So there’s a major brouhaha over a fertility clinic in which a doctor is claiming that he can help would-be parents determine, not only gender, but eye color, hair color, and skin color.
My initial reaction was not being sure how to react to the prospect at all. Naturally it raises specters of a race of supermen, and not the cool, faster-than-a-speeding bullet kind. So that was enough to engender a certain amount of squeamishness. And there’s the further gut reaction that there are simply some things that people should not be able to control. Things that mankind was not meant to experiment with, as someone who was raised on 1950s B science fiction films can readily attest.
However…however…
While there is something to be said for dangerous precedents over genetic manipulation of such attributes…there’s also something to be said for dangerous precedents over refusing to allow it.
First: If you’re telling a woman what she can and cannot do in terms of “designing” her fetus, aren’t you laying groundwork for saying that she doesn’t have the right to decide what to do with her body? The consequences of which can range from governments that tell you you cannot have an abortion even though you feel you have too many kids, to governments that tell you you must have an abortion because you have too many kids.
Second: Closing the door on the genetic manipulation of surface characteristics can also threaten to close the door on research into—for instance—detecting and curing in utero such diseases as spina bifida, or cystic fibrosis, or cerebral palsey. Sure, it might seem common sense to say, “Well, nobody would oppose curing disease in the womb.” The answer to which is: Sure they would. There are plenty of people who would assert that you play the hand that God deals you, and altering a child-to-be for any reason is a sin.
Ultimately, what we’re discussing here in terms of practical application is a tiny, tiny minority of babies born. The existence of the technology is not going to result in the creation of Khan and the advent of the Eugenics war anytime soon.
Bottom line: I have a feeling that no matter which side one comes down on, it’s a mistake. So if there’s going to be a mistake made, my tendency would be to err on the side of scientific research and personal freedoms.
Thoughts?
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Yeah, that’s the fun thing about technology and medical advances. You have tools that can be used for good or evil, right or wrong, but people tend to look at one tiny point on the bigger picture and forget that the tools themselves are fairly neutral in nature.
A lot of people forget with time (or just never knew) that some of the life saving tools we have now came from research in other areas that sometimes included trying to figure out ways to kill people. And a really big chunk of people, when stuff like this pops up in the news, seem to forget or ignore the fact that some of big strides we made in basic first aid and life saving knowledge last century came in part from notes made by men who gathered their information by doing some of the most vile and evil things that they could to other human beings in the middle of an even greater act of evil.
The knowledge and the tools aren’t good or evil. It’s what we ultimately end up doing with them that says anything at all about who we are. This designer baby crap is just freakishly weird to me, but who knows if it’ll really catch on at all and who knows what amazing, life saving knowledge might accidentally come out of it?
(somebody find the sketch from SNL with Eric Idle as the clerk at a genetic engineering clinic taking the order for Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtin’s baby and post a link here.)
I’ve seen plenty of Nightline et al shows where they’d talk about finding the genetic code for deafness or dwarfism, and they’d have on a deaf guy of a dwarf coming out AGAINST the idea of curing the diseases. So help me, one time a dwarf advocate claimed (in his cute little voice) that it would make dwarves “a thing of the past, an extinct species”.
Yeah? And?
I am wholly confident that a great deal of deaf people, or parents of massively birth defected kids would all too happy to make sure this never happens to another person. I know enough about time travel to know the dangers of the old “If could have done that then…” line, and I’m more than happy with how our girl Siobhan is doing, but making sure nobody has to go through having to raise an autistic kid ever again? Where’s the switch?
The big thing here is risk. I can not foresee a scenario where such manipulation of cellular plasm would ever be risk-free and foolproof. So there will ever be the chance that you’ll get a kid with John Barroman’s face, J-lo’s ášš and Flipper’s legs. Taking such a risk if they tell your kid will have microencephaly, people will likely side with you. Tell them you played genetic roulette so your kid would have nturally curly hair like Frieda in peanuts, get ready for the laughing and pointing.
Then there’s cost. I’ll lay odds this ain’t cheap, and we’ll soon have people complaining that only the rich will have the access to the treatment, resulting in SUPER trust-fund babies. And then that’ll become an issue.
If you want to talk about government intervention, you could go the opposite route of blocking the science, and go the route that the givernment, under the guise of not wanting to pay for the care of a kid with defects (since the government will be paying for all of our health needs any time now), will REQUIRE that all such expensive deseases be fixed in vitro.
In short, no right choice; you’re guaranteed to pìšš øff someone. Pretty much like everything you’ve blogged about for the last few days.
A related question; what happens when reproductive rights begin to trample on other people’s rights? Should people really be allowed to have as many children as they want, even if they cannot support them and the burden falls on society? What happens when overpopulation seriously begins to degrade the quality of life? Where do we draw the line?
