Curious....

[Distracted]

Scifi wise its interesting. Realisticly with health insurance the way that it is it will not surprise me if one day you cannot get health insurance if say you carry a gene for CA,MS,Parkinsons....It may not happen in 5 years or 10 but rest assured there will come a day when everyone is using some kind of retro therepy just to maintain health insurance.
Scifi wise its interesting. Realisticly with health insurance the way that it is it will not surprise me if one day you cannot get health insurance if say you carry a gene for CA,MS,Parkinsons....It may not happen in 5 years or 10 but rest assured there will come a day when everyone is using some kind of retro therepy just to maintain health insurance.

Ah. But then, who pays for the retrovirus which will need to be introduced into every affected developing embryo? And who pays for the in vitro fertilization and pre-implantation testing which will be necessary to find the genetic abnormalities early enough to fix them? Retrovirus gene therapy will probably not work on a fully developed adult. All these treatments will need to be done on pre-implantation embryos, or possibly infants in some cases. What will probably happen is that rich people will have retrovirus engineered petri dish conceived kids and everyone else will have 'em the old fashioned way, creating a race of super-perfect, super-intelligent spoiled rich brats who will run the major corporations and therefore the world. Joy.

[Rigil Kent]

I've seen that movie. Gattica, I believe...

It will be interesting to hear what they have to say to us.

"Hello my name is Bingo. I like to climb on things. Can I have a banana? Eep eep."

Mad props to those who get the reference...

[evcake]

Hmmm...just how sentient are they going to be, BnB? Which Planet of the Apes movie are we in?

[blacknblue]

You tell me. How big do you want them to grow the brains? Theoretically, they could be made more intelligent than we are. Much more intelligent.

[evcake]

You tell me. How big do you want them to grow the brains? Theoretically, they could be made more intelligent than we are. Much more intelligent.

They're very strong, too. 4-7 times more than us, I read somewhere. They may be 98.7% identical to us, but I think humans act much more like baboons.

[blacknblue]

Not really. Chimps practice murder, cannibalism, form gangs, make tools, steal, defend territory, beat their mates. They do a lot of things we do. They even fight wars of a sort, something that baboons never do.

[evcake]

Good grief! Sounds like they're as smart as us already. They should be promoted without delay. They're obviously ready.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

This discussion reminds me of David Brin's Uplift novels...

[evcake]

Or The Island of Dr. Moreau. Or Corwainer Smith's underpeople. Oh, for androids, and a whole other can of worms.
Would anybody be interested in a thread about favorite SF novels?

[Distracted]

I'm game.

[Rigil Kent]

You tell me. How big do you want them to grow the brains? Theoretically, they could be made more intelligent than we are. Much more intelligent.

Damn ... and we won't have the Flash around to save us from Gorilla Grodd ... what? Yeah, it's a comics reference...

[evcake]

Hmm...Solovar would make a great name for a Vulcan.