> Surely the majority of scientists, medical professionals, and laymen alike understand environmental factors play a huge part in this.
The majority of laypeople have no idea what you are talking about, and if they know anything, I would guess from colloquial language that they 'know' your 'genes' are inherited and determine things about you, in a way you can't change or avoid.
I'm not criticising the laypeople (or flattering us), but pointing out that we are in a bubble ... on another planet ... in a different universe ....
I expect that more scientists and medical professionals are back on planet Earth (i.e., unaware) than you imagine. Who else would the OP be targeted at?
I was pretty surprised at the amount of biology we don't know (I'm writing software to help geneticists, a recent development for me). We know a lot, but its astounding how complex these biological systems are.
> Only 1% of the total population carries this genetic mutation that makes them resistant to HIV.
Wow, I didn't even know that you can be immune to HIV. It's only a matter of time before we have technologies to change our genetic code or at least the genetic code of two cells before they form an embryo.
> How did it take years for them to figure this out?
They thought they could beat it by measuring over long periods of time. This didn’t work. Medical research and scientific envelope-pushing is hard. This was a risky project that failed; everyone walks away with superior knowledge and nobody was harmed.
>Seems like the same problem as nuclear power, GM foods, and just about every other new but complex technology. People don't understand it, and we always fear what we don't understand.
Well, it's also that people who do understand it, can also be severely worried about scientists not understanding it and playing fast and loose for profit.
Medicine/biology can not even put out a decent non-conflicting dietary advice that holds its position for more than 10 years, but they are allowed to assemble genes they half-understand and put them out in an ecosystem whose interactions and complex interplays they understand 10% and just see what happens...
> You vastly underestimate the complexity of the human genome
We mapped it out 20+ years ago. We learn more about it each year, but what's more, the extent of our knowledge increases exponentially, not linearly.
> Ontogenesis, epigenetics, environmental factors, ... there is a lot more on sex variant hardware front than genetics.
You act like these are factors that can't be controlled, if not entirely, at least to some degree.
> at that point of understanding and manipulating human biology
We are very nearly at that point. Within anywhere from 20-30 years, maybe even less. If you think "people" will have moved beyond limiting categories in that time, you're not thinking clearly about the past, but what's worse, you're not thinking clearly about humanity.
If you think we'll end up in a Star Trek-like world before we have the ability to successfully manipulate the genome, you can just look to the fictional history of Trek for that... we were supposed to be in the middle of the Eugenics Wars right about now. Turns out they'll come later, I guess.
> a scant drop in the bucket compared to real-world concerns
Objectifying human beings in such a radical way and arrogantly putting the human germline at risk isn't a real-world concern? You have a very strange grasp of real-world concerns.
> Is your DNA a secret? I think the fact that you leave it everywhere means no.
There is a complicated procedure to convert this skin scales to data. Not everybody is able to do it, so if is not a secret, neither is exactly open data.
>Maybe we should not publish openly about human genetic or gender differences for the same reason we do not publish precise schematics for atomic weapons or detailed how-to documents on how to create a doomsday plague with a mail order CRISPR kit. That reason being: some of us will use such knowledge to kill each other.
I've sometimes wondered if the answer to the Fermi Paradox is that the knowledge to destroy the entire population became available to too many individuals in those societies.
For instance, suppose some new physics were discovered and technology developed so that it was possible for an average-intelligence person to build a true earth-destroying doomsday bomb in his basement. It would only take one crazy person to eliminate humanity. Even more likely is the ability to genetically engineer a doomsday virus; just look how bad COVID-19 was. If some angry teenager could make something far worse, we're doomed as a species, or at least as a civilization.
> The guy that you can see in one of the pictures drinking from a glass recipient was in a Netflix documentary (I can't remember the title from top of my mind) where he was advocating for everyone being able to use genetic engineering for self-improvement, even without any previous knowledge of genetics.
You mean the documentary unnatural selection. I have seen it, but I recall something quite different. He did infact advocate that at some point people will use this technology without understanding it. It surely feels like a premature opinion, but in retrospect people use many life changing technologies without understanding them either
Does everyone understand what they eat? how electricity works? how their smartphone works? the drugs their doctor prescribes?
> there are researchers who propose the creation and release of engineered viruses in animal populations adjacent to people (to prevent pandemics with zoonotic origins of course!)
Humanity is so technophile these days... instead of doing the sensible thing (leaving bat caves alone, ending mass animal farms) we seriously think about massive bio-engineering of wildlife only so that we don't have to stop the bullshit we're doing.
> And has killed a lot of their own lab animals in experiments
Killed in horrifying ways, in many cases for no reason at all. And definitely too quickly, compared to what would have been expected if they were trying to learn from their mistakes so that, one day, human implants would be successful. And, even then, there would still be all the unknowns you are talking about.
> if it all comes crashing down in 30 years
I give it 3, tops. Save this comment and add to a calendar if you have to.
Were also the people who have very little understanding of biology and/or privacy. I'd say that covers a good 90% of the population.
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