[LINK] Well, it is April

[grove at zeta.org.au]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2012, Harry McNally wrote:

> On 17/04/12 09:25, David Boxall wrote:
>
>>> ... genetically engineering human eyes to be more like those of a cat
>>> because ?if everyone had cat eyes, you wouldn?t need so much lighting?;
>
> I've wondered for a while about the cost of night glasses for everybody so
> street lights weren't needed. Wonderful for star gazing.
>
> Could Google EyeWare be the first step to mass production of glasses that also
> have low light image sensors ?

Why not go the whole hog and delay children going through puberty and growing up 
at all?   Such is the nature of an article (I cannot find the reference now) 
I read the other day mentioning such a procedure to be performed on disabled 
girls, to stop them growing into women, which apparently is a "bad thing", 
especially when they have severe physical and mental disability.

While I definitely agree with the premise of "discrimination" against women in the article,
which pointed out the procedure was mostly directed at severly disabled girls,
a pragmatic part of me (after having read a similar premise in an SF novel) 
thinks that perhaps delaying adulthood in *all* humans, so that they do not 
mature as fast, are smaller and less destructive on one another and the environment,
might not be such a bad evolutionary principle.   That is, to permit intellectual 
and emotional development in a "child" but through the use of genetics and 
hormone therapy, keep them in an immature state until about 25 or so.

I know it sounds quite bizarre, but this is actually achievable in a generation or 
so, with a few eugenic-style tweaks.  A lot more achievable than "cats eyes" for 
example.   Bizarre, extreme and unsavoury, all of it, but the potential is there
and the fact someone already thought of it means others are already thinking of it.....


rachel

-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove at zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
    "The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum." - Finagle's Law