“First: If you’re telling a woman what she can and cannot do in terms of “designing” her fetus, aren’t you laying groundwork for saying that she doesn’t have the right to decide what to do with her body? ”
This will sound a bit reactionary I suppose but it is not her body that is being designed. The fetus is his/her own body. This is another step that reduces human life to a commodity.
Sounds to me that the only way to keep things sane would be to have two levels of treatment, both optional, and not mutually exclusive.
(1) Screening against and repair of a broad range of agreed-upon “nobody wants this” defects.
(2) A menu of specific conditions to ensure (eye, hair color, gender) or block against (dwarfism). Parents can pick some legally permitted number X, but will have to leave the rest up to chance/fate/spaghetti monster/etc.
(2) A menu of specific conditions to ensure (eye, hair color, gender) or block against (dwarfism). Parents can pick some legally permitted number X, but will have to leave the rest up to chance/fate/spaghetti monster/etc
Ahhh, but as Vinnie points out, there are dwarves (dwarfs? Little people?) who would take issue with blocking that which you would not hesitate to say parents should be able to prevent.
PAD
“A related question; what happens when reproductive rights begin to trample on other people’s rights? … Where do we draw the line?”
Have you ever thought you were going to see all the graphics on your screen jerk to one side as the thread you were reading veers off course and your computer’s intertial dampers weren’t able to take the strain?
I’ve always wanted to create a little animated GIF of the Enterprise Bridge in one of those “everybogo left, now fo right” moments, followed by a graphic reader “WARNING -THREAD OFF COURSE”.
I’m loath to chime in on this for fear of this happening, but what the hëll.
In a model where people were pretty much supporting themselves and the only time your neighbor’s large family directly affected you was in social situations, it would be very hard to get such rules passed.
In a model where, say, a large percentage of people’s taxes was being used to support the underpriveliged, and they were percieved as taking too much and not “giving back their fair share” by raising intelligent healthy and useful childresn, or at least appearing in a reality show so we can all click our tongues at the burden that thank god we don’t have to bear…
I could forsee such a mindset gaining ground. However wrong it may be.
“…such diseases as spina bifida, or cystic fibrosis, or cerebral palsey”
I believe it’s “cerebral palsy”, sans “e”.
I forsee an Alan Abel-type hoax in the making here.
An interview with a black couple who went to this guy to make their kid white.
“We wanted to make sure our child will have the chances that we didn’t have.”
This could be the I, Libertine of the 21st century.
(And can I just blanketly express my apologies for my sucky typing now, in perpetuity?)
“In a model where, say, a large percentage of people’s taxes was being used to support the underpriveliged”
And see, I support this. I don’t think it’s morally right to let a child starve just because their parent is stupid, irresponsible, or uncaring. But if we’re not going to let children starve, then we have to set some kind of other rules to ensure that society’s limited resources are available in sufficient quantity for everyone. So I don’t know if reproductive rights can be as absolute as to say “under no circumstances should you ever be able to tell another person what they can and can’t do with their body.”
The problem is parents being able to pick gender. By the year 2020, China will have a massive wife shortage.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6254763.stm
Couples are only allowed one child and most want a son, not a daughter. Many in China abort a fetus if and when they discover that the sex of the fetus is female.
“I am wholly confident that a great deal of deaf people, or parents of massively birth defected kids would all too happy to make sure this never happens to another person.”
You might be surprised. There are actually advocacy groups out there that are upset the medical knowledge has gotten to the point that, even if it’s via mechanical aid, we could literally have no truly deaf people in a generation or so. They feel that it’s wrong that the deaf culture (the language of sign and the unique view on some things) will be destroyed by man’s technology.
I’ve met blind people when various causes or bills are up during our General Assembly session who hold the same POV for their culture. They’ll tell you point blank that they have a life that is distinctly different but just as equal and valid as anyone other and that they don’t need to be “fixed” and that technology doesn’t need to be looking for ways to fix what ain’t broken.
Not a majority view mind you, but a pretty common view in some areas.
I think in the end it really doesn’t matter that much, because, as someone pointed out, only the incredibly wealthy will be able to afford this. It’ not like we’re looking at “Gattaca” in the next twenty years. Add to that the fact that generally, poor people have more kids, and you’re ensuring that only a tiny segment of the population will be affected by this treatment.
Honestly, I kind of fall more on the side of playing the hand you’re dealt. Although if a couple wanted to get their genome read to predict what chances they have of creating a healthy baby over creating one with a debilitating illness, that makes all the sense in the world to me. But when you start manipulating those genes… eh… I don’t know. I probably don’t know enough about it to really make any judgment call.
Maybe what it comes down to for me is this: if I was 11 and going to school with a designer child, I would probably totally join in on all of the kids teasing that kid and telling her/him that s/he doesn’t have a soul. But then, I was the outcast at that age, so likely to latch onto any teasing that wasn’t directed towards me.
