Expert: Griff Ruby - 6/12/2011

Question
Hi, I am conducting an ethnographic research for a school assignment.I was just wondering what your view on genetic engineering is?
Also, do you believe there's a distinct difference in ethics of genetic therapy vs. genetic enhancement?

Answer
Despite whatever good things might derive from it, genetic engineering sounds to me like a rather dangerous bucket of worms.  The ability to "design" one's children ("I want him blue-eyed, muscular, tall, and very smart...") is far too much of a temptation.  How much would such a child be of one's own?
And then there is the question of somehow changing a person's chromosomes.  At what point does this get done?  What does it do to the person that already existed?  Are they merely subtly changed, say from having a predisposition to sickle-cell anemia to not having that but otherwise being in all respects truly the same person, or might it be more like destroying one person and creating another?
One more thing:  Once this is successfully done in some laboratory, will those there who did this actually imagine that they "own" the person so created the way they might legitimatly have "owned" a lesser creature, say a fish or a cow, so created?
As to genetic therapy and enhancement, I have no idea what those things are let alone what difference there would be to them, and therefore am in no position to comment on that, sorry.