Here’s a photo of some bioenginoodled mice. They glow greenish blue. There are also glowing fish and glowing rabbits, most likely coming soon to a petstore or AllMart near you.
I’m not sure how I should feel about this. On the one hand, I rather like the idea of biological monstrosities like cute glowing fish or cows that squirt chocolate milk, but then on the other hand I don’t want to be trying to rid my rose bushes of the super-intelligent rats or dealing with sharks that can talk. I have a full plate as it is dealing with ordinary creatures, like ants (damn them) and mosquitoes (double damn them).
After all this making of ‘designer pets’, what if people get the big idea to start noodling with human beings? Wouldn’t most parents simply try to have the most attractive, intelligent, and fit genetically engineered children? Wouldn’t that just make it boring to be attractive? Maybe those in the shallow end of the gene pool are necessary so people appreciate intelligence, health, and vigor, so why mess with it? Although, no one wants to be ugly or stupid, so maybe that’s not fair. Maybe people should just not judge other people on whether they’re ugly or stupid, but that’s almost certainly unrealistic.
I definitely want a glow in the dark kid.
Glowing mice would make good nightlights.
And I think the ladder theory is absolute sexist bullshit.
The question isn’t really whether or not there should be ugly and/or stupid people in the world. It’s that ugliness and stupidity are such subjective, mutable ideas. If people could make their children look any way they wanted, we could end up with a frighteningly homogenous new generation–maybe the girls would all grow up busty and blonde, or people would make their kids look like some celebrity who would then be passe, or whatever. People with unconventional features who are beautiful in a unique way (the usual example is Barbra Streisand’s nose but there are tons of others) might become rare. Or everyone might want those “unique” features and they would become totally banal. Certainly unrealistic excess and faddishness would become a factor eventually, if not for the population at large, at least in some subcultures.
That’s just the beauty angle. What’s more difficult to see is that people with other characteristics we see as bad–“stupidity”, which might in some cases just be a different kind of understanding of things, or shyness, or even some kinds of mental illness–could be said to have some value, if only for the sake of a diversity of viewpoints.
Oh, and I checked out that ladder theory site, and not only is it sexist bullshit, it’s fraught with tautologies and other logical problems and just isn’t based on anything but some loser’s freaked-out ramblings. It would be thoroughly depressing if his arguments had any strength…actually even though it should be laughable, it is kind of depressing because I think this “theory” expresses some (usually) unspoken bullshit that a lot of people go around believing.
I was all ready to embrace the sexual ladder theory since everyone else who posted thought it was crap, but then I read it and it’s total bullshit. For several reasons a couple of them are: We no longer need your fucking money and chances are we make more AND Most of the time when a guy cheats it’s with someone much lower on this ‘ladder.’
The ladder theory is basically some dumbass dude’s justification to himself that all the women who dumped him were stupid whores, so he can feel better about himself.
I’m not advocating the ladder theory, btw. Just so there’s no confusion
The best idea about genetic engineering and mosquitoes that I’ve heard comes from one of Bruce Sterling’s recent books: genetically engineer people to have blood that’s poisonous to the mosquitoes. Yeah! That could wipe out malaria, dengue and a bunch of other tropical diseases in one swell foop. (Not to mention making Texas a hell of a lot more pleasant in the summertime.)
Looking back, I don’t think I put enough irony markers in that mosquito item. If I don’t trust Monsanto to genetically engineer my food, I sure won’t trust Terminix to genetically engineer my blood. Side effects would be a major concern, as well as the likelihood that mosquitoes (with a zillion times the reproductive cycle of us humans) would just mutate to get around the poison.