The Right to Privacy

Think not public.

Not everything is everyone's business.

How much do you want to share?

Are you sharing more than you would want,

without knowing it, through the Internet?

Some of you use your full name

when you comment here on the Sky of Stars blog.

Your opinion stays here, undeleted, for who knows how long.

Do you stand by what you say and how you say it, for years?

On the other hand, is privacy no longer a social norm?

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg stated in 2010:

"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information

and different kinds but more openly and with more people.

That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

Have we "evolved" past privacy?

The Right to Genetic Modification of Offspring,,, Healthy Lives

When available through technological progress,

everyone shall have the right to genetic modification (GM) of future offspring,

limited to the prevention of life-threatening diseases,

such as Down's syndrome, Tay-Sachs syndrome, cystic fibrosis, and Gaucher's disease.

However, at this moment of writing,

 I do not have a position on genetic engineering to prevent aging,

because it conflicts with my position on the Right to Age.

Balding, wrinkles, arthritis, pain, dementia --- elements of normal aging---

may be found to have specific and easily-modified DNA locations.

But adding 50+ years to the life cycle would re-position life's phases

(childhood, puberty, retirement, etc.) and increase world population,

thus requiring monumental changes to both society's institutions and attitudes.

On the other hand (no pun intended for a GM 3-handed human),

genome researcher João Pedro de Magalhães states:

these technologies
"will allow us to escape our human limitations and evolve beyond our dreams."

Something about João Pedro's words move me.

Still, ordering offspring
like a burger-to-go-have-it-your-way

seems
wrong, odd, destructive, and false.

Is this our evolutionary choice?

future offspring

I'm on the fence, partly, on this one
regarding GM for age prevention or offspring qualities.

Which side of the fence are you on?