Eugenics under the guise of scientific breakthrough seems good, but I've heard that can go wrong. I read something about that in history. The best and most natural way is to pick a partner with desirable genetic traits. It's like recording music: it's better to get a good recording from the start instead of having to complicate the process with too much post-production.
But not everyone picks their partners like that, and can we really tell them what to do with something so intimate as procreation?
I don't like the word "ethics", it's full of shit.
I do think they're wasting resources and time, there are so many problems in the world and they're discovering more and more useless things than useful ones. This won't make the world better. It's interesting but we don't need it.
I agree that we don't really need it, but I don't think we can fully rule out that it won't make the world better. We don't know that yet. But we also don't know if it would make the world worse. You are right though, if we want to be philanthropic, there are other places to start that can be argued as more practical, but considering how fast information and technology are increasing in complexity, this is something that will be here soon and is kinda inevitable. So that being said, it's good to discuss ahead of time that way awareness of what's coming can be used to find some sort of a consensus.
But yeah, trying to establish ethics will always result in some sort of contradiction. It's up to the perspective and can be either or, (Cause in reality everything is neutral, existence will go on regardless of what we do with our genes) and will depend on whose hands it gets into. If I were to say it's unethical in it's totality, that would be based in the possibility of the negative outcomes and uses for it. But at the same time, saying it's all around unethical, would sort of imply that I don't want to help prevent children from being born with disease through efficient technology, that can be argued as being unethical too (a contradiction.) On the other hand, if I were to say that it was all around ethical for it's possible philanthropic uses, that would mean that I would be okay with the negative outcomes, so long as the positives were there as well. So can you really firmly have an opinion on it, in it's totality without having a flaw? For the sake of peace of mind it would be best for humanity to agree on standards and terms for it's uses, but as we can see, when it comes to science and technology of this proportion, that's not something easily done, with different nations and belief systems already vehemently disagreeing on things like Nuclear energy etc etc.
Over-all, I think it's an interesting possibility, but something that should be treated as extremely delicate. Cause we can never truly predict the outcomes of directly manipulating the environment in any way, and whether we believe so or not, we are part of a genetic environment, and while there may be some shiny aspects to these possibilities, there will be repercussions for whatever we choose to do with it, directly or indirectly.