38 replies to this topic

[niner]

The people do not have to be willing to die, to die. A single epidemic of an untreatable pathogen like SARS or the current wave of anti-bacterial resistant bacteria could annihilate billions while only requiring the work of a single person to spead the disease.

Are you planning something? :ohmy:

[gashinshotan]

This reminds me of the Vietnam war... an endless ideological conflict in which both sides can only see the faults of their opposition...

Too funny. So evolution decided to evolve mechanisms to gum up arteries in order to kill individuals, spawn cancer cells after x years, trigger amyloids to accumulate and cause memory loss? What were the evolutionary pressures that lead to these? I've been through all of the major biogerontology textbooks and have not found one paper that suggests any evidence of this. I was at a conference a few weeks back and two presenters also stated that no programmed death pathways have been identified. I think you're on you own on this theory.

Evolution is a mechanism in continual progress, forever creating organisms better adapted in response to selective pressures of the previous generation. Evolution produced "mechanisms to gum up arteries in order to kill individuals, spawn cancer cells after x years, [and] trigger amyloids to accumulate and cause memory loss" because evolution does not care about selfish individual desires for self-preservation, only the survival of the species. Evolution creates organisms which are continually being perfected in response to the environment and competition from other life. Natural selection requires death in order to allow the most viable genes to propagate and face continual selective pressure. It is not a question of "design" but rather of probability - organisms evolve in response to selective pressures for the survival of the species; they do not evolve to achieve longer and longer life spans because this would threaten the viability of their offspring and prevent the elimination of detrimental genes.

18 months is pretty good for 30 years of effort. Evolution had 4 billion years. These numbers alone indicate we're better engineers than evolution. We don't have to massacre hundreds of millions of test humans to get our heart versions working either. Furthermore we don't need a perfect heart in our lifetime. One (or two) that last 20 or 30 years would be fine as we can swap in new ones every decade or two. We'll want to anyway as new models will continuously roll out. I would bet you could find engineers that would agree that an artificial hear that lasts 20-30 years could easily be engineered in our lifetime. If you're 21 you'll probably live another 80 years. That's a lot of time for accelerating returns and emergent technology to evolve a better pump that pushes fluid around. The same goes for all organs.

You are judging everything by human standards and desires - not natural progression and evolution. As I mentioned before, our bodies are developed in order to maintain the survival of the species, not the individual and extended life spans are only detrimental to human survival. You place too much faith in man's abilities to maintain life and too little faith in the history of man's destructive behavior and the natural mechanism which has always made the best developmental decisions that has allowed us to develop to the level of advancement we are today, far, far more advanced and still incomprehensible to our greatest minds and efforts.

Short-term yes. Longterm I would argue they are not more economical simply because you have to wait for them to grow and time is money. Artificial versions can be mass produced, stored in warehouses (rather than feeding their hosts) and be designed to outperform biological versions thus they will be far more economical. They can be made smaller, faster and more efficient. Better in absolutely every way which translates into more economical. The cost and effort to design these is a one-time cost unless you take into account the followon versions that improve durability and pack in more features.

Artificial versions would have to be continually developed and replaced - costing billions while organically grown organs require only a host animal which costs only a few thousand dollars over their entire life spans. Again, there is no evidence that artificial organs will be mass produced nor that they will even be comparable alternatives to organic transplants.

Natural organs are overly complex for most of the functions they perform and are far more prone to failure than their future synthetic cousins will be. They are prone to cancers, disease, degradation and have millions of tiny moving parts that can misfire at any time. They don't even work well into today's industrial environment. A synthetic version can have built in redundancy, fault tolerance, self diagnostics, self tuning and communication mechanisms to the outside world when it needs replacement. Today they just fail and you die. Yuck. Your perfect evolutionary models are crap compared to what an engineer will be able to design for me.

