The Future of Genetic Engineering

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Hi all. I want to talk about a book that I read when I was in high school.

When I was in high school, I often went to the library to read and re-read a book called Future Man. The book's tagline was "In the future, mankind will control its own evolution, as well as the evolution of all living things."

Some of the things proposed in the book were fairly sane. For example, the book proposed genetically engineering chickens that never grow heads and need to be fed through a tube. This would allow industrial meat production to continue without any possibility of animal cruelty. I imagine that some people would be squeamish about eating a genetically engineered headless chicken ... or perhaps not. Most people never even see chickens until they have been decapitated anyway. We - the general population - have already distanced ourselves from the meat production process. At this point, if the meat production process were drastically altered, hardly anyone would be able to tell the difference.

The book also proposed creating cyborg humans who can plug themselves into machines in order to control them. I will admit that this is a thought-provoking idea. I just hope that it doesn't become mandatory. As much as technology has made our lives more convenient, I still believe that human beings need to be connected to nature in some way. I doubt that being totally isolated from nature would be good for our mental health. I'm not totally against cyborgs. I'm just worried about creating cyborgs who are dependant on electricity, and can no longer survive without it.

Now I want to talk about some of the truly bizarre proposals that were made in this book.

The book also proposed creating many new human species for different purposes. For example, the book proposed genetically engineering specialized humans for war. These humans would be created in laboratories and would be completely sexless. They would have thick, scaly skin, built-in gas masks, and very thick skulls. In a similar way, the book also proposed creating flying humans, creating aquatic humans, and creating humans designed to live in space.

I can't help but think that creating humans designed for war would be disgusting. Ending war would probably be easier then genetically engineering super-soldiers ... or perhaps that's just me being optimistic.

That being said, if war does continue, our methods of waging war will likely become increasingly repulsive until war finally ends.

So ... let's turn this into discourse. What will the future of genetic engineering be like?

Almost anything is possible when you're messing around with genetics. When I hear about this stuff my mind keeps going back to a line from Jurassic Park:

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”