So help me, one time a dwarf advocate claimed (in his cute little voice) that it would make dwarves “a thing of the past, an extinct species”.
Scary that he thinks he’s a separate species of human. And that this is a good thing.
can not foresee a scenario where such manipulation of cellular plasm would ever be risk-free and foolproof.
But neither is having a child the old fashioned way. But certainly this GATTACA idea would greatly lessen the odds of the child having a defect.
(BTW one day GATTACA will be hailed as one of the most prescient of all SF films)
Then there’s cost. I’ll lay odds this ain’t cheap, and we’ll soon have people complaining that only the rich will have the access to the treatment, resulting in SUPER trust-fund babies. And then that’ll become an issue.
That’s a huge problem, when the rich are not only wealthier than everyone else, they are genuinely superior. Smarter, healthier, better looking, more athletic…a true master race, made all the worse by the fact that their superiority isn’t just in their minds, it’s reality. What happens when all men are demonstrably NOT created equal?
And I don’t think it would stay limited to the wealthy for long. The technology would become cheaper and instead of saving for college why not just spend the money earlier? In the GATTACA world the numbers of non-genetically chosen children is small, small enough for them to become a forgotten and powerless minority.
If you want to talk about government intervention, you could go the opposite route of blocking the science, and go the route that the givernment, under the guise of not wanting to pay for the care of a kid with defects (since the government will be paying for all of our health needs any time now), will REQUIRE that all such expensive deseases be fixed in vitro.
that is one of the fears some have with government control of healthcare–when your lifestyle impacts your health it becomes the government’s business.
This will sound a bit reactionary I suppose but it is not her body that is being designed. The fetus is his/her own body. This is another step that reduces human life to a commodity.</i.
but for those who are pro-choice it would be a rather odd position to take that a woman can kill a fetus but not take action to improve its health and quality of life.
Ahhh, but as Vinnie points out, there are dwarves (dwarfs? Little people?) who would take issue with blocking that which you would not hesitate to say parents should be able to prevent.
What happens when parents request something that others consider a defect? Some deaf parents are against the implants that allow their kids to hear; they say they have a deaf culture an these implants are essentially a kind of technological genocide. What if they discover a ‘gay gene”? Could parents opt to screen it out? Would gay parents fight back by requesting gay children?
“In a model where, say, a large percentage of people’s taxes was being used to support the underpriveliged”
And see, I support this. I don’t think it’s morally right to let a child starve just because their parent is stupid, irresponsible, or uncaring. But if we’re not going to let children starve, then we have to set some kind of other rules to ensure that society’s limited resources are available in sufficient quantity for everyone. So I don’t know if reproductive rights can be as absolute as to say “under no circumstances should you ever be able to tell another person what they can and can’t do with their body.”
Not to get all Ayn Randian here but in a world where the government gets to tell you how much money you can earn and keep and the government gets to decide how many kids you can have and the government gets to decide what actions you can do that will affect your body which the government takes care of because the government controls health care…what exactly are you free to do? You’ve gained a good bit of safety but you’ve lost a good bit of control over your own life. I don’t see why that control would not extend to thoughts as well, since we can certainly demonstrate how certain kinds of thought lead to all manner of social unrest and other undesirable distractions. And it would all be done under the very best of intentions.
The problem is parents being able to pick gender. By the year 2020, China will have a massive wife shortage.
Whenever I hear people talking about how China or India could overtake us economically T think about that. How do you overcome a demographic disaster like the one fast approaching these countries? Interestingly, here in the USA I have read that most couples choosing a sex are choosing girls, though the numbers are close–its couples who just want some balance in their so far one sided family.
It wasn’t so long ago that ‘test tube babies” were something scary and strange. Now I know at least 7 families that got their children through in vitro fertilization, and they are by no means wealthy. This IS going to happen. We’d best deal with it.
>>>”That’s a huge problem, when the rich are not only wealthier than everyone else, they are genuinely superior. What happens when all men are demonstrably NOT created equal?”
Considering the better schooling, nutrition, training, sports medicine and such available to those who can afford it, that’s an argument now. but yet we still see amazing people rise and succeed from the most squalid of origins. To quote Dr Ian Malcolm, “Nature finds a way”.
>>>”What if they discover a ‘gay gene”? Could parents opt to screen it out? Would gay parents fight back by requesting gay children?”
That’s one of the reasons I’ve always been fascinated by the argument by the gay community that they were “born this way”. It makes homosexuality sound like a disease, and in many eyes, where there’s a disease there’s a cure.
This is not a new topic you know. PAD once wrote a BID back in the day that addressed the idea that they could one day test for all sorts of genetic issues and afflictions. His wife commented how interesting it would be if there were a test for the mutant gene in the MU.
PAD thought it was interesting enough to make it a major plotline in the first run of X-Factor.
I’m fairly neutral om this one. Part of me thinks it’s academic, because once it can be done, it will be done, and you can’t get the genie back in the bottle.
