We recently asked Theodore Friedmann (the director of the University of California, San Diego Program in Human Gene Therapy and a professor of pediatrics) to be the "expert" for the question, "When might gene therapy be available to alter eye color?"

He gave a very conservative and restrained response, including the closing statement: "It's not at all clear to me that it is justified to go ahead for cosmetic and ethically and socially questionable applications such as eye color manipulations, even once questions of safety are better understood."

So even if it becomes safe, says Friedmann, it's a questionable procedure.

Unreal.

It still boggles my mind that Friedmann and others have such a problem with something as banal and trivial as manipulating eye color. In absolute seriousness, how in the world could altering eye color be "ethically and socially questionable" to the point that we would have to criminalize such a thing? Just how is the individual or society harmed by such a practice? How could anyone decide when a cosmetic practice becomes socially questionable? Do we need to ban contacts that alter eye color? What's the qualitative difference?

Man, do we ever have ways to go.