Biology is the New Tech: Letter from a conference on CRISPR
The tourism angle mentioned is the real deal killer for these regulations.<p>If you outlaw this, people like me (who think inflicting stupidly and ill-health on their children by withholding these technologies is morally wrong) will just fly to Singapore. Even if you could enforce this, not every country will. 5+ standard deviation increases in many traits is on the table: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;Embryo-selection#iterated-embryo-selection" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gwern.net&#x2F;Embryo-selection#iterated-embryo-selec...</a><p>If we make this illegal here, we will be as children compared to those in China or Singapore.<p>The potential increase in IQ is so high that any country that defects from a global ban, even a smallish one like Iran say, would quickly be producing the vast majority of all genius-level intellects.<p>A global ban is just is not a stable equilibrium.<p>From a balance-of-power perspective, we would expect huge shifts in future power to those countries that embrace the technology. An absence of taboos against human enhancement may be a more important factor in this than current scientific achievement for predicting global leadership in the next couple generations.<p>In islamic culture, traditional scholarship places the point of ensoulment anywhere between 40 and 120 days after conception. Our western taboos around this topic, likely even our western secular taboos, derive from a belief in ensoulment at conception.<p>This simple doctrinal dispute may end up having huge consequences. And may allow islamic cultures to return to a position of scientific power, likely shared with China and other Asian countries who similarly do not share our taboos.