Yes. Natural organs are prone to failure, but synthetic versions are even more problamatic and this does not seem to be improving. However, organs are naturally perfected through evolution over time in response to selective pressures and would not nearly be as capable nor as complex as to be impossible to replicate letalone understand without evolution. Nature creates to preserve life; artificial organs are created to preserve the individual, in opposition to the survival of the species.

Fetish? What is your fetish with evolution? It takes hundreds of thousands or millions of years to make simple adjustments. We will be able to redesign synthetic organs to match whatever environment we desire. Earth's gravity, Mars' gravity & atmosphere, the moon, space, etc.

We will never be able to create organs that are as perfectly designed by evolution. Just because you have an individual-human centric view of life does not make your love of synthetic organs any less dangerous to human survival. How can we predict the outcomes of synthetic organs and organisms? How can we gurantee that our artificial creations will eventually destroy the hands that created them? For example, if we designed a respiratory system which allows human beings to live in a CO2 dominant atmosphere, what is preventing these people from using it against natural humans, manipulating our air so that it is toxic to most humans but not these modified beings? What is to prevent genetically engineered humans who can live off of the moon's inorganic elements from taking over earth by destroying the organic food supply?

I don't ignore the costs. The costs of not doing these improvements are far more significant. Futurists have been mostly right in regards to what emerges but when is virtually impossible to get right due to the chaos that ensues from billions of will powered organisms doing crazy shit. I'm more than happy to admit that some of my predictions could be off by a hundred year or more. The world economy could collapse setting us back decades and knock us off track. What's important is that we're on a trajectory such that they will happen. If we want them to happen sooner, we need to redirect our effort and resources towards doing so. Obviously I'm in this camp and will use my freedoms to pursue and influence others help me with my utopia. You'd rather live like a stone age human and take your chances competing with nature and others simply for the sake of refining your genome for your offspring, which you are also quite free to do.

The costs of not doing these improvements are not costs at all, but rather money saved. Why would governments care about developing immortality for all when they could wipe out enough of the outside world's population with biological weapons to allow them access to a significant amount of resources?

Sorry, but I and many others would like to keep those imperfect children rather than kill them or let them die for the sake of a better genome that you seem to hold as far more important than any other ideal. If the outer crust of the earth was vaporized by some freak solar event your sweet genome would have no answer. If mine and others' ideals of expanding the human race to other planets and beyond the solar system emerge then guess what, putting your faith in evolution would be a waste. Your genome would be dead and gone whereas the human species would prevail in our scenario at which point we could repopulate the planet.

Sorry, but evolution has a 4 billion year track record in maintaining and developing species optimally in response to selective pressures. Without evolution most of us would be living with deformities and diseases which would make life unworthy of living. This is the way nature works - the sacrifice of the weak for the health of the entire species. Our liberal humanistic and futuristic ideals have allowed degenerate and harmful human diseases to be maintained in the gene pool - diseases which most people consider detrimental to the quality of life - autism, sickle cell, AIDS, dwarfism, etc.

[gashinshotan]

Please explain how. You simply keep repeating this but I'd like to understand what your particular doomsday scenario is? Runaway virus? Irreparable damage to DNA, collapse of the biosphere, famine, global warming, angry deity? You must have a few scenarios that could destroy the entire human race by engineering it to live longer and healthier.

How? Runaway pathogens and dominant genetically engineered plants and humans. We cannot predict the evolutionary and social consequences for every genetic modification we make and so far, human choices have been far more harmful than good, especially with regards to genetic modification as exemplified by the billions of dead animal corpses sacrificed in the name of "research."

