It seems inevitable that sometime in the future, we'll know how most of the human body works and how to use gene therapy to modify our individual characteristics. A simple example of this would be to change the color of your eyes from blue to green. A more complex example would be to to change the composition of muscle fibers in your legs for greater speed instead of endurance. Instead of having to go to a hospital in order to get the appropriate mix of genes, wouldn't it be great if you could download the DNA sequence directly from a wireless network into a special internal cyber-organ that could synthesize the genes directly from the genetic code? That way, you could order the features you want via wireless and get the gene infusion within moments. If you think about it, this is where digital music is going, and it's just a few steps away from digital gene therapy. The Culture series by Iain Banks introduces something similar, in which members of the culture directly synthesize various mood-inducing hormones via special glands.
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