Or: Is One Man’s Fix Another’s Enhancement? ‘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.’ (h+ Magazine)