You seem so certain throwing around terms like "never" and "impossible". Do you mean "in our lifetime." because never is a long time and impossible is quite finite. Usually these terms are reserved for ignorant fools and you seem fairly intelligent in general to make such errors. I don't feel strongly that gene therapy is going to deliver significant strides short-term despite the fact that there are over 100 gene therapy trials recently completed, under way or scheduled for 2008. It may surprise us though and some of these trials may pan out despite the immune system concerns you raise. 50 to 100 years or beyond? Without a doubt as the technology will be capable of predicting where and what modifications are necessary. Computing power will have grown to a point where we can simulate the entire proteome on a desktop PC. Supercomputers will be capable of screening millions of people simultaneously. Tweaking gene expression and making significant alterations via RNAi to healthy gene expression patterns could easily be only a decade or two away though. Much more will be discovered regarding the genome, proteome and metabalome over the coming decades that may simplify improvements even further making my predictions seem horribly too conservative.

You place to much faith in human "intelligence" and not enough caution in human self-destruction. Before we develop the technologies you propose we will most likely be wiped out by a run-away pathogen or a nuclear war. Human's do not think in terms of species' survival, only group and individual survival and any new technologies will be used to benefit the few at the cost of the rich. But as history has always shown, technology is uncontrollable and eventually all people will have access to the same weapons of mass destruction and will be willing to use them against their enemies in the name of religion. With most of the world holding religious values which value death over life in the name of an idealistic "heaven" we are more likely to be wiped out by continued human advances than saved.

Well said but you forget the fact that with exponential computing power, genetic and proteomic knowledge, that we will be able to do this hit or miss trial and error testing in silico at some point, then on primates, then in limited trials, then in the general population. This is why your doomsday scenario of planet-o-mutant-zombies will never pan out. We can model, test and control how we roll our better-than-evolution versions, just as we do with today's therapies and drugs only the process will be faster, cheaper and more effective with bigger and more powerful tools. Your "some day of perfect genetic engineering" scenario could be pulled to within a 100 years or sooner if a concerted effort were made to go this route.

This is assuming the situations I outlined above do not occur first. Governments have always had primacy over science in the human world and have directed science toward economic and military development over utopian developments and this does not look like it will be changing any time soon.

Wrong. 2-3 new medical devices are announced daily in the press. Go check Google news for the past week of "medical devices" announced if you don't believe me. Here is the list of drugs that entered phase 1 trial in the past week from drugresearcher.com. This list averages 5-10 per week.


Avant Immunotherapeutics & National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Peru-15 pCTB Anti-infectives & Vaccines Oral vaccine designed to offer combined protection against both enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) and cholera.

Quark Pharmaceuticals AKIi-5 Acute Renal Failure (ARF), also called Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) small interfering RNA (siRNA) to inhibit the transcription factor human p53. First systemic delivery of siRNA.

Cytochroma CTAP101 Vitamin D insufficiency in chronic kidney disease (CKD). Prohormone

Cardiome Pharma GED-aPC Cardiovascular - initially cardiogenic shock Engineered analog of recombinant human activated Protein C (aPC) with enhanced anti-inflammatory, anti-thrombotic and strong binding to endothelial protein C receptor properties

GNI F351 liver fibrosis/cirrhosis Inhibits overproduction of collagen by liver fibroblasts following inflammatory insults

Are those drugs available to the general public? Are they applicable in the treatment of any diseases? They still have to undergo testing to verify their viability and effectiveness so I do not consider them to be "medical devices" until they have proven their worth.

I don't need to visit a lab. I can read the papers published and query the databases they publish their data to and talk to scientists who work on this stuff daily. All relevant data for doing comprehensive systems biology in a couple of decades shows exponential growth curve in their data like this...

PDB Growth Chart

That and the growing trend towards high-throughput and mechanization of labs and using software for analysis is enough to recognize we are in for drastic changes in the realtive near term. Biology is increasingly going to transform from a manual process of tinkering with test tubes and single-threaded equipment to a mechanized automated high throughput process driven primarily by robotics. From there it will transform into a computational and information based science where 70% of the work is done in silico on desktop and supercomputers.

Yes but most of that data is on animal research as well as mechanisms which have no viable medical applications in humans.

The term perfect is the rhetoric of a fanatic and few science minded people would consider any natural process as perfect as it implies some type of inherent design which proving, is well outside the scope of science. Trying to argue that no ideal should supersede what nature has emerged is fanatical and would only be argued by someone with a bias that believes that there is a universal ideal expressed through nature that is superior to human ideals. Nice try though.

Perfect implies the best development in response to evolutionary pressure in the scientific context; I do not understand how anyone can claim perfection beyond nature when nature has proven over billions of years to make the best choices for the propagation of life. Isn't life the ultimate measure of perfection?

Some of us hold the genome's organisms (our children and ourselves) as more important to us than a copy of a blueprint and set of instructions that create them. We have transcribed the human genome and can store it on a hard drive and retrieve it whenever we want. If we muck up our genome we can simply revert to backups of frozen sperm and eggs and eventually just the digital copies. It's safe now so stop worrying. Go download a copy if it'll make you feel better.

We have mapped the genomes of less than a dozen people over decades and the costs of doing so for billions let alone thousands of people would be astronomical. How can we replace DNA in an already living organism? The technology to do this is far from reality in the foreseeable future.

It can change and will. We simply need to rework some global social contracts and agree to not destroy the environment or each other with the technology we develop. It's not rocket science. It's diplomacy. Technology can and will march on improving every facet of the human condition even under strict guidelines in regards to requirements that the environment be taken into account for each advancement. For every improvement we make, we simply gauge it's negative affects and engineer a solution accordingly.

It will change according to who? Most people don't care about human survival and life extension; how can you predict that their beliefs will change in the foreseeable future? Why should they care about the survival of their enemies at the costs of national sovereignty, pride, and economic resources? Why save lives when it is easier to kill to obtain your objectives? This is human nature that will never change because it is programmed into our genetic code and evolutionary history.

[gashinshotan]

For the most part I am going to continue to sit back and observe this discussion but one point caught my attention as meriting a comment.

Evolution occurs through random mutation and selection against these mutations. MOST of these random mutations cause death.

I am not sure I agree this is well said at all Maestro (and I know you didn't say it). The first part is questionable and the second part is just wrong. Most random mutation is neither benign nor malignant, they are *mostly* just irrelevant and as such rarely come to our attention. Certainly of the mutations we can recognize few do anything and many have harmful impact but most are not mortally fatal and that is the point, even when they cause hardship and infirmity they are often survivable.

I am not claiming that most are favorable either, just that the claim that *most are fatal* is another example of gross exaggeration. The genome is full of examples of mutations that hold no benefit and cause little to no harm. Some may be vestigial now and others may simply be broken DNA or compromised for other reasons but they do not result in immediate fatality or even prenatal fatality. On a scale of good to bad I would agree that there are more examples of bad mutations than good in terms of the total number of random mutations at a given moment but even that is a highly subjective observation as a mutation that is wrong for one environment could be very beneficial in another and therein lies another important element of chance with respect to mutation and that is always relative to the conditions under which it occurs.

For example; Sickle Cell anemia is recognized as a terrible mutation to suffer, that is unless you are also afflicted with tse-tse flies. It is also not immediately fatal. It also means that a mutation which shortens your life in modern society lengthens it under jungle conditions. Sickle cell makes blood less attractive to the tse-tse and thus those that have it have an increased chance of survival under those conditions. Environment is the more important determinant than subjective assumptions of better and worse mutation and you are second guessing that aspect too much. What is fatal under one set of conditions can sometimes save your life under another.

The first part of the comment is questionable too and for somewhat the same reason, selection is not so much against anything as much as in favor of what ever enhances fitness with respect to the environment over generations. I think there is a tendency to see the importance of genetics in respect to itself under a microscope and forget the most critical single factor for selection is survival within a set of environmental conditions. Change the environment and you are changing the evolution of species over generations too. It may not be as direct or swift a method as intentionally tweaking genes but it is certainly as effectivea dn also happening as well.

