Genetic Defects and New Colonies

From: "Tom Tucker (Olympia)"
To:
Sent: Monday, December 25, 2000 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: [spacesettlers] Re: Genetic Defects and New Colonies
[snikt]
Tom - Bill, Bill, please! We are going over the same territory again!
No, they would still have been born, only without the genetic defects, OK?
[snikt]

No, they wouldnt. As far as I remember, you were advocating forbidding
reproduction/immigration of people with genetic defects in your space
colonies. That would rule out the parents of Tesla and Hawking, since their
families would have a history of genetic disease. Perhaps you would also
rule out Beethoven, whose father was alcoholic.

Maybe youll say that youre not advocating "selective reproduction"
anymore; maybe youll say that the embryos of Tesla and Hawking would be
fixed by genetic engineering and they would still be born, but without their
defects. However, again youre revealling some ingenuity or lack or
knowledge in genetics: how can you guarantee that, without the aleles for
haemophilia and Lou Gherig disease, they would still be the same people?

Unlike what is pictured in popular imagination, genes are not "modular"
functional entities, independent from each other; instead, they interact
with each other and with the environment in almost unpredictable ways. (And
that makes the production of transgenic animals and plants specially
tricky...) For example: the gene for eye albinism should affect only the
color of the eyes but, through probably a series of cascade interactions
with other genes, it also affects brain visual processing, in such a way
that people with eye albinism are almost blind because their brains cant
interpret images properly. This is an example of a gene coding a physical
characteristic affecting also a *cognitive* characteristic -- and this
example only suffices to cast serious doubts that healthy versions of Tesla
and Hawking would guarantedly be the same persons. And Im not even
considering the fact that, without their diseases (which have strong effects
in the way that they lived their lives), their lives could even follow
completely different stories, leading again to completely different
personalities.

Lucio