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Social and philosophical issues in genetics. Part 4

To what extent are we free to decide our actions and to what extent are we predetermined products of our genome?
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So, sometimes we have seen cartoons of how humans will be in the future with different eyes, breasts, brains, pennies… We have no idea on that. The only thing we can say is that genetically we are not going to change that much. Of course, if we have a given environment, this may induce some changes, but there are no reasons to think that characteristics that come informative in our genome are going to change in the future. For good or for bad, the future of genetics of humans will be very similar to the present.
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Of course, there will be minor changes, for example admixture among human groups will make skin colour to be more uniform across geography, there will be special cases of genetic manipulation in some individuals, there may be some changes that will happen due for example to differences in sun exposure or eating given substances of even to sexual selection but this are going to be minimal. We are talking on the future of our genome, but our future may be far from that. We should talk also on transhumanism, but transhumanism is not going to be important in the modification of our genome.
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Now there is the belief or the theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental situation, especially by means of science and technology. This may happen; but this is not going to change our base, our genome. So, the effects of technology in our survival may be important but this is clearly far beyond our genome. At the very end, so, what we have seen is that we as living being, as humans, we have acted in such a way, that we strongly support the conservative view of our biology, of our genome in the sense that the future of humankind is going to be made with what we have right now. Culture, nonetheless, is going to develop a lot.

To what extent are we free to decide our actions and to what extent are we predetermined products of our genome?

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Why Biology Matters: The Genome and You

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