Genetic engineering ?

ldwechsler wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:
I would go so far as to say inspite of a lot of people in the 1st world doing their best to abuse their bodies (and governments ruinous running of their countries), the average life expectancy for the 1st world is well above the 2nd & 3rd world averages, IOW there already is a caste system operating in the here and now.
And that does not include the caste systems already in place in a lot of 2nd & 3rd world counties.

I do not disagree. But there are amelioratives. Talented folk may rise far more quickly in the Third World (we really don't use the term Second World any more).

But if the wealthy (and I mean the wealthy everywhere, not just First World, can really get built-in advantages, that will exacerbate problems.

My daughter's grandfather never earned much more than a hundred dollars a week. At the end of his working life, he was earning about six thousand dollars.

I was a school teacher and administrator.

My daughter is a full professor (of developmental psychology) at a prestigious college and earns far more than I did. She's met with a lot of big shots (including President Obama) about her work on the impact of poverty on infants.

The progression is not unusual in the US

But if the wealthy can use their money to ensure that their kids come out far better in many ways...and since it's genetics it stays for THEIR kids, many of these things will not exist.

My non-genetically improved grandkids will be competing in sports against kids who have improved strength, stamina and reaction speeds. What fun is there competing in class against a kid who has a perfect memory?

The prom queen will be gorgeous...the perfect body with model quality looks can beat "regular" girls.

And, of course, improved health and longevity helps.

As a society, a lot of changes could be justified for all based on cost factors. Preventing diseases and getting them out of the genome would cut medical costs sharply. But a lot of the best would go to the rich to perpetuate their status in their heirs for many generations.

quite possibly a cat wrote:So there are two different lines of research that need to be done before we can start making designer babies.

The first line of research being able to pick what genes your kids get. The top tier tech here is editing genes of embryos. We've just started doing that. However, there are more primitive methods of doing so as well. The rich of course, have easier access to these methods, but costs do go down.

However, you also need to know what genes to give your kids! That will take a lot of research to work out. Importantly, only artificial barriers would allow the rich to get access to that information first. Unless a government somehow restricts the information's dissemination or use everyone will get access to the new genes as soon as the benefits get confirmed.

The solution then is a healthy democracy and civil society. If IP-law or similar is abused to somehow deny the masses the benefit of genes, the government can simply eliminate or change the problematic laws. On the other hand, if you lack a healthy democracy you could easily see a downward slide into some sort of dystopia. North Korea of a worst case scenario.

But that's not dependent on some sort of cool tech. Honestly, reproductive tech seems to have a very low rate of adoption. People just tend to have kids the old fashioned method if they can.

ldwechsler wrote:

quite possibly a cat wrote:So there are two different lines of research that need to be done before we can start making designer babies.

The first line of research being able to pick what genes your kids get. The top tier tech here is editing genes of embryos. We've just started doing that. However, there are more primitive methods of doing so as well. The rich of course, have easier access to these methods, but costs do go down.

However, you also need to know what genes to give your kids! That will take a lot of research to work out. Importantly, only artificial barriers would allow the rich to get access to that information first. Unless a government somehow restricts the information's dissemination or use everyone will get access to the new genes as soon as the benefits get confirmed.

The solution then is a healthy democracy and civil society. If IP-law or similar is abused to somehow deny the masses the benefit of genes, the government can simply eliminate or change the problematic laws. On the other hand, if you lack a healthy democracy you could easily see a downward slide into some sort of dystopia. North Korea of a worst case scenario.

But that's not dependent on some sort of cool tech. Honestly, reproductive tech seems to have a very low rate of adoption. People just tend to have kids the old fashioned method if they can.

This is far too tricky. Yes, the tech is cool. But ALL of these things "follow the money."

In a dictatorship, you can try to build soldiers. Remember the Hitler Youth and there were Soviet so-called genetic programs.

But even in a free society, things do happen. For years, families in India who had money went to doctors to use centrifuges to separate sperm by sex (sperm for males is lighter) and have boys. China, of course, just killed the girls.

Things like that are used here and we already test for some diseases. But the research you're talking about is expensive. It will also be tricky testing for it. You have to use humans.

Animals won't work when trying to figure out how to build intelligence.

But as certain traits are noted and the appropriate genes spotted, money will change hands. Each little benefit can go a long way. Some elements will lend themselves to government programs to spread them. Creating healthy babies that stay healthy saves money on medical programs.

But making pretty girls is not a medical thing. But think of it as a survival characteristic.

This will be a real problem over the next century and it is clear that some elements have not been resolved even thousands of years from now. On Beowulf it costs a lot of money for prolong. That creates a real difference. Imagine the rich living easily a century and a half with no real disease and a raft of enhancements. And those without money living half as long, getting sick, etc.


What a great world!

Bluesqueak wrote:
The impression I have from the series is that most of the richer worlds like Beowulf offer prolong to all their young citizens. The people who can't afford it are the citizens of poor worlds or 'gypsies' like the Butry clan. Prolong, in the series costs a lot of money for non-Beowulfans.

