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Genetic Engineering single cover art

The common misunderstanding of evolution is that it leads to us (anthropocentric). That is backwards. We are genetically similar to the other primates because we are primates. We are not more advanced than them because 1) we didn't evolve from them and 2) all the primates are occupying respective niches to which they are adapted.

The major difference is that humans are for the most part no longer subject to the environmental pressures which give rise to natural selection and are instead putting pressure on the environment for our own benefit.

Without the pressures which drive evolution, we must ultimately be reaching a point where genetic fitness is being subverted. Technology has allowed us to stand above selection (with the exception of mass extinctions) and continue beyond the limitations of our biology. In the run up to The Singularity we can either merge with our technology or continue with our augmented biology. Genetic engineering is the latter.

We're in the primitive stages of engineering whereby we screen diseases during pregnancy - which prompts debate whether one has a right to be born disabled. Through engineering we can adapt a million times faster than if left to nature. However, as doctor and patient, what is good becomes difficult to ascertain and we end up with artificial selection, which is subject to aesthetic pressures and the human ideal of 'perfection'. Derailed as plastic surgery became cosmetic surgery, the struggle for perfection all too easily descends into eugenics.

Prejudices have always been irrational until now. They were never quantifiable like the genome.

Based on drafts written March-August 2006
Coda edited 05/04/09 
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