Is there any likely reason why personal DNA tinkering machines would become widespread?

This is my favorite question in a while, so I hope it's okay if I bend a slight rule in order to answer it. The question explicitly says "likely", so chances are my answer is completely invalid. I don't think there's much of a chance this would become likely anytime soon without some drastic change in the world. It goes completely against the question, but I'll explore some relatively un-likely scenarios.

I'm in a rare creative mood, so here's a bunch of weird, wacky and completely (un-)likely scenarios:

• Cockfights on steroids. I'm strongly against this kind of thing, and I'm fairly surprised it came to mind. Imagine underground, illegal leagues where animals are put together to fight it out. If you had these tinkering machines, you could change the DNA of your fighting creature in question to make it better. You could modify the creature over many generations. Selective breeding goes out the window.
• Rampant, constantly changing diseases. Let's say you've got a world that's stricken with a plague that continually changes its structure, so it's nearly impossible for an organism to fight it. Perhaps you could use this machine (note: you probably couldn't) to modify your white blood cells (or at least their centers of production) to better fight off this illness. This assumes really poor medical care.
• Weather is highly variable. If you have rapidly changing weather that goes from one extreme to another, it's going to be hard for farmers to grow anything. The solution: use this thing to make minor variations to the DNA of certain crops that make them resistant to different conditions, such as plentiful water or droughts, or hot and cold swings. Make different crops immune to different conditions, and plant them all.
• Rapidly changing fashion trends. Well, fashion is important (sadly) in our society, too. But let's say it changes soon here. What do you do if your (genetically modified) purple hair become uncool? Change some genes to make your hair pink or green. Don't like your eye color? Change the genes for that, too.
• Scientists are needed. Need a bunch of scientists? Inspire the kids early with this machine. Use it to inspire them by showing them the wonders of genetics. There's nothing like an amazing effect to inspire someone to do something. There are plenty of things to inspire people to go into science, but bringing the previously seemingly-abstract field of genetics right into people's houses would really inspire them.

More to be added whenever they pop into my head. It's just going to be a fun little list.

Note: Pretty much all of these things are highly unlikely. I'm taking a short break from science. It's quite relaxing.

Edit: You really need circumstances where this device must be widespread. Here are some:

• Back to diseases. I'll go back to my idea about diseases. Imagine a world where people are not densely populated. There's virtually no infrastructure, so it's difficult for people to gather. At the same time, there's a highly infectious and deadly disease that's constantly spreading (because people are so far apart, I'll imagine it's airborne). It constantly mutates, so people have a very tough time fighting it off. What do you do?

  Our bodies fight diseases with antibodies. These are proteins produced by plasma cells (which are produced in bone marrow) that latch on to certain proteins in an invader cell and help to destroy it. However, they are only useful against a certain version of a certain disease. In this world, that's a problem. The solution would be to use this machine to constantly alter bone marrow, producing different plasma cells to create different antibodies to fight different versions of the disease.

• A changing atmosphere. What if the world's atmosphere is constantly changing? This would throw anyone's respiratory system into total chaos. How would a species survive? Once again, this machine would come in handy. Simply use it to modify some cells in the respiratory system that make the system able to process slightly different gases - for example, processing gas $XY_6$ instead of $XY_5$. If there are these constant changes in the atmosphere, the species could need this machine to survive.

  That - and some of the other ideas I've put forward - of course raises the question of how the species survived in the past. Perhaps there was some event (meteor, volcano, etc.) that changed the gases available for circulation in the planet's atmosphere, thus making it less stable. Unlikely but possible. This device would be very useful for dealing with infants, who are constantly developing and would have a hard time surviving in this changing world. Every family (especially those with children) would want this machine.

This machine would be handy in a world where the environment is constantly changing, with otherwise dire effects on the population.

posted almost 10 years ago

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