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sooner or later we may have to use it to kill the human population alive, b/c we are over the limit nature intended

*Edit: keep, not kill

I agree with GM. Maybe not everything, such as manipulating genes to give certain people/things advantages over others. But I do agree with it.
And we have the right to because have the ability to, denying that is like denying our ability to write poems or build cities. Both of those have the power to change the world, maybe not on the scale the GM will but it still can.

Plus now that the technology has begun there's little we can do to stop it. There's far to much pontential profit to be made from it. Large corporations will place pressure on it to go ahead, and even laws against it will only be a stop gap measure of stopping it.

It's an interesting point, but the truth is that humans have been messing with other species for as long as we've been farming and using them.

Lets take cows for example. Cows were originally smaller then they are today. Breeding programs have caused the cow to get bigger and bigger, thus more meat and milk. This principle can be applied with horses as well. Horses that have certain characteristics that the the breeder wants to mix with another are bred secessively until a colt comes that has the best mixing. In this aspect humans are only speeding up the process with genetic engineering.

With plants

It seems like there is so much to gain from genetically engineering crops. By making plants less suseptable to disease you prevent a farmer from losing his whole crop and going bankrupt.

And on the environmental front you can produce more crops on less land, with less water per ton and use less pesticides that would otherwise poison ground-soil and pollute water.

The only thing that bothers me with using it more extensively on plants is the potential for a "Mutation" That could contaminate the entire supply.

And people...

For making stronger, smarter and longer living humans? No. Age exists to limit the population, and increasing the next generation's ability will drop this generation into the gutters. There is a limit to science.

But to cure diseases? I personally have a genetic disorder. My body will sometimes disperse calcium wrong, ending up in bone growths. One of these growths nearly severed a nerve in my leg. I had to have surgery on it, but because of that I will always walk with a limp and my leg will always hurt under stress for the rest of my life. Wouldn't it have been great if that could have been eliminated before i was born?

Medicine can only go so far on surgery and drugs. Many of these disorders are caused at a genetical level, the only way to cure them is to modify the genes themselves. And one day bacteria will outgrow modern anti-bodies. There is much risk in genetic modification, but so much to be gained as well.

and when that day comes, modern anti bodies will become futuristic antibodies

evolution is a door that swings both ways. either way i doubt bacteria have enough time to evolve to beat our antibodies... cause evolving takes a pret-ty long time... and our sun can't wait that long... i think sweatdrop

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first of all.. i said if they can evolve, so can we... so yeah.. *the other way around* not that it is important.. lol..