I think you’ll have two camps, those who want designer accessory babies and those who genuinely want to give their kids better quality of life, and I think to begin with, both camps will be populated by the uber-rich.
Hëll, we’re already 90% there with Angelina and Madonna picking and mixing their rainbow families, and if you think “the best healthcare money can buy” is an empty phrase you’re really not paying attention.
So some of this will make the same tabloids that obsess on Brittany, and Michael Jackson and Jade Goodey, and some will just happen quietly behind very stylish closed doors.
Then I think that fifty years from now it’ll be unthinkable not to have gengineered your kids…
Unthinkable the way my daughter can not understand that I lived in a house with outdoor plumbing, or that TV was once black and white and only had one channel, or that people I know had polio…
Cheers.
“I don’t see why that control would not extend to thoughts as well, since we can certainly demonstrate how certain kinds of thought lead to all manner of social unrest and other undesirable distractions.”
I get the slippery slope argument, but at a certain point, you have to make choices. Do we let people starve, or do we have a societal responsibility to take care of those around us? If we choose the latter, some rules will have to be put into place, otherwise the entire system will fall apart. Ultimately, it’s up to society to weigh the restrictiveness of those rules against the importance of taking care of its members. Which takes precedence? It’s a tough choice, but one that we will have to make as resources dwindle.
We’re forgetting the basic premise: all this is through in-vitro fetilization. AT BEST, by recent stats, invitro has a 38% chance of implanting. That’s a 62% chance of failure – far more than 50-50. Octo-mom’s Dr.’s success rate was only 10%, which was why he tended to throw so many embryos in at once and cross his fingers. So you can pick and choose all you want, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to get a baby. And guess what: you can’t genetically screen for cerebral palsy, among others, so you’re not going to eliminate disabilities even if you try. If you’re dead-set on paying $15,000 for a baby, adopt; you can pick and choose all you want.
(This does not mean I am completely against it: I’d rather see someone implant a boy after having a girl and be done with it, than push out six girls trying for a boy. The world does not need more idiocy.)
“Ultimately, it’s up to society to weigh the restrictiveness of those rules against the importance of taking care of its members.”
We are a country very keen on maintaining our personal freedoms. We are also very good at wanting to eat the cake and have it too. We want the government to help us and do things for us, but NOT tell us WHAT to do. This holds for the companies receiving bailout money. Once you allow another party to hold sway over you economically, you run the risk of them enforcing control of you. The Middle East can throw us into a tizzy by raising the price of oil by ten cents. If your company institutes a dress code, you have to go buy new clothes. And if the government (or indeed any external party like an insurance company, to be fair) controls your healthcare, you run the risk of them deciding that you shouldn’t smoke, eat so much candy, or have that eighth (or fifth, or third) baby.
A lot of people will and do (and should) bristle any time their rights and/or priveleges are threatened. But I’ve always said if the government set up a “Second-class citizen” designation, where you could receive full cradle-to-grave care and coverage in exchange for a limited set of rights and privileges, a scary too many people would sign up.
What about wanting to be smarter or faster?
Is altering someone’s DNA to boost their IQ by 20 or 30 points any different than the prospect of artificially implanting a computer chip that does the exact same thing?
I think that artificial augmentation whether it be genetic or through AI may become as prevalent as Facebook or mobiles. Although not everybody is on Facebook and there are still billions of people in the world that don’t have mobiles. Or telephones. Or running water.
Will augments be required to formally identify themselves as such in job interviews or trying out for a sports team?
Another thing to consider: is mental illness always a defect when it has been a factor in the professional success of numerous individuals, especially some creative individuals for so many centuries? Would we have some of the fantastic literature, movies, music, etc that we do if some of the people making them had been “cured” in the womb?
If strength and adaptation can come from weakness, what happens to that strength if the perceived weakness was never there to begin with?
Can a child sue their parents for not using genetic screening and engineering?
And now my head is officially spinning…
“That’s one of the reasons I’ve always been fascinated by the argument by the gay community that they were “born this way”. It makes homosexuality sound like a disease, and in many eyes, where there’s a disease there’s a cure.”
I think Alan Shore put it best when he implied that if homosexuality were a disease, Big Medicine would have a pill for it.
I hope I’m using the right tags, there’s no preview button to be sure.
I’ve met blind people when various causes or bills are up during our General Assembly session who hold the same POV for their culture. They’ll tell you point blank that they have a life that is distinctly different but just as equal and valid as anyone other and that they don’t need to be “fixed” and that technology doesn’t need to be looking for ways to fix what ain’t broken.
Now this actually angers me. You want to be blind? Fine, go ahead. But to actively campaign against a potential cure is so undeniably selfish as to cross the line into being outright evil.
“Oh, you want to continue being a photographer, or a truck driver, or any of the dozens of occupations that require sight? Too bad, this group you’ve never heard of wants to maintain their culture, so congratulations, your life is over. Have a nice day.”
