I’m 100% for this type of gene tinkering. The very real negative social consequences of this are outweighed by our increased understanding of how to modify our body. Yeah, the early vast majority of this modification will be banal and crude. But that’s what the internet looked like in the beginning too, all porn and chat-room flame wars.

We need to get good at modifying our bodies for the same reason we need to get good at launching stuff in to space. If we want to have any real chance of surviving for more than a few thousand years we need to spread to multiple locations – planets, moons, asteroids – other than Earth. That’s going to require us to be able to make changes to our bodies