Repair, Augment, Perfect!

At present the entire geneticist world is focused on understanding DNA sequences in order to solve inherent and genealogical disorders, diseases and disabilities. From human to my own work on crops, we, all of us, are attempting in some fashion to better the world through either repairing, augmenting, or perfecting.

In my most recent work I have been developing research samples to augment maize crop in order for it to survive in high salt content soil, thus providing for its farmers and ridding the world of starvation through a bad harvest.

Others are geared more toward human defects or damage – for example, the loss of a limb could be healed and replaced not through surgery but through the splicing of self-repairing lizard DNA. Let’s not discuss the Vacanti mouse. No genetics were involved there.

But, here’s a discussion on arguments against performance enhancing drugs in sports.

I really do believe that once we’ve got the whole sequence appropriately mapped we will be able to rectify (in childhood) most if not all genetic disorders, leading to a perfecting of the species. But this raises the question of whether we should be messing around with God’s creation – if we were squeamish in that sense we should never have started. We can already see so many benefits from playing God as we have done. But, how far do we take it? When do we leave it up to evolution.

The link to performance enhancing drugs discussion raises another questions of augmentation, and whether it is fair to genetically enhance a person’s physique and athletic ability. Should we, could we, would we?

It may indeed not be fair for one athlete to use performance enhancing drugs when others do not, but what about performance enhancing genetic alteration? Is it fair for one to be augmented when others are not?