Monkey See or Is One Man’s Fix Another’s Enhancement?
Color blindness affects some eight percent of males, and the most common form is the inability to distinguish between red and green. Yes, there are other forms of colorblindness, and yes, females can also be colorblind, but the females are few and far between. The condition is almost exclusively found in men, and you simply can’t ignore something that is a reality for one out of every twelve men.
Colorblindness is well known but there is no treatment. The colorblind simply learn to accommodate.
As with all human conditions, the degree of colorblindness varies, so its impact varies widely. With a mild case, a fella might come off as just a bad dresser, while in a severe case life becomes an adventure. Say there’s a Christmas sign with red letters on a green background, and such a situation is typical during the holiday season. To the man with red-green colorblindness, such a sign would look all one color, sort of a grey all over. One presumes he would still somehow find his way to Santa, but you can readily see why red and green would be poor choices for commonplace street signs.
The good news here is that these folks are simply missing a patch of DNA… which is just the kind of challenge this Millennium is made for.
Enter science.
While eight percent of human males are colorblind, all male squirrel monkeys are colorblind, so that makes them perfect guinea pigs — so to speak — to study potential solutions. The September 16, 2009 online edition of New Scientist reports that scientists from the University of Washington modified a virus to carry the missing patch of red-green-distinguishing DNA as a payload. Then they found a way to introduce this modified virus into the eyes of the male squirrel monkeys. And then… they waited. During this time, they hoped, the virus would take up happy residence and start multiplying. It took 20 weeks, but eventually the monkeys started distinguishing between red and green.
It was clever how they got the also-clever monkeys to reveal what colors they could and could not see. (It turns out male squirrel monkeys like video games! Who knew? See Resources) But the point I want to make here starts with the ability to easily introduce new strands of DNA into living, breathing creatures — which would include you and me.
Who would deny a person the richness of a glorious sunset? The vision of the world’s greatest paintings? The diversity of the Internet? The fullness of the faces of our loved ones? In this situation, science is applauded for trying to fix a capability that the great swath of the human race enjoys. But could it be viewed differently? Are we trying to “normalize” humans to a threshold of experience?
What if things were different? What if, for example, over 99% of humans were colorblind, so that there were only a handful of people in the world who could distinguish between red and green? (For starters … they’d be keeping their mouths shut. The accusation “You’re seeing things!” has special meaning here.) One could even imagine scientists trying to correct the ability to see both red and green. They would be trying to eradicate what would be generally considered an annoying problem.
Who would deny a person the richness of a glorious sunset? The vision of the world’s greatest paintings?
But if one person in the general population figured out that they could gain an advantage by simply adding that little patch of DNA, would that be an enhancement? It exists naturally in some humans, so it’s not some creation of a genetic mad man… and yet it moves that person away from the norm. And there you have it: one man’s fix is another man’s enhancement.
Now is the time to ask these questions: How should we view this, individually and collectively? What is our responsibility as a society? What is the responsible way to proceed?
So here’s my new sign, in colors neither green nor red: “Slippery Slope. Enter here. Watch your step.” Indeed, welcome to the slippery slode of DNA. It's as slippery a slope as there ever was.
Moira A. Gunn, Ph.D. hosts “BioTech Nation” on NPR Talk and NPR Live. She’s a professor of global information systems and biotechnology in the School of Business and Professional Studies at the University of San Francisco, and the author of Welcome to BioTech Nation… My Unexpected Odyssey into the Land of Small Molecules, Lean Genes, and Big Ideas.
Gene therapy cures colour-blind monkeys
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17799-gene-therapy-cures-colourblind-monkeys.html
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You lost me at "No eyes." I would like to keep mine.
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>(For starters … they’d be keeping their mouths shut. The accusation “You’re seeing things!” has special meaning here.) <
This is currently the case with synaesthetics.
And, yes, I too want viper-vision. And hundred-eyed insect vision. But most of all, see-through vision.
I wish I wasn't colorblind
Genetic Engineering is a slippery slope. The article brings up the ethics point but doesn't think further down the line...let's take a look...
Let's say we fix color blindness today. No harm, no foul - right?
