Saturday, February 19, 2022

Two-edged Sword

 


DNA databases and their analyses are the future. Already such treasure troves are being used to predict a person’s susceptibility to breast and prostate cancer, whom one is related to, whether a suspect has committed a crime and all kinds of less consequential personal characteristics like flat feet and hair loss.


This trend derives from the fact that, except for the case of identical twins, one’s DNA is even more unique than the topology of one’s face or fingerprints … primarily because it contains many more unique datapoints.


There is no doubt in my mind, kind reader, that the future will bring mankind the ability of science to create designer babies once our DNA can be reliability manipulated … and that there will be many disasters along the way as this same science misreads the complex coding embedded in and between DNA sequences.


Of course, like all of science, this is a two-edged sword. China is already collecting DNA data in a greedy frenzy … possibly for designing future pandemics that target specific populations? Is that scary enough? And just imagine if Hitler had had this technology along with mandatory abortions in order for him to design his super race?


The upsides and downsides are endless.



STAND UP FOR THE FUTURE?


No comments: