philosophy on genetic modification

This is going to be a long one…

After I saw an excellent documentary on Discovery yesterday, called The Real Superhumans and the quest for the Future Fantastic, I was amazed to see that some people have “a genetic enhancement” which enables them to do and experience things usually not possible for average humans.

The show also shed light on the research which a Chinese doctor is doing into stem cell modification, by combining the genes that cause “superpowers” with usual genes, and thus eliminating weaknesses out of the human race... (hence the term “Future Fantastic”).

Research is currently carried out for example into the genes that cause certain people to be more intelligent than others, and the technicality to plant these genes into foetuses or baby’s in order to ‘enhance them’.

If this would be a possibility, and we could enhance people from birth, making people smarter, erase illnesses and handicaps… Surely that could be a good thing. It would eliminate a lot of risks in life…
But the world would be rather dull, wouldn’t it?
Now we can admire and respect people with a certain handicap or illness for their capability to live everyday life, and we can learn from it, as well as people of other races, who are genetically different from us.
But if these would be eliminated through genetic modification, we would not have this admiration or respect anymore…

I think it could be nice to be a bit different than other people, not necessarily through a handicap, but just genetically.
Being genetically less able than others can challenge us to improve ourselves and learn to become just as good as others around us.
But if the genetic modification of stem cells would truly take off, I think there would be less difference between humans, and it would be more difficult to find our own individual identity. I think the world would become a bit boring…