How about fixing birth defects in the womb? We can take care of any heart problems, sight issues, handicaps, etc. before the child even has to experience these hardships. That sounds great! Maybe. What if this child's blindness would have made them the next Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder? What will we lose?
Where do we stop?
What about engineering the child in the womb to be smart like Einstein or agile like Michael Jordan? Is that wrong?
What if we need superhuman strength for certain tasks? Can we require job applicants to get muscle enhancing DNA sequencing?
What about cybernetics? Is it wrong, for example, to require mechanics to replace their arm from the elbow down with a specialty tool that will allow them to do their job 300% faster?
Again - where do we draw the line?
The original article is a teaser to get people to think about the coming ethical decisions we'll be making in 5 to 10 years.
As a colorblind person I guess I would be one of the few who wouldn't take treatment to subscribe me to "the norm." I have red/green/brown in addition to blue/purple. It's not that I don't see those colors -- it's that different shades of colors appear as different colors to me. That evergreen Christmas tree you see appears as a bright orange/red to me. Still, stop signs appear dark red.
My profession is an illustrator and graphic designer. To say that color blindness hasn't come up in this vocation would be ludicrous, but you learn to cope with color values and other tricks. I enjoy seeing the way I do, however. I think there are some benefits. I can look at a forest and see reds, oranges, greens, browns and yellows instead of simply green (for the most part). I can identify clusters of trees from miles away just due to their distinct color -- not from their leaf pattern or shape.
I think that my color blindness actually helps me more than it hurts. First, I wouldn't see the world any other way. Second, I think it makes me a better artist. It forces me to pay attention to color more than the average person. I can still dress myself fine. I don't have a problem with traffic lights. I just live in a world that has a different palette than most of you.
Still, would I hold any sort of animosity towards those who would choose to get treatment? Of course not. Color blindness is something that is different for everyone. The way I see is probably the way that no one else on Earth sees. Who's to say someone wouldn't like to view it in a different way? Why would I care or stand in the way of that?
Utter bullshit, if it can be cured people should be allowed - and idiots who sit and think to much should set to do hard labor until they stop acting like nazis.
I went nearly 20 years without knowing I was "colorblind." It crushed most of my career aspirations and forced me to change paths, fortunately I found out early enough to do so.
Growing up, I was constantly embarrassed and just assumed I was stupid in some way, despite high grades and such. Without a point of reference, there's no way to know until you're presented with an Ishihara test.
I suspected something might be wrong my whole life, but nobody wants to believe they can't see what everyone else can, and many parents go the denial route. On the bright side, the sense of relief I got when I understood why green traffic lights were white was very comforting.
Those colorblind people like me that really want to know what the (civilized) world look like, apart from a possible future gene therapy, well, I have a cheap solution. It's not perfect, but it does show the world differently, particularly the things made by humans.
It will be hard to do in America because it's a bit labor intensive and that's something that American workers are not willing to do for their wages. Even here in Brazil I'll have trouble finding another optic/glass industry guy willing to do the several attempts I did in the past. One of the glasses is gone, but the best one is still with me.
If you do find someone willing to do that, ask your glasses-making technician to tint a pair of lenses with red. The best result I got was with a lighter (to me:-)) shade of red, because stronger shades block too much light and indoor use gets impaired.
Only then you can understand why the modern world is colored like it is. You will see why red cars are so talked about, you will see that warnings are really attention-catching and so on. Don't remember right now if I've looked at a supposedly beautiful sunset to check it out. For those that do see the whole spectrum to understand, the sky/clouds just show up like a dirty spot, wherever people say "the red is so beautiful"... I don't see much difference when looking at nature scenery though. I guess in Brazil in the places I live and have seen everything is so lush with green vegetation that you don't have anything red standing out to be seen. That should have made a difference on Painted Desert though.
I disagree the Moira shouldn't be asking the philosophical questions. We should all be asking them because the collective answer to this particular one as well as the ones that will follow will determine what is "normal".
Asking the questions shouldn't be discouraged. *telling* other people what they should ask and how they should live, should be.
I tell you what. I'm sixty years old and I'm mildly red-green color impaired and while I have gotten through life alright, sometimes the difference between what I see and what most others see becomes obvious and sometimes embarrassing.
