Chinese genetically alter human embryo

[Lagmonster]

What about genes for other stuff? Like how long before we will be technologically capable of picking the hair, eye or even skin color of our offspring? Imagine if genetics was to allow one to at least superficially change the race of ones children. That would be a can of worms I'd love to see opened.

That doesn't seem significantly different from physical alterations made AFTER birth, except in terms of the choice of the individual to have those traits and the greater level of permanency gained.

An adult can and will change the colour of their hair, skin, even eyes if they're feeling crazy. They can alter just about anything about the shape of their face or body via surgery if they really need to go the extra mile. For people who really want to look like a different race or less like their own, if they have the money, they can do that right now.

[Purple]

That doesn't seem significantly different from physical alterations made AFTER birth, except in terms of the choice of the individual to have those traits and the greater level of permanency gained.

An adult can and will change the colour of their hair, skin, even eyes if they're feeling crazy. They can alter just about anything about the shape of their face or body via surgery if they really need to go the extra mile. For people who really want to look like a different race or less like their own, if they have the money, they can do that right now.

But imagine if say the black community in america were to gain access to a simple tool to make their children be born as white, or at least passably white to the inspecting police officer. Some people would do it, others would not. And soon enough you'd have riots over people accusing each other of being race traitors and what not.

[LaCroix]

What about genes for other stuff? Like how long before we will be technologically capable of picking the hair, eye or even skin color of our offspring? Imagine if genetics was to allow one to at least superficially change the race of ones children. That would be a can of worms I'd love to see opened.

As I mentioned above, you need to change at least 10 different gene sequences to change eye color - hair and skin will certainly be affected by that, as well, for if you change melanin production somewhere, it will affect everything.

So first, it's highly complicated, and second, it probably comes with restrictions due to interactions, like 'nope, ebony black skin and blonde hair with blue eyes will not work'.

Same for strange colors. 'Natural' neon-blue hair for example is very likely out of reach, unless you are willing to really mess up that humans bodily systems and replace eumelanin and pheomelanin by some other strange compounds and hope for the best.

[Lagmonster]

But imagine if say the black community in america were to gain access to a simple tool to make their children be born as white, or at least passably white to the inspecting police officer. Some people would do it, others would not. And soon enough you'd have riots over people accusing each other of being race traitors and what not.

Yes, and we'd punish the rioters because they were breaking the law. Anything other than that is none of anyone's business. I don't think you should always consider something is bad just because assholes aren't okay with it. That's solving the wrong problem.

[Purple]

Well no, of course not. I am not saying any of this is wrong. I am just saying that if this were to occur the socio-political results would be interesting to behold.

[Ziggy Stardust]

It's just so hard to predict potential impacts, because we are still SOOO far away from actually being able to reliably alter traits at will. I don't think people understand how little we truly know about the human genome and how it works.

Hell, in many cases, we don't even know the exact gene that codes for X, we just know the region of the chromosome within a few thousand bases that is most closely associated with X.

And that's not even getting into the fact that saying a gene codes for X (whether that X be eye color or what have you) isn't even an accurate way of describing genetics to begin with. Genes don't code for traits, genes code for amino acids. The downstream relationship between that amino acid and whatever phenotypic trait you wish to discuss is still mostly unknown.

[His Divine Shadow]

Then there's also the factor of epigenetics. Also we recently learned another breakthrough in how DNA works, which also addresses some potential problems of evolutionary theory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sjwlxQ_6LI

Also a nice segment on epigenetics (yeah I like hank green):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1bZEUgqVI