> Why are we still giving column inches to people saying "This is really disturbing"?
Because it is. Who will be responsible for the suffrage that gene-edited people will inevitably go through when someone screws up (and make no mistake, someone WILL screw up). Who will pay their medical bills?
That's only addressing one small issue from an unfathomable pile of issues and unintended consequences.
I for one am glad those "luddites" have more say in issues like this than people like you.
One could easily rewrite your comment to lament the invention of the automobile:
Who will be responsible for the suffrage [sic] that accident victims will inevitably go through when an automobile driver screws up (and make no mistake, automobile drivers WILL screw up).
The answer is: yes, a few suffer, the vast majority benefits, and life goes on. Your comment insists on a notion of perfect safety that exists nowhere in the real world.
My larger concern is who is paying for us not making the genetic effort: afflicted individuals and the social costs of trying to give them at least an approximately normal life.
Weighing any risk against that cost? I can't make a pursuasive argument that we shouldn't proceed.
Or as John Donne quipped in 1623, "... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
you could make a case that millions of people currently suffer genetic diseases they are born with that have the potential to be cured using this technology if it's developed
Because it is. Who will be responsible for the suffrage that gene-edited people will inevitably go through when someone screws up (and make no mistake, someone WILL screw up). Who will pay their medical bills?
That's only addressing one small issue from an unfathomable pile of issues and unintended consequences.
I for one am glad those "luddites" have more say in issues like this than people like you.