The future of evolution - is there anything good in all this?

Everyone would love to be smarter and healthier, but things get a little more complicated when you're talking about genetically engineering super flexible toes

Robert Sapolsky,

Everyone wants to be 'above average'

The purpose of medicine is to make sick people "healthy", which is actually another way of saying "suffer more or less from the same diseases as everyone else". But as our readers can understand from the series of articles on 'The Future of the Human Body' presented to you in the last few weeks' editions, we are jumping into a world where medicine intervenes more and more in our lives in the name of the promise to make us more 'improved' than healthy. We are developing a whole array of biological enhancements: smart drugs to improve memory above normal, drugs that stop certain proteins to grow muscles, gene therapy to stimulate the formation of nerve cells in the brain above normal levels. Anything that comes to our mind, somewhere in the world there is a scientist who is already working on it.
What is at stake is actually the effort to be above average, and this is where things get complicated. The average person often has trouble with the math of averaging. So even if flying is a safer means of transportation than cars, most people are still more afraid of flying because people like to feel in control, and because the average person thinks they are a better driver than the average driver. Or that doctor who prefers her gut feelings over clinical research findings because the average doctor believes she is better than the average doctor. Then come the social philosophers, also confused by the mathematical definition of the average, who wholeheartedly believe that our schools should produce only above-average children. The idea of ​​cultivating an above average company is by its very definition destined for failure. And yet, with an imagination steeped in science fiction literature, and a firm confidence in our ability to solve humanity's problems, it is not difficult to imagine strange and wonderful ways in which science will make us 'more improved than healthy'. However, it is advisable to consider - is it even worth having fun with such attempts. Our senseless preoccupation with body and mind has several troubling aspects:
What happens when an amazing intervention goes wrong? It is better that this concern be at the forefront of our concerns against the background of the rich history of such disasters, starting with the recommendation of the 'Medieval Medical Association' to use leeches when feeling a little down, to the recent discovery that gene therapy intended to cure a dangerous immune disease causes leukemia. And there is no guarantee that the well-intentioned promise that "this time we are taking extra care" will be able to be fulfilled, because we, the scientists, are always careful, always determined not to fail, and even so, unexpected things happen when we sail into the unknown. But the unexpected is not the only danger we face. There are quite a few things that should worry us, even when the medical intervention is successful.

Engineer the body of your dreams

Or lush hair…
Where is the border? There is nothing inherently wrong with becoming 'more enhanced than healthy', but there are certain lines that should not be crossed. I often hear that we should not change the chemistry of the brain. If so, according to this limit it would be fine to carry out, for example, genetic therapy of the bladder of the elderly to solve the inevitable increasing frequency of what a polite doctor would call: urinary urgency, so that middle-aged men will only void once a day, precisely at noon. The problem with this strategy of "preserving the sacred brain" is that we are already changing the chemistry of the brain. All the time. When the average person goes through a night of canning, he is not very effective the next day unless he chemically refreshes his brain with a cup of coffee that goes into his stomach.
Another red line that is often mentioned is related to heredity: we must not change the series of Germline cells that allow genetic changes to pass on to the next generation. According to this view, if you want to waste your money on plastic surgery to implant glowing deer antlers, that's your right. Just don't interfere with your Germline so that the horn trait is passed on to your children. But wouldn't controversial science also be able to determine which traits are not inherited? Take for example Tay-Sachs, a congenital disease in which large deposits of fat build up in the brain, destroying it, and the child, within a few years. Most people will surely agree that this is an intolerable situation and will feel comfortable with an early scan before birth in order to delete the disease from the gene pool. But what about other ideas for changing the germline by removal? Bringing healthy children into the world is generally considered an example of the definition of "healthy". However, in parts of China and India, the promise of a healthy son would be considered 'more improved than creation'. Is it okay to determine the sex of the newborn with different laboratory methods, and only allow a certain type of sperm to curl up in the bosom of the egg?
Who here wants superpowers? Once we have the tools to make someone 'more improved than healthy', what should we do with that ability? Suppose that "Big Pharma" develops a smart drug that will affect cognition so that a person will think and learn better under pressure instead of these skills being weakened under the same conditions. What's wrong with that? I think that such a remedy for people concerned with safety, whose actions may decide whether the next "Chernobyl" will happen, God forbid, is a good idea. But is it supposed to be something a student can take before university exams? And what about the commander of an extermination unit under pressure who makes a quick decision as to the best way to carry out ethnic cleansing of the residents of some village?

