ---maybe you have to take a snort of some antibiotic combo at the same time to activate it, which is a current technique used for turning on inserted genes. Later