Lets genetically alter humans. Is it possible?

Question

So here is the question of the day. Can we alter humans through selective breeding? I read recently about taking snakes with unusually high colors of a certain hue and breeding them with other snakes to create new colors of these species of snakes, for instance creating a red tailed Boa that is completely yellow.If you have ever seen the movie Shallow Hal than you may know what I am talking about here. In that movie there is a guy who has a very small tail right above his butt. Now it's nothing like a monkey tail, but rather an awkward little eleventh finger. However if this person mated with another person that had the "Nubbin"(Thats my made up name for it.) Would the child that they beared have a little bit longer tail? And then if we crossed these people with other people who had nubbins, would we eventually have a human with a fully functional tail. If so would they're balance greatly improve? What other possibilities could we create? What are your thoughts on this? I really want to know.

Answer 1

We do it all of the time.  Sexual selection determines the number of reproductive opportunities that an animal can have.  There is intense competition to be selected for mating.  Those organisms that produce more viable offspring will have their genes propagated, and this process slightly alters the genetic pool of a species.  So, the bottom line is that the collective human genome is being modified already by sexual selection.  However, this does not imply that there is an obvious direction to human evolution based on sexual selection.

Answer 2

Human breeding programmes are part of Eugenics, which is a morally-dubious and discredited field.

Admittedly, eugenics was classically used to breed "better" humans (not neccessarily humans with tails). And it also involved the forced sterilisation of "inferior" humans (the mentally and physically handicapped).

As the previous answerer has stated, it would involved the forced crossbreeding of humans.

Obviously, this is *possible* - it is just not something that is practical or acceptable.

Answer 3

Yes it's possible, but it's not practical.

"You and you, have s*x, now."