Gills instead of diving tanks.
The rich get richer. Are the healthy becoming 'more improved than healthy'? The great promise of technology in Western society is that it will improve the lives of all of us. The idea is beautiful but rarely implemented. Those who are at the top of the socioeconomic ladder are the ones who will most likely hear about some medical innovation, they are the ones who will understand its implications, they will have a cousin whose girlfriend's sister will be able to put them at the head of the queue waiting to receive it, and they will have the ability to finance it, whether thanks to medical insurance or whether Thanks to deep pockets. In recent decades, the United States has enjoyed an unprecedented economic boom. It is at the heart of the biotechnology revolution, and its investment in the healthcare system from its gross domestic product is greater than any other country in the world. And yet the United States ranks around 29th in the world in life expectancy, largely because we are moving toward a divided country, where our urban poor are 60-year-olds, crippled by heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, while our 70-year-olds grapple with whether to move Knee replacement so close to ski season. The weaker sections do not always get a share of the advanced medicine that the wealthy enjoy.
Who is even healthy? Before you opt for prosthetic x-ray eyes or super flexible toes, or anything else that will make you 'more improved than healthy', you need to decide what constitutes 'healthy'. And here we, as individuals and as societies, have a rather dismal past of poor judgment about what is considered acceptable. For example: in the early 90s, an appetite-suppressing hormone called leptin was discovered. People went out of their way to hear the news under the assumption that here was discovered the wonder pill against obesity for society as a whole. But, as it turned out, most of the fat people do not suffer from leptin deficiency.
Still, some people have a mutation that results in very low levels of leptin. An article reported on three Pakistani families whose members were described as "chubby". You probably guess that this is how things unfolded: a Leptin team stormed in, gave these people a synthetic Leptin that suppressed their appetite, melted their fat, moved them towards a life of success with publicized events in the glittering circle, an appearance on the cover of 'People', etc...
But here the Leptin missionaries ran aground: the family refused treatment. These people came from a culture where chubby is a status symbol. And so you are left with the unexpected compulsion to convince people that, according to the dominant culture, something is wrong with them, in order to cure them later of that 'problem'. This is a disturbing scene. We already live in a world that spreads promises to make people 'more improved than healthy' by getting a nose job, breast augmentation, straightening frizzy hair or tanning the body to give a coppery complexion all year round. These changes sometimes create wonders in the quality of people's lives. But we don't need more sophisticated science to be good at pushing people to change and then dealing with their embarrassment and shame about their images and origins.

So what is the limit?
And finally, one of the best reasons to stop and question some of the advanced developments of 'more improved than healthy' is that even when they are successfully implemented, they may end up achieving nothing. We are a competitive and jealous species. Psychological studies have proven, for example, that an addition of X dollars to a person's salary does not make him happy if it means that his neighbor gets twice as much. To be honest, we don't want to be rich, we just want to be richer than others. Similarly, there are very few reasons to be a tall person, per se; In fact, there are even some health risks associated with going to great heights. But there are more than enough social advantages to being taller than others.
This brings us back to the difficulties many people have with the mathematics of the average: no matter how advanced science is, and no matter what miracles and wonders the little gnomes create in the laboratories, the majority of society still cannot be taller than average, smarter than average, prettier than the average, and so on. You can think of plenty of 'better than healthy' medical interventions that could have been magic in themselves. I, personally, would be very happy if my earlobes were genetically modified so that I could hear wonderful birdsong from afar, or gills that would make it easier for me to dive in magnificent coral reefs, or if anything, then also a long and beautiful tail that is good for holding on.
But if science is mobilized to make people 'more improved than healthy' because they want to enjoy all the benefits that the 'improvement' will give them in society, it is a dead end. It's an endless spiral race of obeying the command to be more improved than healthy' and then to be more improved than the previous 'more improved', and then. . . I think things are clear.

I think it's scarier than average.