Relax, Conor E, they’re not that militant. Well, the ones I’ve met aren’t.
I’ve never met anyone who is against medical advances that restore sight or hearing to people who have lost them due to an accident. They’re POV is usually that they don’t need fixing and that there’s nothing wrong with a child who is, say, deaf. Some of it is an extension of the PC junk of the last few decades, but some of it is just misplaced concern.
And there is an odd fact that backs the not broke/don’t fix factor for some adults at least. There have been cases where people who were blind were given the “gift” of sight and then wanted to give it back after some time. Someone spends 20, 25 or 30 years blind and suddenly having sight is almost as disorienting as someone sighted for that long losing theres.
But it should be the choice of the individual.
This is great. The richest people will be able to afford to have the best looking, most intelligent kids. The football jocks would be able to afford to have their wives give birth to running backs or offensive linemen. The poor would have kids who would grow up to be servants or concubines. And the really stupid parents would have kids that grew up to be fodder in the armies of the future. And the Mormons would have daughters genetically programmed to agree to be part of multi-wife communes. I think the first city to try this should be re-named Stepford.
There is the potential for both enormous good and enormous bad to come out of this. On the one hand, I can see where the rich and pretty are going to be able to afford “designer babies,” which strikes me as overprivileged and very, very facepalmy.
On the other, if it means that if you find your fetus is going to end up having genetic defects or diseases, and you have the chance to cure them, hëll yeah go for it.
I don’t think one ought to genetically alter their child in utero for purely cosmetic reasons. That’s just WTFery all over.
Unfortunately, once the imp is out of the bottle, no one’s going to be able to put it back in. Just like nuclear energy and its uses. It’s one thing for me to sit here and say “I approve of it when it will provide genetic health benefits,” but I know full well that it’s NOT solely going to be used for that purpose.
So if it becomes available, I say use it – or opt not to use it – in a way you feel is consistent with your own morality.
Then again, what the hëll do I know, I’m gonna get sterilized the second I can afford it. XD
Re post # 6, PAD, I’ll see your “ah” and raise you a clarification: I meant dwarfism as an example of an “optional” criterion to block against. I wouldn’t be too concerned about it myself. [Actually, I could even see a real cheapskate selecting it, figuring that shorter people would need less food and be less likely to grow out of clothes.]
Again… not read all the comments here… sorry! :o(
One word… Gattaca… you give people the chance to tinker and you immediately draw a line between the haves and the have-nots. Sure, there are some things we’re going to want to change (or ‘put right’?) but who are we to make that judgement? All I know is, if my brother had not been born with spina bifida I would have been robbed and wouldn’t even have known it.
Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should do something.
Also, ‘the woman’s right to choose’ is an issue of the control a woman has over her own body, not someone elses (in this case the unborn child). As the meerkat in the insurance ads here in the UK says… don’t even sound same!
Concurrence is, Chuft-Captain.
Or, to put it another way, over twenty years back there was an item in a local newspaper written by one of Canada’s genetics researchers. In the piece he commented about receiving a letter from a woman who claimed to have been ‘gifted’ of a child suffering from some debilitating, unpleasant condition, but that she was opposed to genetics dealing with such things, because taking care of the child had, in her opinion, made her stronger and better. The researcher admitted he hadn’t looked at it from that point of view.
My point of view? People who feel that way should have the condition genetically inflicted upon them and then they’ll have a first-hand taste and be far better placed to decide whether they still think it’s a good idea to abandon curing it.
As for such ‘cultures’ wanting to keep going, I should point out that, twenty or thirty thousand years back, if Ugh the Caveman was either blind or deaf, he couldn’t see of hear some predator sneaking up on him and probably didn’t live long enough to pass on his ‘culture’ anyway. So, is it really such a good thing?
And Ugh’s cousin did have his sight and hearing, therefore I am.
”That’s a huge problem, when the rich are not only wealthier than everyone else, they are genuinely superior. What happens when all men are demonstrably NOT created equal?”
Considering the better schooling, nutrition, training, sports medicine and such available to those who can afford it, that’s an argument now. but yet we still see amazing people rise and succeed from the most squalid of origins. To quote Dr Ian Malcolm, “Nature finds a way”.
Ah, but now we are changing nature! The reason all the extra schooling, training etc did not guarantee success is that there was still the random chance of birth, the fact that talent and genius and many other great qualities is already in us and cuts across all races and classes. But now we are facing a situation where ALL people who can afford it will almost certainly be having children who would currently qualify as being in the top 2%. And those who do not avail themselves of this technology will have a 98% chance of having kids who do not measure up to this new standard.
I don’t think one ought to genetically alter their child in utero for purely cosmetic reasons. That’s just WTFery all over.
