(Replying to PARENT post)

Why are people uncomfortable with this?

While it's not important enough for genetic engineering on it's own, I'd probably edit my children to be darker. Having spent a few days on the beach in Thailand, the genetic inferiority of my own fair skin is quite visible and painful.

👤yummyfajitas🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Your body evolved skin to suit an environment other than a Thai beach. I would not consider that genetic inferiority.
👤up_so_floating🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

What does it have with skin color? Just limit the sun for two or three days until you tan, no sunburns after that. It's not like Thais are black. Compare:

https://pixabay.com/p-199674/?no_redirect

https://tonycavanagh.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/5005.jpg

Hardly a big difference. For genetic modification, the best solution is to increase range of tanning rather than changing the constant. It's already possible to get black skin [0] with eg. melanotan-2, so it's not that big of a change.

[0] http://imgur.com/a/I428E

👤duckingtest🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

> Why are people uncomfortable with this?

Some aspects of cultural, ethnic and religious identity are associated with and expressed by genetic factors like skin color.

For African Americans, just to give an example, the premise of "editing" children to be "whiter" might appear to enable racial genocide.

It doesn't apply only to skin color - some deaf people would consider genetically engineering away deafness an attack on "deaf culture."

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(Replying to PARENT post)

Having spent a week in Cabo I agree with you, but having spent the entire rest of the year in Seattle I need all the Vitamin D I can get.
👤philwelch🕑8y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I'd probably edit my children to be darker. Having spent a few days on the beach in Thailand, the genetic inferiority of my own fair skin is quite visible and painful.

Is this like reductio ad absurdum of PC signalling? Where do you spend the other 362 days of the year? In an environment that fair skin provides advantages for things like vitamin D production perhaps?

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