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[i2amroy]

And if your kid is dealing with a crippling fear of strangers that you imprinted into them they can always just go to therapy right? I'm for genetic modification, but it's pushing a line when you start messing with infants cosmetically IMO. (If you lived on an underwater planet and we're going for something like gills that is, of course, another story).

[wierd]

Part of the requirement was it being prehensile. This implies correctly wired motor nerves, and muscles to drive movement.

This would be a significant challenge with a grafted 3D printed tail.  With a grown one, all nerves, muscles, ligaments, and and bones seamlessly integrate.  May require training to learn to use the muscles to control the tail--- but the physical capacity would be there.

[penguinofhonor]

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[~Neri]

I'm getting a tail.

If you're talking about a prehensile, Saiyan-like tail then sure. Same here. If you're talking about something as useless like a dog or cat tail then I have no choice but to consider you as inferior to me. Honestly, the downsides in that case would outweigh the singular bonus (balance) it gives. A few downsides that come to mind include discomfort while sitting, new clothes being required (not really that terrible, actually), and extra hygiene requirements.

-snipsnop-

Prehensile and fluffy is what I want. So technically a combination between a saiyan like tail and a fox tail.

Fluffy is not a good idea, IMO. Short fur is better because with fluffy you have more fur/hair being shed, it can get caught in clothing like zippers more easily, and if you're outdoors it'll get dirty pretty quickly. Something to cover the tail would probably be for the best since tails look really ugly when the don't have it, at least on humans.

Realistically, you could do a germ line genetic modification and have your child have a tail, but that carries a risk of a major psycho-sociological disorder known to the specialists as 'never talking to you again, ever'.

I'm not sure what the problem here would be. If the child doesn't want the extra limb, they can just remove it through surgery, right?

How would the tail get caught in zippers? I mean, you have control over it, just don't let it be near your zippers when you zip them.

Shedding is a non issue in my view~

Fluff is technically something covering the tail. Hairless tails are ugly/creepy. Tails with fluff or fur are not. Although You could prolly slice the arm off a shirt and use it as a tailsock.

[wierd]

@penguin

That's a personal judgement call. Killing is walking up to the kid and pulling the trigger. Witholding treatment is different. Depending on the severity of their illness, they may well survive without the treatment. Who's to say.

What we CAN do, is look at consequences in analogous situations where humans have meddled in the selection process. Humans are NOT magically different from other animals in this respect.  If you care to look, you can find many good sources of literature on animal husbandry, and why culling is necessary. When you remove the selective pressure against a deleterious mutation, it can rapidly over-express in the genepool, leading to net reductions in group viability.

Take for instance, the problems with hip dysplasia in dogs.  Domestic (as in, living in houses) dogs lack natural selection pressure, so dogs with dysplasia breed freely, and spread the disorder around.  Feral colonies of dogs have strong natural selection against dysplasia, and have significantly lower group rates of incidence.

There is very little stopping the spread of human DNA within the human genome, other than social conventions. With the advent of sperm banks, that limitation is also removed.  It is quite possible for a very deleterious mutation to spread like fire through the genome in just a few generations, if your philosophy is upheld. 

Choosing inaction is not the same as choosing offensive action.

You are trying very hard to conflate the two.

[GiglameshDespair]

I imagine it'd be closer to a rat tail than the dog tail of your dreams, Kevak. Indeed, humans born with vestigal tails have hairless tails, even ones that have vertebrae in them. They also look pretty horrible, truth be told.

[~Neri]

I imagine it'd be closer to a rat tail than the dog tail of your dreams, Kevak. Indeed, humans born with vestigal tails have hairless tails, even ones that have vertebrae in them. They also look pretty horrible, truth be told.

Growing one would not be good for getting a fluffy tail.

Grafting one would work better.

[wierd]

No, not really.  Are you familiar with the "Skin gun"?

Spoiler: possibly graphic youtube video (click to show/hide)

The Skin Gun

Similar stemcell research is being done with hair follicles. A similar approach involving a stemcell "ink", and a tattoo gun and follicular unit generating stemcells could be directly injected into your ugly naked tail, and it would grow the hair later.

[penguinofhonor]

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[wierd]

How very western-culture-centric of you.

I try to approach this as culture-agnostically as possible.  It seems that you are unable to let go of your cultural moral foibles however.

Here's a shocker for you. Outright infanticide has been practiced by human cultures since before writing was invented. Often times, it has been codified into law as permissible under the right circumstances.

It is still practiced by south american native tribes, under such social conventions. Do you feel these people need to be arrested?

[Naryar]

Nice eugenism discussion there.

And yes i am on weird's side on that matter. Babies that are born with basically no cognitive function should be left to die, because they are only shells in the form of a human. And emotional crutches to the parents, but you can buy a cat/dog or have another non-braindead child and it'll give you back far more affection than a braindead son/daughter. Relationships are made to be twofold : one-sided ones end poorly.

