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Message: <blockquote data-quote="masque" data-source="post: 812526" data-attributes="member: 9792">Having been involved in two classes this semester beating into me a wholly negative view of designer babies and cloning, I came into an idea to save myself from a total boredom breakdown.  I'm sure it's been done before, but the idea was for an alt.earth that was approximately a generation in the future from this one.Genetics and the Human Genome Project advanced earlier and faster, leading to genetic manipulation, not just of eye and hair color, but genes though to be linked with intelligence, physical strength and stamina, and creativity.  This is a world where designer babies are about as cheap as a four year instate college program, and getting cheaper by the year.A study done on mice (in our reality) where a gene thought to enhance intelligence was added to their genome.  These mice showed an increased sensitivity to pain. Extrapolated, the designer baby business is new enough that this hurdle has not yet been overcome, and these children and adults easily become addicted to painkillers.  On the other side, you have super athletes competing in professional sports and the Olympics, making it that much harder for someone not of design to break into those arenas.And what about the kids who are engineered to be intelligent, or an athlete, or be a musical genius, and they would rather be something else?  How would this affect cloning?  The European reception to GMOs?I'm attempting to engineer history to support this world, including "Caverns of Socrates"-esque VR spectator sports, a 2 minute mile benchmark for the Olympics, a dark unofficial class system emerging (not legislated) between the designer kids and those who are not, and a hidden group or two of the original designer kids (i.e. experiments gone somewhat-to-horribly wrong).The eugenics program in America was, to my understanding, going strong until the Nazis came along and made it look immoral by association.  The first historical revision was to have Hilter's influence tempered by another popular German leader so that the Holocaust didn't happen and the war did not last as long.That alone has immense repercussions, as the Pacific War would become a separate conflict and Admiral Yamamoto would more likely have been listened to (inherent assumption is nuclear weapons were not used). Israel may or may not be formed.  The Communist advance may have gone differently.  I was working on turning Desert Storm into, essentially, WW2, complete with nuclear bombs, but I don't know if that's feasible.  It's the butterfly effect.I have very little knowledge of social trends.  I'm not trying to make this airtight, though watertight would be nice.  Does anyone have any advice or suggestions for the development of this?  Especially a system if you don't think d20 modern would work well.Sarah(edit: title changed to better reflect the content of the post and maybe get a few more people interested...?  Anyone?)</blockquote>

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