Embryos Created From Multiple Persons?

Interesting news indeed. Check it out on Yahoo.

Are we getting to that place Hitler once dreamed of—against our own determination that such desires were a threat? That place where there is a world full of genetically perfect and superior humans? Every year, science puts us closer to that gray area of ethics, genetics and evolutionary biology that science fiction writers love to tackle.

Advances in technology, science and the medical field are increasingly widening the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots”. Will we see a future where the wealthy class are perfect genetic specimens and the rest of the world suffers from genetic diseases and struggle even harder to make it—in the hopes of one day bettering the lot of their offspring by genetic manipulation?

Whatever the eventual outcome, this very non-fiction advance raises interesting questions about the future evolution of human kind.

What will become of the warrior class in the world? Those who are descended of warriors, whose very lives have been enabled by the successful struggle of ancestors and a long line of evolutionary selection? Can we trust that governments won’t seek to create more perfect soldiers using this technology…and decide that other advances ought to be coupled with it as well?

Who will decide when this procedure is acceptable and who is eligible? What will happen when we have genetically modified humans who live longer in a world with an ever-increasing population and fewer resources? What will it mean in terms of the human condition when we genetically weed out anything that causes hardships—and the stories of perseverance and courage, and the character built by struggles against the hand dealt by nature?

Will be able to leap ahead in our evolution as a species by eliminating some genes, easing physiological and other stresses on us as a species?

The researchers responsible for this breakthrough say they have no intention of manipulating genes, just replacing a few unhealthy ones. Cited as an advance in the fight against muscular dystrophy, their efforts are decidedly of a humanitarian nature, there is no doubt of that. And so far, they are only working with genes in the mitochondria, not in the nucleus.

We must ask ourselves important questions, however. Given the darker side of human nature, politics, and greed, how long will it be before that is no longer the case? How long before someone inevitably uses an essentially beneficent scientific breakthrough to questionable ends? Human history already has more such stories than it needs.

Only time will tell.

And, of course, by the time it does it is generally too late to change the ending of the tale.