I wanted to personally explore how I felt about this article. Should we not allow embryos to continue, or just cure them after they are born?
Should we limit suffering?
Should we do everything that we can to extend life?
Should we remove a child’s struggles so that they can focus on their contribution to the world?
Yes, I’d argue vehemently so.
Should we be selecting only the best embryos?
Should we filter mental illnesses?
Should we “fix” things like autism?
For these, I don’t think we are ready to make the call. Our capabilities to detect and control the human body and mind is unfortunately slightly ahead of our ability to predict the impact of our meddling.
I will always drive to advance human capability and science’s ability to improve the human condition. I also recognize that we may normalize ourselves and kill off future advancement if we are not careful. How many brilliant scientists were children who would have been identified as deficient? How many ideas have been borne out of human suffering?
Should we really tame the human experience until it we are all the same? Sanitize our genome and remove the disturbing variations?
It is too early, and we are far too ignorant for this.
One day, we will all have the capability of being everything and anything we choose to be. We will be able to choose the experience causing the right pain to trigger the poem we feel lurking inside. We will be able to suppress our hearing and sight so that we can experience the world through heightened touch and sculpt the graceful flow of love that we feel in our heart.
But until then, some of us have to accept who we are. Accept what fate chose us to be. My request to you: push against your limitations and help build the world that allows us all to break through.