Yeah, but the line between cosmetic and health is very thin. Choosing a child who will have a lean build is both buying into the current idea of beauty AND a good way to avoid obesity problems. Good vision eliminates the need for glasses…but it’s also a good thing to have good vision. Where do you draw the line between health and vanity?
We’re forgetting the basic premise: all this is through in-vitro fetilization. AT BEST, by recent stats, invitro has a 38% chance of implanting. That’s a 62% chance of failure – far more than 50-50. Octo-mom’s Dr.’s success rate was only 10%, which was why he tended to throw so many embryos in at once and cross his fingers. So you can pick and choose all you want, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to get a baby. And guess what: you can’t genetically screen for cerebral palsy, among others, so you’re not going to eliminate disabilities even if you try. If you’re dead-set on paying $15,000 for a baby, adopt; you can pick and choose all you want.
I assume that the success rate will surely improve.
A lot of people will and do (and should) bristle any time their rights and/or priveleges are threatened. But I’ve always said if the government set up a “Second-class citizen” designation, where you could receive full cradle-to-grave care and coverage in exchange for a limited set of rights and privileges, a scary too many people would sign up.
You’re an optimist. My fear is that we are just going to be signed up for it without having the option to choose something else.
Another thing to consider: is mental illness always a defect when it has been a factor in the professional success of numerous individuals, especially some creative individuals for so many centuries? Would we have some of the fantastic literature, movies, music, etc that we do if some of the people making them had been “cured” in the womb?
that’s a valid worry. What’s that song, we all stand on the shoulders of freaks? But who among us would choose to have the talent of Van Gogh if it came with the torment and miserable life?
What’s that song, we all stand on the shoulders of freaks?
Henry Phillips. Awesome song.
And on the actual topic, I tend to err on the side of permitting it. I’m not especially comfortable with the idea, and it’s pretty much førdámņšûrë something I’d never do myself, but I can think of a lot more messy slippery-slope arguments in the banning than in the allowing.
Mark L also asked something about people finding out the sex of children ahead of time. Lisa and I did, but not b/c we needed help setting up the nursery — we weren’t going to go the blue-or-pink route anyway. Why we found out is best summed up this way: when I asked Lisa a few months into the pregnancy whether we were going to find out, she looked at me and said,
“Are you kidding? That’s DATA!”
She went on to add, “I’m not going to have some lab tech find out and me NOT know.”
So for us it was just a knowledge obsession.
TWL
Variety is the spice of life, and as close as my son and I look and act like each other, I like the od random things that he does.
And, dámņ it, Mulligan, GET OFF MY SHOULDERS!
I’m going to quote Jesus from SOUTH PARK HERE:
“I’m not going to touch that with a twenty-foot pole.”
But I can see my house from here…
Yeah, but the line between cosmetic and health is very thin. Choosing a child who will have a lean build is both buying into the current idea of beauty AND a good way to avoid obesity problems. Good vision eliminates the need for glasses…but it’s also a good thing to have good vision. Where do you draw the line between health and vanity?
When I say cosmetic, I mean completely cosmetic. The shape of a face or the color of skin/eyes/hair. The line, in my thinking, is when an alteration does not affect one’s health in any way.
I wouldn’t fault a need for good vision genes in utero. I was born blind in my left eye and it’s bothered me for as long as I’ve been alive.
Bill Mulligan Says:
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:02 pm
“Ah, but now we are changing nature!”
Cue the Devil’s Apricot! Aren’t we – and our inbuilt desire to futz around with just about everything we can – part of nature? Alternatively, the argument is that man is no longer evolving once he controls the environment, but I’d suggest we’re just creating new evolutionary forces, like being rich and powerful, which surely affects your chances of passing on your genes…
Hmmm.. random thoughts…
Thre’s a big difference between doing this in vitreo and in utero. I’m tending to think that what’s currently in vitreo will eventually become possible in utero.. At which point it does become ‘available for general release’, and cost will come down as it usually does with ‘economy of scale’. At that point you do have the question of government intervention.
Time to revesl my ignorance, what do you have over there in terms of pre-natal care, vaccination programmes and the like?
Over here you can go private and get whatever you choose to pay for, or stick with the NHS – funded by taxation, but everybody gets their jags.. whooping cough, diptheria, measles, mumps, rubella (Hmmm.. there was a huge stink about MMR jags. More on that later, maybe) and most recently free innoculation for all secondary school girls against HPV (cervical cancer related). I’d see genetic healthcare in the same general package.
I see the gay gene got it’s inevitable mention… How about more ‘out there’ ideas? Genetic tailoring to turn off the buzz people get from nicotine, or other class A drugs? There used to be a theory that men with an additional Y chromosone were inclined towards violent behavior – that’s still not been proven one way or t’other, but I’m sure someone would want to tinker with behavioural traits as well as purely physical ones.
