Everything you mentioned in the first paragraph is a source of interracial tensions in ME that have tentatively fallen into sort of a steady state, only because the wars over them in the past have not proven decisive. The release of gene therapies that seem to disproportionately favor the shorter-lived races very well could reignite tensions that lead to war in the past.
Or it would greatly calm them down, as those shorter lived races would be able to look at long-term perspective for the first time in their existence.
And let's not forget that genetic engineering is technically illegal, both in the Alliance and in Citadel space.
Err... Not at all. Uplifiting of non-sapient beings is illegal within the alliance. Genetic engineering is regulated, yes. But it's not forbidden by any means.
Medi-gel specifically is mentioned as being technically illegal, but is considered so beneficial and useful that in practice nobody objects to it.
Because it's a completely new species.
Eternal Youth might run into legal trouble, just on the merits of what the therapy promises.
Age prolongation genetic engineering (outright engineering, not just post-birth treatments) is considered ok. Projected lifespan of an average alliance citizen is higher than one hundred years already (150 I think) and is steadily rising even in canon. No one has problems with that. .
If the Council decides that our gene therapy technology is going to inflame sectarian divides among the Citadel races, however, they could try to have us discreetly taken care of, and before anyone says this is unlikely I'll remind everyone that this is the same Council that decides to ignore the clear and present danger of the Reapers, even after one invaded and took over the Citadel; they are perfectly capable of making stupid decisions when it's politically expedient to do so.
Seriously? Council didn't ignore anything. They were building up forces. They weren't admitting that it was Reapers, and, well, that's kinda an obvious thing to do. Doing so doesn't help anything. They were doing pretty much all they could. After all, everyone expected Reapers to take many years to get into the galaxy, not 2.5 years.
The Asari are going to dislike us because we're messing with their race's master plan of screwing all the other races to extinction, or at least political irrelevance, over hundreds of years.
Could I get citations on that master plan, please? Because I don't remember anything like that in the game or the quest, really. Don't assign maliciousness where there doesn't need to be one. Asari, by their very nature, should be accepting of others, and not suffering from tribe mentalities and "us vs. them" mindsets - it's in their very biology that allows them, in fact encourages them, to fall in love with, copulate and bear progeny with members of other species.
The Salarians are going to dislike us because we're potentially curing the Krogan and starting off that war again.
Except... How does eternal youth relate to that? Please cite the maximum age a krogan can get to. Because Okeer, as far as I remember, fought in Krogan rebellions. I personally favor the hypothesis that krogan are already biologically immortal.
The Krogan are going to dislike us because we're letting the Salarians live as long as we do.
Krogans are 1) irrelevant, 2) angry at everyone already, 3) disorganized, 4) focused on their own thing
The racist factions among humanity are going to dislike us for practically giving away treatments to these evil nasty aliens, etc etc. This is all politics, and
Politics is the Mind Killer thanks to millions of years of evolution teaching us exactly the wrong things about political positions.
Except from all indications racist factions are minorities. And why should we be afraid of them anyway? that they will be angry is not the argument not to do this. Besides, we are giving humanity an overwhelming technological ege
I really, really wish we could rely on starry-eyed optimism here, but history and current events prove that sort of optimism is usually proven to be naive
What current events?
Just because religion is not considered fashionable in the Alliance military does not mean there will not be a militant response, in fact this is likely to make what religious objections there will be worse, as the people objecting will feel they have no official recourse.
So? We have good security. And you are way overblowing the power available to such sects.
Let's not forget that most people expected the US to be greeted as liberators in Iraq. Look how well that turned out?
In US maybe. Pretty much no one expected this where I was. And do you really need to bring real politics into this? Especially one that doesn't seem at all relevant?
This could work, but we need to be very cautions. I suppose it also depends on the nature of the immortality treatment: will it be a one-off, fixing the recipient forever at 25 years old; is it an endless series of rejuvenation treatments, etc.
Likely second, where either periodic treatments or sleeping each night in a special pod would work.
I know I'm starting to come off as a wet blanket here, but I think we're rushing ahead with a plan that, likely in the short term and probably in the medium term, is going to turn out very badly for us. Unlike all the stuff with the Arc Reactors, all this genetic enhancement tech is going to seriously piss off a lot of people, and even on the remote chance that it doesn't lead to us being buried under a tide of jihadists or touching off a dozen wars, it's going to be a very long time before things settle down long enough for anyone to even consider letting us proceed to tinkering with AIs, which if I recall was the original objective when we started on this plan.
... Seriously? You think we didn't piss off people with Arc reactors?
Seriously? We basically shat all over energy industries everywhere. Think, in modern day terms, of it like this: we made oil, gas, coal, nuclear and solar energies obsolete, completely. This includes all related industries (transport, extraction, etc). If anything, I would have expected fleets of ships over our home the second we announced arc reactors, not when we announce eternal youth. Because unlike fundmaentalist nutjobs, energy megacorps all over citadel space actually have fleets of spaceships (needed for Helium three extractions from gas giants), and those ships are likely armed.
Basically, I completely disagree with your reasoning, think you are fearmongering and blowing possible problems way out of proportion, presenting very remote probabilities as facts of what will happen.
In other words: That Revy has finished researching Peak Human, Advanced Xeno Biology and Eternal Youth must be all announced at the same time and immediately patented and released under a free license to everyone.
Disagree. We release peak human, then we piggyback on peak human infrastructure (and good will) to upgrade it to eternal youth.