I know there are a lot of people who deal with mild vision impairments and don't seem to care enough to buy and wear glasses unless they are pressed to the wall and need to read small print and begrudgingly pull out a pair of drug store reading-glasses hidden somewhere on their person.
For myself, I want to live in a full-color, high-definition world and I don't mind at all paying top dollar for state of the art glasses to correct vision that gets more weird and frustrating as I age.
What I'd like to know is why is this woman writing this article? Has she ever experienced the frustration of seeing gray when everyone else in a room sees green or red? Has she ever been denied a job because she failed a color-blindness test?
Maybe I won't live to see this treatment used to treat humans, but I'd pay a lot to be able to experience the full-color world.
What if I were to write an article minimizing or over-complicating the impact of some disorder that affects mostly women? Wouldn't I be called a boorish, insensitive, chauvinist?
I'm excited by this research, but I'm absolutely appalled by this article and the cluelessness of the author.
Maybe she needs to stick with science and leave the philosophy to someone else.
As someone who is red-green colorblind, I would definitely call it a handicap. Not a significant one, but it is no way an advantage to me. As a military officer, there are specialities that are closed off to me. I tested in the top 10% to be a pilot, but was disqualified based off color-blindness. For pretty much any combat speciality in the military, it's the same. This might not seem like a big deal, but in my service there is exactly one 4-star general that's not a combat speciality.
I don't see an ethical issue here at all. As long as it's by choice, who cares? If you are color blind and wish to have that segment of DNA introduced into your eyes, go for it.
I wonder if it is possible do turn a person with normal vision into, say, a tetrachromat? There are many details to work out, including whether or not existing cones may have to be altered to be sensitive to a 4th wavelength. (I don't see how otherwise).
Which also raises questions about the colorblind retina which this treatment works for. Is it that the cones for either red or green are simply not present, or is it that they are there but are "malformed?"
It also raises very fascinating questions behind the neuroscientific basis of color. In the case of the monkey, it would appear that the monkey's brain is plastic enough to adapt to the new sensory information, which is absolutely fascinating! If we had a treatment to turn a normal person's eyes into tetrachromat eyes, would his brain be able to reconfigure itself to perceive that new primary color? There's issues of qualia here, as well as neuroplasticity, ....!
These are fascinating times we live in, and I think it's rather silly to raise this ethical question over something so benign. Human experience will never be "normable" despite your best efforts. And even if that's the case, as long as everyone has free choice in the matter, you have no issues to worry about -- as long as everyone understands what is being done, and what possible side-effects that may happen, etc.
I'm all for human enhancements. Life is too short to dismiss the possibilities.
as one of those that is colorblind I would welcome the choice to
fix it. There is a solution available. There is a contact lens available
that corrects colorblindness. But I am one of the people that cant wear contacts.
I for one (colorblind respondent), would certainly welcome a chance to view the world in more colors...
Seriously folks, how difficult is this? If you demand they have the "repair" then it is wrong, immoral, etc. If it is their choice, then we're good. This really isn't rocket science.
I'd like to point out the factual inaccuracy of red-green colorblind individuals seeing red and green as gray. That's simply not the case. A red-green colorblind individual sees his world in in terms of blues and yellows. For an idea of how a colorblind person sees the world, go here: http://www.vischeck.com/daltonize/
A couple of comments about colourblindness. Firstly, I think it is a mistake to think that a red-green colourblind person sees some sort of 'grey' where other's see lively colours.
I am red-green colourblind, but I still see red and I still see green. eg traffic light colours are quite separate for me, and neither of them are anything like grey. Often darker colours and less saturated colours are more difficult to distinguish, and something people probably don't think about is that it affects colours on the other side of the 'color wheel' as well. Mix blue light with some red and/or green light to get slightly purplish or slightly cyanish, and I have trouble working out which way it's gone, I suppose for exactly the same reason I have trouble distinguishing the slightly higher or slightly lower frequencies of light between strong red and strong green.
