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See now I'm not quite sure that's true totally true though. Whilst pharmacogenomics is slowly becoming a big thing, at the moment there are a very limited number of alleles present within the genome, and whilst things like splice variation and receptor di/tri(etc)merisation increases this variability a lot, we a lot less variable genetically than most species. With the advent of customisable genomes I would expect that to change quite a lot (indeed, if engineering genomes did become the norm for some section/strata of society, it would probably start with the blastocyst, so parents would no longer even need to be genetically compatible.
The reason personalised medicine is so crucial in oncology is largely due to the majority of cancers being produced by mutations in genes. As you introduce new genes, you encounter new possible problems. Increased lifespan = increased likelihood of mutations cropping up in a genome (all other thing being equal). And there tends to be trade-offs in biology*, which makes me think that overcoming these will take more treatment. Even though people will likely be altered so as to eliminate a lot of the (proto-)oncogenes, heart disease-risk alleles, etc., I think the introduction of new genes will probably balance this out somewhat. Of course, given that cost is likely to be related to how many genes you want altered (with different companies holding the patent** to each one) a genetic middle-class might arise, with none of the bad genes, but none of the new ones. Over time, as these new genes patents ran out, they would get cheaper, becoming more accessible, and the opportunity for GM would trickle down the price range. Companies might even start selling some genes, such as minimum breast cancer risk as loss leaders to draw people in.
So yes, you're right modified people will be lost costly to genotype at the point of treatment as, barring mutation, it will have all been done as part of the engineering process. So that cost will have already been paid for (though it may have to be repeated if any disease is thought to have a genetic component), not eliminated entirely. But I believe that genotyping is a limited cost field. There is a maximum possible cost, which will slowly fall as technology advances. Treatment on the other hand has no nominal limit to possible cost, as it's ultimately a fight against death (which in my opinion is why the NHS could quite happily swallow global GDP and still have room for more) and entropy always wins through in the end.
Grant re the sensory network implants - surely its only a short step from there to something approaching gestalt consciousness. I'd suggest though that the primary limiting factor is how much humanity we want to retain.
* For example, species which grow quickly tend to be rather succeptible to damage/have trouble with repair, horses legs have trouble healing if broken, fir tree branches will not be replaced if removed.
** If a novel gene is designed, given that it is (represented by) a sequence of letters, could it arguably be filed under a copyright as opposed to a patent? |
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