AHC: Make a "Biopunk" outlook on life and science less controversial in politics and society

baltur2

How could it be possible that by the year 2020 (with a possible earliest divergence point of 1900) genetically engineered organisms, and even human genetic engineering is seen as a good thing about as universally as Electricity is seen as a good thing in OTL?

By the year 2020 seeing a 2 year old girl on a beach in North America, Europe, China, or Japan with photosynthetic skin and giving off reflexive light-pulses to her parents, while still using diapers, would be no more controversial than turning on a light switch is in OTL.

Invasive species harmful to local environments have long ago been duped into mating with genetically engineered, infertile fellow animals, and will soon be extinct of old age.

Most countries keep up a stack of GMO viruses as a 21st century version of MAD to ensure global peace.

Young people experiment with their own bodies, to find out how far the human condition can be taken with genetic engineering.
 
Last edited:

Thisisnotausername

baltur2 said:
By the year 2020 seeing a 2 year old girl on a beach in North America, Europe, China, or Japan with photosynthetic skin and giving off reflexive light-pulses to her parents, while still using diapers, would be no more controversial than turning on a light switch is in OTL.
Click to expand...
I don't think this is doable, honestly. You'd need the pace of technological development in these fields to be massively accelerated compared to IOTL just to have options like these available to people in 2020 at all, let alone as such a safe, mature, and commonplace technology that no one would bat an eye at seeing a young child with such modifications.
baltur2 said:
Invasive species harmful to local environments have long ago been duped into mating with genetically engineered, infertile fellow animals, and will soon be extinct of old age.
Click to expand...
This is probably relatively doable if you make the technology advance faster, though, although probably not for every invasive species in every environment, and as with any program to meddle with local ecologies, the practice would still probably remain somewhat controversial (and of course, in many cases you'd have to keep an eye out for reintroductions and whatnot).
baltur2 said:
Most countries keep up a stack of GMO viruses as a 21st century version of MAD to ensure global peace.
Click to expand...
This is a really bad idea. Either you have a way to vaccinate/treat your own population to make them immune to your bioweapons, meaning that you're one failure of counterintelligence away from your opponent's population also being immune to your bioweapons, or there's no treatment and you're one containment breach away from killing off huge swaths of your own population. There is a reason that bioweapons, whether GMO or all natural, were never the WMD of choice IOTL.
baltur2 said:
Young people experiment with their own bodies, to find out how far the human condition can be taken with genetic engineering.
Click to expand...
This is already happening IOTL, albeit among a very small number of people and with plenty of controversy, with the guy who used CRISPR to cure his lactose intolerance probably being the best known example. Accelerating the development of the relevant tech could make it more common and less controversial, but just as in the case of the photosynthetic light-pulse baby, there's a limit on just how much further the tech can get by the present day.
 
Last edited:

oboro

Banned
Well, for a slight change stem cells could be less controversial (in the U.S. at least) Better science education. Tattoos and piercings not seen as extreme enough anymore. None of this neo-primitive anti-GMO and pro-organic lifestyle
 

Orcbuster

dna.png


To illustrate the problem.

Biology is hard. What you propose is likely a full century away even if full focus was lent to it.
 
Last edited:

overoceans

I actually don't think it would be that hard to get the attitudes that this scenario requires, because, Huxley's novel aside, I don't think people really have any serious aversion to this kind of science.

I remember the day the first test-tube baby was announced on the news. Of course, there was a lot of moralizing about "playing God" and whatnot, but since then, test-tube babies have pretty much been an accepted fact of contemporary life.

re: stem-cell research, concern about that is pretty much confined to the pro-life movement in the USA, and(not trying to get into current politics but it's neccessary for my point) the politicians who pander to them. And AFAIK, the politicians have only been able to ban state-funding, private researchers are still free to do work on stem-cells.

Long and the short, I think the only thing really standing in the way of a biopunk utopia is the technology itself.
 

Arkenfolm

overoceans said:
I actually don't think it would be that hard to get the attitudes that this scenario requires, because, Huxley's novel aside, I don't think people really have any serious aversion to this kind of science.
Click to expand...
The anti-GMO movement is pretty influential in some parts of the world and has had some successes in the past. Although it's not all necessarily about the organisms involved but also the effects of patents and such on farmers. That would also would apply to humans being genetically modified but in this case it strikes me as closer to arguments about the price of drugs and generics.

That said I doubt people will accept photosynthetic babies for a long time for the same reason that a baby with a full sleeve of tattoos and tons of piercings would attract a lot of negative attention and criticism.
 

oberdada

Have more pro science Nazis win WWII and go full Social Darwinism through genetic engineering.
Like at the end of "The Iron Dream"

Oh my, this could go political really fast...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top