I think there’s good cause to split up parts of NASA. The space science stuff is in direct conflict (and unfortunately losing) with the manned space program. Certainly that should be split off. Perhaps it can be merged with NSF or put under some umbrella organization. I agree with Phil here though. Enforcement and vision/incentives are pretty different. The police don’t decide what society should be doing. It’s not their job. I see little benefit to a unification of these tasks.

Second, I’m not clear on what the point was about human-animal hybrids. First, why does this need to be regulated? If I have a cat-girl fetish and as an early adopter of this sort of technology wish to transform myself into a female hybrid human/cat (all the way down to the gene level even germ line), how should the government regulate what is likely to be inherently very risky to me? The issue of third party harm seems limited. The world is unlikely to be harmed by the cat-girl threat. OTOH, I can see some third party risk in the tools required to make cat-girls out of existing human beings.

The FDA isn’t likely to rule that experimental biological manipulation on a human being is “safe”. But then neither is sky diving and bungee jumping. Yet people are permitted to engage in these activities.

If you think that people will alter themselves, and pay no attention to mr Bush’s warning about human animal hybrids, I think there had better be an agency enforcing safety. This agency, say: an all new FDA, does not question whatever it is you want to be, as long as your method, drug or whatever is safe. (more on my own blog)