Can we accelerate evolution?

I am beginning a blog on a topic very similar to this. Please check it out:A New MessageTanus

I'd like to respond to the idea of eugenics and all forms of genetic engineering being a bad idea.All forms of technology, whether fire or stone tools, have the capacity to both harm or help the user. There is no doubt that early attempts at improving the human race met with different sorts of failures and if we continue to try genetic manipulations we will have some pretty spectacular failures, but does that mean that we should give up fire because some people get burned? Should we give up cars because there are crashes? Should we stop speaking because people sometimes say stupid things?Mistakes are the way we learn and they are the reason that we must keep trying until we learn how to do something.

My thought is that selection and evolution will continue even with extensive genetic engineering. The new humans with either be well suited to their environment or they won't. We humans who make mistakes will create new humans that we think are so much better, but chances are that there will be unintended consequences. Perhaps the gene that makes people so beautiful will increase cancer; ;perhaps the gene that makes people so kind will take away their ambition, etc, etc.Selection will occur on the group level too. Perhaps the new race of supermen that we create will simply not have a desire for children. That would doom them for sure.There are MANY selection pressure in this world and a little tinkering will not make them go away. The US and the world have had a nice run of wealth so that the agents of selection have appeared to diminish, but they are stll very much there. Ask yourself this, are some people more likely to die in a war? Are some more likely to survive. As just one small example, war will always be with us so that selection is still very active. In a similar way, do some people have an easier time getting married than others? Again, a method of selection that is still very active.

What you are describing is a genetic bottleneck. We most definitely want to avoid one, but the world has seen many of them over the eons and they are a major force that drives speciation. I would argue (as would many) that this is why we need to get off the earth and out into space, because it is the best way to ensure the survival of humanity.The fear of insufficient genetic variability is so widespread, that I hope we will make efforts in the future to ensure that it does not happen. I would also expect that in the future we will be able to "print out" genes and organism from stored information so that if a gene disappears, you will just call up the file from the library and hit the print button on your "Mr. GeneBuilder"{The following message was spam and was deleted - Adminnemooseus}Edited by Adminnemooseus, : No reason given.