I also believe that people see things somewhat as they want (or expect) to see them. I recall being puzzled at why a grey pastel crayon seemed to me to be slightly coloured, and I supposed it was intended to be a flesh tone. Other students in my class (it was a design class) insisted that it certainly was grey. I think it was something about the texture of it (and the context), but even examining it in direct sunlight it still seemed to me to contain colour. Was I seeing something the others weren't. Probably not, but I don' really know.
Secondly, not only is colourblindness far less common in women, some women appear to have superior colour sense over most people. Look up tetrachromacy. Tetrachromats sense four colour channels where most people only sense three. Does that make almost everyone colourblind compared to them? Should this be corrected?
Re: your last paragraph. It's not that it SHOULD be corrected. It's that if there's an option and people are willing to take that option, it is their business and we do not have a moral right to stand in their way.
It's the same deal with the subject of this article. It's great that you don't see your condition as a handicap and (probably) wouldn't choose the treatment for yourself. But what gives you or me the right to make that decision for someone else? Just a sense of "the way things must be"?
No one is saying that we should force "normalcy" on everyone. But if you look around, people choose to be "normal" (at the expense of watching their natural abilities lie unused) all the time! It's called 'choosing a profession' (a high-paying boring job instead of a creative one for instance). I have yet to hear anyone complain about that and say that it is morally wrong for gifted people to choose to be happy (in a narrowly defined but popular sense) rather than do what they are good at.
What sort of twisted morality is it then that affords people afflicted with such ailments with LESS freedom than the so-called normal folks?
Why should colorblindness be a handicap? I've personally know 2 people with colorblindness that seem to have a slight advantage with colorblindness.
On road trips with 1 guy, he would spot police patrol cars from 2 miles away on an open stretch of road, this is WAY before anybody else would confirm that it was a police car, he said that the lights on top of the cars give it a distinct look that pops out at him.
And the other guy plays Lazer-tag with a bunch of co-workers (http://www.db-az.com/) on our lunch breaks and he consistently out-scores everyone else. It has a lot to do with him being able to spot everyone else a split-second before they see him, and he also mentioned that colorblindness is a favored trait amongst Marine snipers.
Why should colorblindness be a handicap you ask!!! .. Are you for real? That’s like saying why is aids a disease. You don’t have color vision issues or you would not be so optimistic. Let me tell you a thing or 2 about color vision problems: things like when a person’s spends years LONG FUCKEN YEARS at uni and then graduates and the family’s and relatives get all happy for him/her and the light at the end of the tunnel starts to show, THE DREAM JOB THE ONE THAT PERSONS BEEN WATING ON FOR SO LONG IS WITHIN HIS /HER GRASP THEN ………………………………they find out for the first time that there color blind and in order to work in that profession you need to have full color vision and the persons is told sorry that’s the rules and there’s no cure for color vision. Or someone that’s been looking forward to joining the army and fulfill his or hers goal and dreams BUT THEY CANT ALL because OF FUCKEN GOD DAM COLORBLINDNES!!!!!!WHAT NOW UHHHHHH!!!!!!! WHAT TTTTHHHEEEEE FUCK IS THAT PERSON MENT TO DO WITH HIS/HER FUCKEN LIFE UHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!AND YOU SAY IT’S NOT A FUCKEN HANDICAP PLZZZZZZ. AND AS FOR YOUR FRIEND well he’s just a fucken idiot you can’t even get in the army in a combat role with colorblindness you may get in a combat role with very very mild color visions issues but I really don’t think as a sniper. And as for laser tag and spotting cop cars 10,000 kilometers away and all that shit. It’s very different to be fucking around with your friend than to pass a full color vision test upon which the results determines whether or not you get the position which you are a applying for . This shit fucks people’s lives up lady it did to me and many others alike don’t insult the colorblind by brushing colorblindness off as some other problem that can be fixed with some cream or a pill because it can’t it’s something that we have to live with and accept that it’s all gone fucken wrong and you have no back up plane so yeh thats my two cents. at least I made it fucken count.
Too bad there are no fixes for morons yet.
...so what you are saying is if you had aimed for one of the other thousand career paths you would never even had noticed you had this.
E
I went nearly 20 years without knowing I was "colorblind." It crushed most of my career aspirations and forced me to change paths, fortunately I found out early enough to do so.