I like to call the basis of this discussion Human Selection but the fact of the matter is that for the most part it is still Negligent Selection (Unintelligent Design) a lot more than Intentional or Artificial Selection.

Ironically, sometimes I think the most disturbing part of the whole idea of Human Selection to Social Darwinists is the realization that we are changing the rules that they live by to excuse the abusive primitive conduct they seek to rationalize into one of *rational selection* that will broach all too little *necessary evil* before all is said and done.

Someday we will look upon the past and have no one but ourselves to blame or praise but we won't be able to any longer blithely excuse or condone our more brutish behavior as simply our animal nature. It is also ironic because I find that Social Darwinists have some of the hardest time getting out from under the yoke of Intelligent Design as a rationalization for their beliefs and defense of some mythical *natural order*.

Where did you learn about evolution? Because that IS the literal definition of evolution that has been proven by practically all levels of biological research. Random mutations, on the scale of billions of years of evolutionary history generally causes death - this is a fact that does not recognize the desire for humans to consider nature as being centered around them. Please ask ANY biologist to explain that evolution does not revolve around humanity and that most mutations have by far been fatal for most organisms on the huge evolutionary time line.

[niner]

Please ask ANY biologist to explain that evolution does not revolve around humanity and that most mutations have by far been fatal for most organisms on the huge evolutionary time line.

Well, no. Most mutations either do nothing or the changes they cause are insufficient to be fatal. Some mutations are harmful. Some are helpful. Probably more are harmful than helpful, but I think you're overstating things.

[gashinshotan]

Please ask ANY biologist to explain that evolution does not revolve around humanity and that most mutations have by far been fatal for most organisms on the huge evolutionary time line.

Well, no. Most mutations either do nothing or the changes they cause are insufficient to be fatal. Some mutations are harmful. Some are helpful. Probably more are harmful than helpful, but I think you're overstating things.

Except, I'm not. This is what is taught at my university and in the text books. Most mutations are deleterious and this is what helps to maintain the average in species.

OK an update. I finally realized why we are not seeing eye to eye. You are referring to organism-level mutations while I am referring to genetic base-pair and frameshift mutations. These types of mutations are mostly deleterious while this is less true for mutations that occur in developed organisms as a result of environmental and nutritional factors because the organism has already adapted for the most part. When you refer to mutations in the academic context this usually means you are referring to DNA mutations.

To quote wikipedia:

"A very small percentage of all mutations actually have a positive effect. These mutations lead to new versions of proteins that help an organism and its future generations better adapt to changes in their environment. For example, a specific 32 base pair deletion in human CCR5 (CCR5-Δ32) confers HIV resistance to homozygotes and delays AIDS onset in heterozygotes.[4] The CCR5 mutation is more common in those of European descent. One theory for the etiology of the relatively high frequency of CCR5-Δ32 in the European population is that it conferred resistance to the bubonic plague in mid-14th century Europe. People who had this mutation were able to survive infection thus its frequency in the population increased.[5] It could also explain why this mutation is not found in Africa where the bubonic plague never reached. Newer theory says the selective pressure on the CCR5 Delta 32 mutation has been caused by smallpox instead of bubonic plague.[6]"

http://en.wikipedia....rmful_mutations

Another update: most mutations are deleterious over the scale of life's existence, not necessarily so in higher organisms but nonetheless still a threat to adaptation and viablity.

Edited by gashinshotan, 26 November 2007 - 06:04 AM.

[maestro949]

You are judging everything by human standards and desires

Of course I am. What other standards are there? You personify the genome and evolution as if it's some entity. Or do you have some knowledge of an alien race that designed our genome and are defending their creation against what we'd like to create?

You place too much faith in man's abilities to maintain life and too little faith in the history...