Most of the worlds where the rich get Prolong and the poor don't are bubbling cauldrons of revolutionaries, only kept under by the ever constant threat of Frontier Security. The few that aren't are the ones where people know that the government, with all its faults, is trying to lift the entire planet out of poverty.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

Bluesqueak wrote:
The impression I have from the series is that most of the richer worlds like Beowulf offer prolong to all their young citizens. The people who can't afford it are the citizens of poor worlds or 'gypsies' like the Butry clan. Prolong, in the series costs a lot of money for non-Beowulfans.

Most of the worlds where the rich get Prolong and the poor don't are bubbling cauldrons of revolutionaries, only kept under by the ever constant threat of Frontier Security. The few that aren't are the ones where people know that the government, with all its faults, is trying to lift the entire planet out of poverty.

In fact, even Haven was able to offer Prolong to a whole random world of Neo-barbs they found. Only really poor worlds can't offer Prolong to everyone.

ldwechsler wrote:There was a section in one of the books, possibly Torch of Freedom, here Berry's boyfriend's story involved waiting around and not getting prolong. And I think there was something about Nancy's daughter and prolong.

The comment was made that it was not all that expensive for a government. Torch was giving it to their soldiers as a key benefit.

Torch of Freedom: Ch. 12 wrote:Ganny El, the matriarch of the clan, would live for centuries. So would the two dozen or so relatives on the station who were her siblings, cousins or children, and who'd gotten the treatments before the clan fell on hard times. But the next generation in the clan, people of an age with Ganny's great-nephew Andrew Artlett—there were at least three dozen of them—were simply going to be a lost generation, as far as prolong was concerned. Even if the clan could suddenly afford the treatments, they were already too old. Their parents—even their grandparents—faced the horror that they'd outlive their own offspring.
And the same fate would fall on the next generation, if the clan's fortunes didn't improve. And they had to improve drastically, and most of all, quickly. People like Sarah Armstrong and Michael Alsobrook were already into their twenties, and twenty-five years of age was generally considered the outside limit for starting prolong treatments.

Jonathan_S wrote:

But like a lot of things there are 2 costs for Prolong. There's the marginal cost of paying to treat one more person and there's the capital and set-up costs of getting the capability to treat anyone. What makes prolong so much more expensive on many verge worlds is that there isn't enough critical mass to make it economically feasibly to build a prolong facility there. Which in turn means that if someone does try to get Prolong it even more expensive because they have to pay to travel to a system that does have it and pay to stay there until the course of treatment is complete in additional to just paying for the treatment. (And a world that poor you've probably got issues trying to turn wealth in the planet's own currency into interstellar negotiable value to pay for transit, lodging, and treatment)

ldwechsler wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:

But like a lot of things there are 2 costs for Prolong. There's the marginal cost of paying to treat one more person and there's the capital and set-up costs of getting the capability to treat anyone. What makes prolong so much more expensive on many verge worlds is that there isn't enough critical mass to make it economically feasibly to build a prolong facility there. Which in turn means that if someone does try to get Prolong it even more expensive because they have to pay to travel to a system that does have it and pay to stay there until the course of treatment is complete in additional to just paying for the treatment. (And a world that poor you've probably got issues trying to turn wealth in the planet's own currency into interstellar negotiable value to pay for transit, lodging, and treatment)

This translates somewhat into our world. If a rogue geneticist thought he/she might run into problems, they could go to a country that is very poor. They could do their work for free to the top leadership and then get hard currency for the country by having rich people around the world doing medical tourism.

They could come to that poor nation and have a designer baby by putting down cash. That would encourage more work.

I know a couple of people who went to Cuba for plastic surgery. It was far cheaper than here and they got good treatment. While doing a bit of convalescing they could walk over to some public clinics which didn't even have aspirin for regular folks.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:But like a lot of things there are 2 costs for Prolong. There's the marginal cost of paying to treat one more person and there's the capital and set-up costs of getting the capability to treat anyone. What makes prolong so much more expensive on many verge worlds is that there isn't enough critical mass to make it economically feasibly to build a prolong facility there. Which in turn means that if someone does try to get Prolong it even more expensive because they have to pay to travel to a system that does have it and pay to stay there until the course of treatment is complete in additional to just paying for the treatment. (And a world that poor you've probably got issues trying to turn wealth in the planet's own currency into interstellar negotiable value to pay for transit, lodging, and treatment)

This translates somewhat into our world. If a rogue geneticist thought he/she might run into problems, they could go to a country that is very poor. They could do their work for free to the top leadership and then get hard currency for the country by having rich people around the world doing medical tourism.

They could come to that poor nation and have a designer baby by putting down cash. That would encourage more work.

I know a couple of people who went to Cuba for plastic surgery. It was far cheaper than here and they got good treatment. While doing a bit of convalescing they could walk over to some public clinics which didn't even have aspirin for regular folks.