I'm not saying we should kill babies that are deformed, no, because we don't kill people that lose legs, and even without legs they can live meaningful life.

Babies that have a few organs seriously malfunctioning and cannot live on their own, however, or people who have such weak immune systems they cannot get out of a bubble... it's another thing. Because a life without meaning is not a life worth living.

[BoredVirulence]

Wierd (and it physically hurts to write it this way) isn't completely wrong here (I actually agree with you to an extent, but we're too late). He's right, evolution is sweet, humans are short sighted and make mistakes. But, as others have pointed out, evolution is imperfect, and the "just good enough" nature of evolution isn't always nice. Frankly, our intelligence is against evolution, our brains have so many neurons because we discovered cooking makes digestion more efficient. We already live in a world where evolution has lost control.

Human "evolution" has already degraded. We don't choose partners based on benefit, we choose based on a shortsighted desire, either our happiness or for a fun time. Evolution can hardly influence who is the most fit, because we have found artificial ways to overcome evolution. Weapons provide safety from predators, housing provides safety from the elements, and we're quite good at protecting from disease. Antibiotics have saved tens or hundreds of thousands, but water sanitation has saved more lives than all doctors in all of history. We craft our environment, and we do it well. Human "evolution" now is controlled by the advancement of technology, which is completely dependent on 2 things, random genetic transactions producing bright people (which means we aren't getting more intelligent), and our artificial environments inspiring the next generation of engineers and scientists.

Evolution has already failed us, we're already our own destiny, and that's scary. I'm all for the advancement of technology, trust me I'm an engineer, but how many mistakes has mankind made in the advancement of technology and shortsighted goals. Will control over our genetic future be a bad thing, probably, but its better than the stagnation and degradation we already face.

How are we to protect ourselves from potential elitism? No idea. I suspect it would involve the same protection against it we've always used, lowering of prices through efficient mass production. Why should rich people get all of the strange body parts when *Insert medical company here* contains potential modifications at economical prices? How long before some become popular enough that hospitals or insurance agencies subsidize them? And what will we do when we need traits from a long dead pathogen? Buy them of course. Is this the right path? Who can say, but our evolution has been dependent on technological revolution, why not allow our genetic future to follow the same? Stagnation is just the same thing as waiting until we die, evolution is running from the inevitable regardless.

Personally, I think "open sourcing" "gene-engineering" is one way to protect ourselves. The right to bear arms is nothing more than security through freedom, which is the same principle open source is built on. If we can open source 3D printing, we can, in the future, open source medical treatments. And again, it might be dangerous, but so is living in a country where anyone you meet can be armed, the nature of life is surviving despite less than ideal situations. Its no more dangerous than a world where any script kiddie can get your personal information because someone found a vulnerability and open sourced its exploitation.

TL;DR: Evolution is meaningless, we already control and influence our environment without thinking everything through. Genetic engineering just brings our genetic future up from perlin noise. Nothing will safeguard life, evolution is fallible, everything will eventually die regardless. Think about how to prevent elitism and centralization of power, not how to make the world perfect.

Edit:

...Babies that are born with basically no cognitive function should be left to die...

I would just like to say babies are born with no real cognitive function. They have no consciousness and aren't self-aware. We have robots that are more sophisticated than a baby, at birth. Of course it grows, they gain consciousness and become self-aware, and eventually do stuff our coolest robots can't. But at birth babies have more in common with ants than people. That's not to say we should kill babies because we can, just a point. I'm also not disagreeing with you.

[i2amroy]

I imagine it'd be closer to a rat tail than the dog tail of your dreams, Kevak. Indeed, humans born with vestigal tails have hairless tails, even ones that have vertebrae in them. They also look pretty horrible, truth be told.

Growing one would not be good for getting a fluffy tail.

Grafting one would work better.

Grafting one would fail, too. Unless you want to be on steroids and potentially facing major organ rejection.

Or (as I mentioned earlier) it was grown from stem cells that were formed from your own cells.

[Bohandas]

That is incorrect sir, and is the result of jumping to conclusions.  You seem to think that I am opposed to research, and applied science concerning our environment.  That is incorrect.  I am opposed to systemic eradication of "Nuisance" organisms, and genetic features.

While there is still insufficient evidence to completely link the two, there is growing data to suggest that keeping the house too clean around children can increase their incidences of developing asthma like respiratory conditions in adult life, for instance.  Does that mean I advocate living in 3rd world shithole conditions? No-- it just means I am opposed to people slathering on the hand sanitizer with OCD like frenzy.

And NO-- the case I made was NOT as you describe it.  The case was for genetically transferred disorders that would normally be terminal without intervention.  Such conditions DO usually prescribe the use of persistent, long term therapy.  Take for instance, congenital type 1 diabetes, where they are basically born unable to produce insulin.  We can save them, sure.  Insulin shots several times a day, or perhaps an installed insulin pump.  But without that insulin, every day? They die. Horribly.

That's fine with me. Personally I'm hoping we all eventually turn into toclafane.

[penguinofhonor]

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