I know not many people look at this account, but I feel the need to scream into the void about something that irks me.

By and large, people don't know how limited our knowledge, the knowledge of humanity, is when it comes to medicine (physical and psychological) and genetics.

In the grand scheme of things we know approximately Jack Shit.

That doesn't mean what we do know isn't important.

That certainly doesn't mean "don't listen to medical professionals or scientists because they don't know everything."

What it does mean is this:

We have a general idea of how the body works. How the brain works. We can generally figure out how to fix some things, or at least alleviate symptoms related to problems we can't fix.

But that's just a general idea. We don't know how to fix, or even diagnose things with 100% accuracy.

This isn't Star Trek where we pull out a Tricorder and magically know exactly what is wrong.

This isn't Star Wars were we plunge you into a tank of Bacta and heal everything.

We take decades (if not centuries) of data and then determine our approach based on statistical distributions of what seems to be the problem and what seems to work.

We make educated guesses, in other words.

Sometimes that is easier than others.

Now why is the therapist ranting about this?

Because for some reason there is a not-insignificant part of the general public that believes that we can use our magical science powers to solve all current "problems."

The quotes are there because some of these 'problems' aren't.

You've probably heard them say things like:

"What if we could just use gene editing to eliminate things like schizophrenia?"

"Wouldn't it be great to turn off cancer genes?"

"If we identify the gay-gene we could make sure no one was born gay, and they'd live happy lives!"

Except we don't actually know what all our genes do.

We have a *general* (that word again) idea of what they *might* do. That 'might' is the important part.

We don't know, with 100% certainty, what they *actually* do.

We may be close to knowing what they do, but as the saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

And that's the problem.

There is a not-insignificant number of people who would like to eliminate 'disorders' by going after the genes.

Essentially the metaphorical equivalent of just hacking away at your organs with a machete because, "Do you Really need that much intestine?"

That's not even touching the subject of what some people think is a 'disorder.'

See: People who want to eliminate the "gay gene."

So yeah, I get really worked up whenever I hear someone talking about "just fixing our genes."

We don't have the necessary knowledge to do so in any truly safe way. We barely know how the damn things work...and we're still learning new things.

Every. Literal. Year.

Hell, we STILL don't really know what the appendix is for.

Is it a left over from our evolutionary past?

Is it a bacterial reservoir to aid in digestion and our immune response?

Is it a biological timebomb planted by our ancient alien overlords?

We don't *actually* know.

So, the take away:

Don't go thinking that eugenics via gene editing is a viable option just because you think humanity's understanding of biology is complete.

It isn't. What we do know is insignificant when compared to what we don't know.

Eugenics is a VERY bad thing.