I’m coming back after thinking a bit more about improving human genes. I think there are three cases to consider:
Improving a living person, e.g., stem cell treatments or improved gut bacteria: These are firmly in the realm of near-term health interventions, and so we should compare their cost-effectiveness to that of bednets, vaccines, deworming pills etc. There is no first-order effect on the far future.
Heritable improvements: These are actually similar, since the number of people with a given gene stays constant in a stable population (women have two children, one of which gets the gene, so there is one copy in each generation[1]). Unless there’s a fitness advantage; but human fitness seems increasingly disconnected from our genes. We also have a long generation time of ~30 years, so genes spread slowly.
Wild stuff: Gene drives, clones, influencing the genes on a seed spaceship… I think these again belong to the intractable, potentially-negative interventions.
To sum up, I don’t think human gene improvement is one of the reliable ways to improve the future that I’m looking for in this question :(
I’m coming back after thinking a bit more about improving human genes. I think there are three cases to consider:
Improving a living person, e.g., stem cell treatments or improved gut bacteria: These are firmly in the realm of near-term health interventions, and so we should compare their cost-effectiveness to that of bednets, vaccines, deworming pills etc. There is no first-order effect on the far future.
Heritable improvements: These are actually similar, since the number of people with a given gene stays constant in a stable population (women have two children, one of which gets the gene, so there is one copy in each generation[1]). Unless there’s a fitness advantage; but human fitness seems increasingly disconnected from our genes. We also have a long generation time of ~30 years, so genes spread slowly.
Wild stuff: Gene drives, clones, influencing the genes on a seed spaceship… I think these again belong to the intractable, potentially-negative interventions.
To sum up, I don’t think human gene improvement is one of the reliable ways to improve the future that I’m looking for in this question :(
Maybe that would be different for inheritable bacterial populations… I don’t know how these work.