Reply #13: well if nanotech explodes though we wont have to

[qazplm]

genetically engineer people.

If you can create microrobots that can repair damage, remove free radicals, remove excess fat cells, exercise muscles, clear arteries, etc then other than perhaps using stem cells for grow your own replacement body parts, you dont need much else to create a human who is more or less in perfect condition all of the time.

Other than particularly novel and virulent diseases that perhaps the nanobots can't handle, and obviously a major traumatic injury (nanobots can't re-attach your head to your body), death would be something that happened fairly infrequently.

Why would you need genetic engineering at that point? I mean I suppose you could get it in the sense of correcting genetic defects prior to birth, but that isn't really modifying humans on a grand scale, it's just removing deformities. I guess I don't think you will see folks with four legs, or artificially larger brains or gills, particularly when you can use nanotech to accomplish some of the same goals (put bots in the lungs that can draw oxygen from water and pass it to the lungs).