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Gee, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The Sun reports that China’s leaders are pondering breeding genetically modified soldiers who will be exceptionally strong and smart, will have superior vision and hearing, and won’t feel any pain.
Hmm. Not being able to feel pain is one of the terrible symptoms of Hansen’s Disease (aka leprosy). People can hurt themselves terribly when they put their hand on a hot stove and don’t know it until they smell their own flesh burning. It would be difficult for people who have lost the sense of touch to survive, much less be able to operate military equipment.
But even supposing that the Chinese were to succeed in creating an army of supermen, why would such people consent to take orders from their inferiors?
Published in General
Surely the Chinese have a back door into their synthetic soldier-bot?
Given the complexity of the human genome, we probably don’t have to worry about this actually happening any time soon.
Not being able to feel pain is generally a very bad thing.
For leprosy, I’d say its a small mercy, compared to the alternative.
Kinky!
I can think of several science-fiction novels that address this sort of thing.
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
I’ve written these kind of scenarios in sci-fi stories. If you want loyal soldier bots, you would have to treat them well. Mistreatment is how you get fragged or overthrown.
I read an article recently, actually a book review, I think, about the Germans drugging their soldiers during the invasion of France in WWII. A drug called Pervitin kept the Nazis going for three days day and nights to overwhelm the French defenses. True? I don’t know. The dream of the super-soldier has always been around, but there are always trade-offs.
Pervitin was methamphetamine.
The Chinese need to read up on the Mamluks or at least remember the Jurchens/manchus.
Super-smart? Better not let them read The Road to Serfdom or Free to Choose, then.
Star Trek: Khan
A number of years ago, when the articles were written by actual scientists, Scientific American had a piece on gene therapy, written by scientists doing work in the field. They were doing work on therapies for muscular dystrophy. An aside in the article said that the (then upcoming) Beijing Olympics in 2008 was probably the last that you could be sure that none of the athletes had been improved via gene therapy. There were ways to detect it using the techniques in place then, but new techniques were being developed. And with those techniques, the only way to be sure was by biopsy and gene sequencing. They said that in the past, some authoritarian regimes (i.e. East Germany) had state sponsored doping done on athletes and that it might happen in the future with gene therapy.
The book is Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler.
I haven’t read it, but I probably will one day. I’ve also heard that U.S. soldiers in World War II took speed to stay awake which seems plausible.