Growing up, I was constantly embarrassed and just assumed I was stupid in some way, despite high grades and such. Without a point of reference, there's no way to know until you're presented with an Ishihara test.
I suspected something might be wrong my whole life, but nobody wants to believe they can't see what everyone else can, and many parents go the denial route. On the bright side, the sense of relief I got when I understood why green traffic lights were white was very comforting.
The best thing to do, for the sake of both evolution and fairness, is to give enhancements away for free and see what happens.
I want to note that we colorblind females are NOT so few and far between. Also, colorblindness almost always means a difficulty to differentiate between similar shades of, say, red and green. It doesn't mean we don't see colors at all. The whole term is a misnomer. It is more color differentiation difficulty, and only for the pair you inherited, usually red/green or blue/green. As for DNA -- I like my sunsets just the way they are, thank you very much -- beautiful!
It's an interesting ethical exercise, but I think the conclusion is obvious: individual choice can be the only arbiter. "Society" has neither responsibility to restrict nor imperative to deliver any treatment. It must be made available by those who wish to administer it and to those who wish to undergo it, no more, no less.
I know the "designer baby" issue is tied up in this and all bioethics arguments, but in a case like this it's easy enough to conclude that if it can be done it can be reversed. If a parent has an embryo modified to correct a colorblindness gene, presumably if the child, upon reaching the level of maturity necessary to make the choice for himself, can have the change reversed if he feels he'd rather take what the roll of the genetic dice gave him.
This particular gene probably had some evolutionary advantage at some point a long time ago - I know full-on colorblindness does - so a more interesting question to me is: suppose we go and "normalize" our genetic codes, and something devastating happens. Perhaps these genes that are an annoyance or disadvantage in modern technologically developed society may have some utility, or be the building blocks toward some new evolutionary step, when put into a different environment.
Homogeneity is not a feature in nature, it's a bug. Is it possible that we're bugging up our own code without knowing it? Or have we transcended the point that natural selection is no longer a developmental path for us? Have we become some new kind of thing which exists outside or above that system of organic evolution? Can we be brought low again, and if so, what has hubris cost us?
So. . .you're arguing that people with deficiencies have a moral obligation to endure their limitations because fixing them would reduce our collective immunity to epidemics?
Or, are you saying that there is no such thing as a deficiency because we can never really be absolutely sure that what looks like a deficiency at the moment won't turn out to be an advantage tomorrow, so we shouldn't change the way we're born?
I disagree with the idea that there is hubris in a desperate, blind struggle to do one's best. The simple fact that we can't be sure what the future holds is reason enough to secure every advantage possible. We aren't being proud when we try something, we're just trying not to be paralysed with fear. I'd rather die trying than passively accepting what I was handed. And I don't think I can honestly tell anyone else that they should think otherwise.
I think you may have skipped over the opening sentence: "..I think the conclusion is obvious: individual choice.."
I have red green cone deficiency and I'd love to benefit from a solution. I've bought several green pants thinking they were brown. Would be nice to have normal vision.
Regarding the last comment: Are the Aspies the gray area, or are the cognitively common the gray area? Aspies probably include Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein, as well as a good chunk of the people who are engineering the future - whereas the cognitively common . . . well, you know what common people are like. ;-)
But I do take your point. Sometimes diversity is good (and for all I know, it may be that the "color-blind gene" also grants immunity to the next epidemic), and sometimes diversity is absolutely useless (as with the "die of mysterious causes at the age of two weeks gene", if there is one). Despite the example I just gave, color-blindness PROBABLY has no great advantage.
I have a friend with color blindness and have asked him directly what his take is on his condition.He told me he considers it a handicap and would love to have it corrected even if now he can't comprehend what he is missing.
Many species of birds can see in the violet range and pistol shrimp have six types of receptors in their eyes including ones to perceive circular polarization.
Snakes have a form of thermal vision.
I for one will be first in line when genetic upgrades become available to obtain those abilities.
I do not understand why anyone would not desire this.We are visual creatures and new details provided by this extra perceptive ability would open new undreamt of
vistas we can not now comprehend .
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