Cheers
So many things have utterly failed when we’ve tried tinkering with genetics, because we just don’t understand them – clone a white cat, and for some weird reason you just might wind up with a tabby. One cause of autism is suspected to be a failure of multiple genes. Obesity and hunger have multiple-gene loci. How are you going to screen multiple sites? The early attempts at gene therapy for CF had fatal results. You can try to code for speed or muscle, but you have no idea what could be screwed up in the process, with degenerative diseases popping up twenty or thirty years later. Do you simply apologize to a 15 year old in a wheelchair because you screwed him up in your selfishness to be a Munchausen’s-by-Proxy Sports Star? Mess with one of the genes for alcoholism, and you could wind up creating obesity (same gene, different expression, according to one UCSD study).
Messing with genes is a crapshoot. I can fully understand screening to weed out such horrors as Tay Sachs, Huntington’s, MPS and other devastating illnesses, but to code for a straight nose or squarer chin? What happens when the style fades 20 years later and the child is considered ‘ugly’? What happens when your child is “out of fashion” – bring him to the Humane Society and trade him in? What happens when your super-jock can heft and run, but would rather cook souffles? Will you force him to play sports? Where will the child’s desires come into play? Or will we become China, choosing our 3 year olds for a life of sports training, 24 hours a day, for the ultimate in brainwashing?
I don’t think we’re mature enough to handle designer babies yet.
Well, think about this–people with money already have access to technology to make their kids (and themselves) pretty. It’s called plastic surgery.
Consider our feelings about that–it’s seen as a potential godsend for people who are, for example, badly scarred in accidents. But people who use it for pure vanity–especially if they use it repeatedly–aren’t highly regarded and people will more often than not refuse to mention that they’ve had anything like that done and be embarrassed if this fact is revealed. Indeed, people who revel in the fact that they’ve had plastic surgery are regarded as a bit freakish. So the notion that The Pretty People Will Rule The World doesn’t quite hold water with me.
Intelligence is a whole other argument and outside of the scope of the subject at hand, but I will point out that genetics is far less of a factor than many people assume.
Sheila Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 8:08 am
“Well, think about this–people with money already have access to technology to make their kids (and themselves) pretty. It’s called plastic surgery.”
Ðámņ, I missed that one completely. Well spotted Sheila!
Sigh. Maybe they cam retro-fix sealion dementia for me at some point 🙁
Cheers.
While I don’t have a problem with disease screening, I’m not crazy about choosing sex, eye color, hair color, etc. The reason is that if people think they have control, they will exercise it, no matter what the long term consequences. China’s one-child policy, for example, has resulted in many girls deaths because of the perceived value of a male heir.
Another example, though it’s much less of an ethical problem, is people finding out the sex of their baby before birth. In a very low impact way, it exemplifies the control people want to have. Most every couple I know the last few years has chosen to find out the sex before birth. They say that it makes naming, clothing, and decorating the nursery easier. As if somehow this was more difficult for parents 100 years ago before the tech existed.
In a few years, having “custom babies” will likely be more technically feasible, though, which means no matter the concerns, certain people will always push the limits.
Mark L Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 10:13 am
“Most every couple I know the last few years has chosen to find out the sex before birth. They say that it makes naming, clothing, and decorating the nursery easier. As if somehow this was more difficult for parents 100 years ago before the tech existed.”
Hmmm..
Nitpicking slightly, but 100 years ago parents didn’t spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars getting things ready for junior’s arrival. If they’re parents who want to do the whole blue vs pink thing, knowing what flavour you’re getting can have some degree of financial relevance.
But yeah, there is a wide gap ‘twixt knowing and choosing….
Cheers.
I think that a big part of our fears over this are simply the same fears that we face over anything new; the automobile was viewed as terrifying and dangerous at first as well. That isn’t to say I’m wholly positive on the idea–reasonable precautions to prevent dangers to the health of the infant should be the first priority, ahead of anything else. Science should do this safely, because we’ve seen in the past how dangerous reckless action can be (and not just in science, either.)
But think of it this way: Wouldn’t you want your child to be the best they could be? If this technology was really available, and you could make use of it, wouldn’t you want to give your child every advantage that you could? People see this as selfish, designing babies like they were Barbie dolls, but if someone told me that my baby could have better hearing, better vision, better resistance to disease and be stronger, faster, and smarter, I’d have an awful hard time saying, “No, I think I’ll chance potluck and hope that they don’t turn out too bad.”
As people have pointed out, we already do control our children’s development, through matters of diet, exercise, upbringing, and yes, in certain cases, infanticide and abortion. We already do these things; genetic engineering just lets us do them more accurately.
And let us not forget that, in our rush to genetically engineer higher IQs, it won’t matter much if we can’t also throw in a dollop of improved wisdom. Unfortunately, while we may eventually be able to manage the former, I’m at a loss to see how we could do the latter.
What I’m really afraid of with this whole thing is that we will eventually create an entire society of supermen, one’s who are so proud and self-absorbed, that when there is a real danger to the world that one of them see’s the rest will ignore this because they didn’t think of it first.