I don't put faith in anything. Faith is reserved for spiritual thinking of which I have no interest in discussing. I do believe that it's possible to accomplish many a great things with our minds including vastly longer lifespans and near-perfect health and yes it's possible that the things we accomplish may destroy us

Artificial versions would have to be continually developed and replaced - costing billions

So? It would fuel the economy and all of the parts could be recycled.

organically grown organs require only a host animal which costs only a few thousand dollars over their entire life spans

Again, there is no evidence that artificial organs will be mass produced

Correct. It's a vision rather than something that currently exists. Visions are required for laying out a roadmap as to how something can be accomplished. There's no evidence that better energy sources will be developed either but it will likely happen because we can envision it happening, theorize as to what research to pursue and then work on the hurdles that block us from achieving that vision. Same goes for artificial organs that are superior to human organs. Companies envision replacement organs and build them without any evidence that they will work and then test them to see if they do. If they do, they deploy them to the market and we have people walking around with dialysis devices, artificial pumps and other implants. Other than birds, there was no evidence that airplanes could be engineered and mass produced but visionaries kept hammering away at it until someone figured out how to do it. Your evidence as a requirement model that something defintely won't happen is naive at best.

nor that they will even be comparable alternatives to organic transplants.

Are you suggesting that their biochemical and physiological function is infinitely complex beyond human and AI comprehension? So complex that even massive amounts of computing power and simulation algorithms could not simulate their component parts? And that humans will never ever be able to build engineering tools that can desing this level of sophistication no matter how many millenium pass? If that's the case then I'd hate to break it to you that humanity already has unintentially exceeded the complexity of biology in what it has engineered. If you aggregate all of the networks of systems, tools, software, roads, buildings, sewer systems, electric grids, computer networks, electronic devices, scientific measurement tools that we have designed and view them as a whole it far exceeds the complexity of human biology. We did this in a couple of millenium with our imaginations. Human biology is a different type of complexity but it can and will be reserve engineered barring catastrophe. The human mind will not be able to understand the system as a whole anytime soon but all of the data can be mapped in silico and custom tailored algorithms and software will emerge that allows us to slow down and view the femptosecond biochemical reactions with atomic precision. We are alreading simulating protein folding with molecular dynamics in silico and simulations are being built now that work across numerous biochemical pathways and protein interaction neworks. Every wall we hit in regards to untangling this complexity will simply trigger another round design and innovation for tackling the next level of complexity and then reworking the models to integrate those complexities. This process will continue until we have full working models of all relevent physiological function. From these models we will be able to engineer better tools for repairing and replacing them.

What do you propose will stop any of this progress from happening? Because we can't do it today isn't a valid answer. And there is plenty of evidence we are moving in this direction. Go read some literature on computational chemistry, molecular modeling, protein interaction networks and you'll see all of the precursors for what I describe above starting to emerge. Yes there are many missing pieces such as computing horsepower and huge swathes of biodata that we still need to collect but that's happening to, and not just in animal models.

Yes. Natural organs are prone to failure, but synthetic versions are even more problamatic and this does not seem to be improving.

You are wrong. Artificial organs are being improved in every fashion. Natural organs are not improving unless your willing to wait a few million years. If I were to put my money on which ones will improve faster over the next 50 years it wouldn't be on the ones working in my body right now. In fact the data suggests that all of these are destined to fail. Today the trend is towards biological, tissue and genetic engineered and lab-grown versions but when once the technology permits, simpler synthetic versions will prevail.

How can we predict the outcomes of synthetic organs and organisms? How can we gurantee that our artificial creations will eventually destroy the hands that created them? For example, if we designed a respiratory system which allows human beings to live in a CO2 dominant atmosphere, what is preventing these people from using it against natural humans, manipulating our air so that it is toxic to most humans but not these modified beings? What is to prevent genetically engineered humans who can live off of the moon's inorganic elements from taking over earth by destroying the organic food supply?

These are all just imagined fears of technology. One could dream up an infinite list of these for present day technology, past technologies and even for a world where there is none. I could easily come up with a lengthy list of scary scenarios that demonstrate why these interventions are necessary in our modern world.

