[Kylon]

Government could provide genetic alterations such as the production of cellulase so people could eat grass, make us where we regenerate, heal up faster, don't age, synthesize many of our own nutrients, produce tons of anti-oxidants, and are more environmentally tolerant.

This would give us an advantage.

What do you think?

[Narz]

Could I have an extra sexual organ too? That'd be cool. Maybe two more!

[Tanada]

Everything comes at a cost, even biologically. If you could turn on the gene for synthesizing Vitamin C instead of having to eat it you could avoid scurvy forever, but what would you have to give up? Every time your body synthesizes a biological molecule it requires chemical energy to do so, not just the mechanisms in your genes. Theoretically you could reprogram a human, say by adding genes for synthesis of all the essential amino acids to one of your shorter chromosomes, and after that the descendents would not have to eat certain proteins, their body would manufacture them or rebuild them from whatever proteins they were able to eat. Sounds great, but every reaction takes energy. Dietary intake of vitamins and proteins and fats that we can not synthesize saves us lots of biological energy, and in times of starvation/famine you would starve faster if you were synthesizing all of them. Ideally a creature that only needed minerals and a food source for synthesizing molecules would be able to eat fossil fuel and a multi mineral tablet, but that doesn't sound like a fun existence to me.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kylon', 'G')overnment could provide genetic alterations such as the production of cellulase so people could eat grass, make us where we regenerate, heal up faster, don't age, synthesize many of our own nutrients, produce tons of anti-oxidants, and are more environmentally tolerant.

This would give us an advantage.

What do you think?

[Keith_McClary]

How about making people smaller to compensate for increased population?