Then what? Will that one individual be forced to send his child off in a spaceship to a less perfect world in the hopes that he will survive as the rest of the civilaztion ends?
Great Caeser’s Ghost! What will this world come to?
I don’t see why this is a surprise to anyone.
Remember all those “Race for the Cure”, “Buy a Pink Ribbon To Support Breast Cancer Research”, etc. that we’ve all participated in? Well all that money was being dumped into genetic research in order to do… this… exact… thing. If they were are going to cure cancer, this was/is going to come first. Be careful about what you wish for and all that. =/
Science has found tons of effective preventative measures to greatly reduce our chances of getting cancer and other genetic, even auto-immune disease that are far cheaper and more readily available than genetic solutions. But corporations want the genetic stuff and they have told the people that this is what they want, so this is what we get.
Completely unrelated:For those that were paying attention- this was an issue of X-Factor (written by PAD) back in he 90’s. There was a doctor who could determine if your baby had the X-gene, and he could remove it. One of my favorite storylines of that book.
And Susan O (waaay above) is correct: we’re such a long way off from being able to safely manipulate genes. The body is carefully balanced. Mess with one thing and everything else gets thrown out of whack. These things are not isolated sliders, like the Hue adjustment on Photoshop. It’s like a complicated pulley system: everything interacts together.
Courtesy of http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/health/article-1159209/Blind-girl-thanks-pioneering-stem-cell-treatment.html the interesting thing here is possibly not so much the technology, but more that it was purchased from an American run biotech clinic in southern China… William Gibson, eat your heart out!
“Born two years ago with severe eye problems, Dakota Clarke could not even see well enough to recognise her own mother and father.
But now the parents of the little girl, who is registered blind, say she can make out their faces for the first time after pioneering stem cell treatment.
The couple gave up work to raise £30,000 to fly their daughter to China for the treatment, which remains at the experimental level in Britain.
Her parents, Darren, 34, and Wilma, 28, from Newtonabbey, Northern Ireland, researched her condition on the internet and found out about the stem cell therapy offered by a private American clinic in Qingdao, southern China.
The clinic is run by Beike Biotech, which offers to use stem cells to treat conditions such as cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis. It claims most patients report an improvement in their quality of life.”
Whenever I see topics like this, I always go into an Outer Limits/Twilight Zone type frame of mind.
I typically think about the repercussions down the line. Suddenly their manipulations have left the human race sterile. Or opened them up to some new virus/pathogen that was until that point a non-threat and now it is suddenly the second coming of a black plague, only on a far grander and deadlier scale.
You start messing with things that are probably better left unantogonized and you never know what the consequences will be (like poking something with a stick only to discover it is a hornets nest).
Sometimes people who are trying to make things bigger and better just end up making an unimaginable mess of things.
The first thing comes to mind is that many of us need to read or re-read Beyond This Horizon by Robert A. Heinlein. As with so many science-fictional concepts, Heinlein was there ahead of us all.
Up the Line by Robert Silverberg and The Rainbow Cadenza by J. Neil Schulman both come to mind, too, although the use of genetic engineering in them is secondary to their main themes.
And for those who are worried about genetic engineering and “designer children” becoming a privilege of the rich? The best way to make that happen is to proscribe the technology. Make it illegal and you make certain that only the richest (and the most corrupt of the richest at that) will have access to it.
One of the things that unsettles me about these discussions is that it’s frequently presented in terms of no cost (not this discussion particularly, several people have posted about the possibility of side-effects), all benefit. But what if there’s a 10 percent chance that an intelligence-boosting gene implant will leave the kid a vegetable? 20 percent? What if changing one gene for the better has some negative side-effect, such as weakening bone density? What if the doctors screw up, let’s say 15 percent of the time? Or the genetic therapy is a “best guess” as to what will happen?
Veering slightly away from that, suppose we reach the point where doctors think they can tinker with personality (which I think is a huge assumption at this point, and may always be, but let’s go with it): Would some people start programming girls to be chaste and submissive? Guys to be more aggressive and confident? Will scientists be able to measure the “right” level of aggression or submission to keep people functional in society?
What if Dad decides he wants his son built like a football player and not too intellectual? Could the kid sue if he doesn’t want to be what he was programmed to be?
As someone noted above, I don’t think genetic engineering at all falls under a woman’s right to control her body. So these are valid questions, albeit speculative.
Honestly, as long as parents don’t select for harmful traits, I’m generally ok with them deciding to pick the “best of themselves” as Gattaca puts it. Surface traits are just that – surface traits.
Any benefit that would be conferred due to class status is already being conferred in other ways. Early education, good medical care, and good nutrition have a dramatic effect on later health, scholastic and job performance, as do genetics.
Besides, you are correct. Right now, we’re talking about a very tiny segment of the population.