You had a very interesting and educative discussion and I would like to add one teeny bit to it, but since I do not have a Mangago account, this is the only way I can reply. Barrett will never be the only genetically modified perfect human. As per the story, there was widespread gene editing earlier to treat patients and it was only banned after he was born, for commercial and truly capitalistic purposes. What I'm getting at is, even in Barrett's own bloodline, a few generations later, if the mutations lead to any genetic disorders that can be expressed, they too can be edited out. Further, when it comes to lower adaptability in case of environmental changes 1000 years from now, then again the genes can be biofortified, as it is done for plant crops to add things like drought resistance. The kind of advancement in biotechnology and ethical leniency towards human designer babies depicted in this manhwa, it isn't far fetched to assume that gene editing for more perfect humans would continue, hidden or illegal, but people won't stop doing this and wait for cons of inbreeding takeover. So, the only possible threat to the Barrett germline is an extremely sudden change in environment like a nuclear explosion, meteor impact and stuff like that, which realistically, doesn't leave the rest any less vulnerable... The others non-Barrett relatives would also suffer and we could lose many components from our gene pool, apart from the Barrett genes. Such incidents would anyway contract our genetic diversity as only the survivors could reproduce.
@blueberry and @elaphae
You had a very interesting and educative discussion and I would like to add one teeny bit to it, but since I do not have a Mangago account, this is the only way I can reply.
Barrett will never be the only genetically modified perfect human. As per the story, there was widespread gene editing earlier to treat patients and it was only banned after he was born, for commercial and truly capitalistic purposes.
What I'm getting at is, even in Barrett's own bloodline, a few generations later, if the mutations lead to any genetic disorders that can be expressed, they too can be edited out. Further, when it comes to lower adaptability in case of environmental changes 1000 years from now, then again the genes can be biofortified, as it is done for plant crops to add things like drought resistance. The kind of advancement in biotechnology and ethical leniency towards human designer babies depicted in this manhwa, it isn't far fetched to assume that gene editing for more perfect humans would continue, hidden or illegal, but people won't stop doing this and wait for cons of inbreeding takeover. So, the only possible threat to the Barrett germline is an extremely sudden change in environment like a nuclear explosion, meteor impact and stuff like that, which realistically, doesn't leave the rest any less vulnerable... The others non-Barrett relatives would also suffer and we could lose many components from our gene pool, apart from the Barrett genes. Such incidents would anyway contract our genetic diversity as only the survivors could reproduce.