The costs of not doing these improvements are not costs at all, but rather money saved.

There are costs besides money. We collectively and individually assign value to things. I value my health and leisure time and would like to maximize both. Others do as well thus for those of us that value these there is a cost to not committing our resources to making improvements. When people assign value to such things markets respond.

Edited by maestro949, 26 November 2007 - 05:37 PM.

[maestro949]

Without evolution most of us would be living with deformities...

You might want to think that statement through a bit more. Without evolution, we wouldn't exist. No species would.

Runaway pathogens and dominant genetically engineered plants and humans. We cannot predict the evolutionary and social consequences for every genetic modification we make and so far, human choices have been far more harmful than good, especially with regards to genetic modification as exemplified by the billions of dead animal corpses sacrificed in the name of "research."

Regarding human choices being more harmful than good. Would you trade places with someone that lived 3,000 years ago? Would you rather have your lifestyle or theirs? Why do you care about the dead animals when you don't even care about humans that have genetic defects? Are you just pulling any objection you can find out of your ass simply for the sake of argument? And regarding animal testing, with near-perfect data about our biology, we'll eventually be able to run tests in silico and leave the mice alone.

With most of the world holding religious values which value death over life in the name of an idealistic "heaven" we are more likely to be wiped out by continued human advances than saved.

I thought you said you weren't a dystopian. The genie's out of the bottle regarding technology. There's no going back to living like prehistoric savages. Nobody would agree to it. I'd rather take my chances and risk dying in a nuclear explosion or via some hideous pathogen with the possibility of significantly more time to live, potentially in a utopian world that I help engineer vs sitting around a campfire sharpening a spear - oh wait, scratch that, fire and spears are technology that can hurt others... Hmmm, what are do you propose as an alternative? I can't even envision it.

They still have to undergo testing to verify their viability and effectiveness so I do not consider them to be "medical devices" until they have proven their worth.

The undergo tests regularly. By companies, governments, patients and the scientists that created them. And what emerges are products that improve the quality of our lives, something the genome isn't designed to do. I don't see any evil overlords plotting to subvert the human race via these medical devices either.

[The day of perfect genetic engineering] is assuming the situations I outlined above do not occur first.

Agreed. Like I said above, I'm willing to roll the dice and simply be optimistic. Living in fear of all the horrible ways we can die is crappy way to live. My vision is a race to max engineer to the point where humans can make all the improvements such that we can leave the planet and just go in different directions based on our different ideals. This is the ultimate freedom and the human race can splinter into as many factions as it likes. Sometimes I wonder if we'd all just end up in our own capsule floating around in space

Yes but most of that [accumulating bio] data is on animal research as well as mechanisms which have no viable medical applications in humans.

We have to start somewhere. With genetic similarities (gene homologues) across species the data is valuable regardless what species it came from. Furthering our understanding of the basic principals of biofunction is just as valuable as how those principals apply in humans. And FYI, drug companies have a wealth of human trial data accumulating in their labs and are increasingly running more tests on human tissues in microwells. New ways of testing such as microdosing are always emerging as well. The results of this testing and the drugs that emerge have very relevant medical application in humans. To suggest otherwise is simply naive. The bottom line is that we are indeed on a trajectory for major improvements to what the genome produces.

Perfect implies the best development in response to evolutionary pressure in the scientific context; I do not understand how anyone can claim perfection beyond nature when nature has proven over billions of years to make the best choices for the propagation of life. Isn't life the ultimate measure of perfection?

No because we are the only thing that decide what perfection is as it's simply a concept generated in our individual minds. It doesn't exist anywhere else. Your ideal of perfection can vary from mine simply because each of us can will it to be whatever we want. Like having a favorite color.

Even by your standards I wouldn't consider evolution perfect because it evolved a species that is capable of destroying itself and all others with it. By your very definition and claim that we can destroy ourselves with the technology we create, it's imperfect. Thanks for playing.