Designer Babies, Version 1.0

Stickerboy writes: "A 30 year-old woman in Chicago gave birth to a pre-pregnancy genetically screened and selected baby 17 months ago, which is being reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association today. Doctors at the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago took 23 eggs from her, screened the eggs for a gene that causes an early form of Alzheimer's, and then fertilized and implanted the eggs back in her womb. Shades of the movie Gattaca - this is a good specific development, but the start of a very controversial trend. Read more about it in the Washington Post or read the abstract in JAMA."

Comments

Some things are good some are bad

[smoondog]

I think we can sum up the solution to this debate relatively easily:

Babies free from disease == Good

Babies who look like Arnold Schwartzenegger and Maria Shriver == Bad

-Sean

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[Another MacHack]

Why not screen against those things? Is it somehow morally necessary for a certain fraction of the population to have severe dandruff?

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

All of them. Please enlighten me as to how disease is good. And, since you are obviously a bit on a slow side, dandruff isn't a disease. Get a water softner and a fucking humidifier. Are you going to pull some bullshit fucked argument that disease is a good thing? I'm waiting. This ought to be good.

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[Mr. Slippery]

Babies free from disease == Good Even that noble goal is a slippery slope to tread. What diseases do we screen for?

And what do we consider a disease?

Recall that not that long ago in the U.S., homosexuality was offically considered a "disease".

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[Irvu]

True fact. The gene that is linked to Sickle-Cell Anemia only causes it under unlikely mutations. If you are a carrier of this gene however, it provides a degree of protection against Malaria. Therefore it is found most often in malarial reigions of the world.

The issue is, If we wipe out a disease such as sickle cell from the worlds population then those people who live in malarial reigons will be far more at risk possibly causing large-scale epidemics.

Healthy babies are good but not if preventing one disease causes an outbreak of another possibly worse one. We have to be careful about our assumption that we *know* what will happen. This is what all the nonfiction opponents of genetic engineering are really on about. We simply *dont* know what all of our genes do or how they behave in specific combinations and under specific conditions. There are just so many possibilities that total prediction and total control is not possible.

Gattaca was less about genetic engineering as ego and fear. It showed a socity so wrapped in its own genetic confidence and so afraid of its own diseases that babies with a 10% chance of heart disease were treated as if they were already dead. The assumption that say the likely appearence of a gene coding for melanin in the skin meant that you were permanantly incapable of any significant task no matter how smart you actually were.

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[stienman]

The ability to screen for these is directly related to the financial status of the person using the screening system. The poor would go the 'natural' way and subsequently become a lower class physically than families who can afford such procedures. As can be seen in every society documented or studied, physical differences lead to class tendencies. Even if it were illegal to discriminate based on some physical triat, it would happen and become the norm in many industries, pushing the lower class even lower.

Plus it require a LOT of government control and intervention to prevent such discrimination, reducing individual privacy and rights.

But we won't be around long enough to see it, so how about if we jump in with both feet and darn the consequences... We'll create a better class of geeks! Or at least ones with 6 fingers (better keyboarding) or a mousing hand or something.

-Adam

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[Reality Master 101]

Recall that not that long ago in the U.S., homosexuality was offically considered a "disease".

Well, calling something a "disease" is a loaded statement. I'm pretty convinced that there are two types of homosexuality: genetic based (where your sexual attraction mechanism is backwards), and psychologically based.

For genetic based homosexulity, there is no question that it is a genetic defect to be attracted to the wrong sex (I mean, duh). I would not do post-fertilized screening, but if it were possible to screen my sperm or my wife's egg for the defect, I would certainly do it.

On the other hand, psychologically-based homosexuality is debatable whether it's a "problem" or not. The truth is that it probably is in some cases, and not in others. For example, a severely abused woman who chooses lesbianism because of the abuse is probably a candidate for counseling. On the other hand, if you simply had a person whose personality encouraged "trying different things", and simply preferred homosexuality, then it's probably not a problem.

Once again it has to be pointed out that closed mindedness of most sorts is bad ("homosexuality is always wrong!" or "Homosexuality is always a 'lifestyle' choice and should never be called a defect!")

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[Reality Master 101]

Perhaps homosexual couples provide a certain benefit to traditional or modern society.

It's possible, but it's hard to dismiss the historical animus towards homosexuality in almost every culture (I'm sure there are exceptions to this). If evolution truly favored homosexuality, then it would make sense that societies would tend to evolve toward accepting the benefits of it.

I'm willing to accept the possibility that there might be some subtle purpose to the attraction mechanism getting switched around, but at this point that seems more political "happy science" than real science.

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[maxpublic]

Spoken like a true moralist. You're willing - nay, eager - to inflict treatable genetic illnesses upon future generations just to satisfy your own personal beliefs on how the world should be. How ethical of you.

But there's a solution: how about you butt out of the personal business of parents choosing to have children in whatever fashion they think is best, and we'll allow you to have children purely through the 'crapshoot' method. Then you can be content in the knowledge that at least you're doing your part to spur on creativity.

Max

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[maxpublic]

Well, I'll be goddamned. I posted a rather lengthy response to this and it was deleted. It showed when I submitted, but here I am four hours later and now it's gone. No message, nothing - just gone.

Well, let's not let a little thing like that stand in the way of pig-headed persistence. Once again into the breach.

Well, feel free to save toilet paper by using Kinsey.

Please post a link to an empirical study published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal which definitively refutes the numbers presented by Kinsey, and all who came after him confirming those numbers. Keep in mind the words "empirical", "accredited", and "peer-reviewed" when considering which link is best suited to support your assertion that when it comes to the ratio of bisexuals to homosexuals, the man and his team had their heads up their asses.

If this was the case, it would still be a defect.

Your definition of 'defect' goes far beyond the traditional definition used in biology and genetics. In fact, it seems to encompass anything which you, personally, don't particularly care for.

In order for a trait to be a defect - as defined by the biological sciences - it must in some fashion reduce the organisms chances of survival or probability of successfully reproducing. Bisexuality does neither; bisexuals aren't less likely to survive nor are they less likely to reproduce. There is no defect here, at least so far as the word is defined in the traditional scientific sense.

my gut feeling is that most bisexuality is psychological.

Your gut feeling and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

That is, most people who are bisexual override their natural inclination by wanting to try "something different".

My own experiences are purely anecdotal but rather wide-ranging, primarily because I am bisexual and I've had contact with hundreds of bisexuals over the course of my lifetime. Their accounts concerning their bisexuality directly contradict your 'gut feeling'. As you have no evidence whatsoever to support your rather whimsical claims, I'll take the word of several hundred bisexuals - people in a position to know what motivates them - over your 'gut feeling' any day of the week.

The point is that any genetic flaws that cause the attraction mechanism to not work in a way that encourages reproduction is most likely a defect.

If you're of the opinion that sex is only useful for procreation and that the development of social ties through sex is of no survival value, I suggest you educate yourself on the topic before speaking further. This is a fundamental given of the social sciences, so clearly apparent that it isn't disputed. Claims to the contrary demonstrate nothing more than base ignorance, willful or otherwise.

And once again this isn't the definition of defect used in the biological sciences.

But even if we were silly enough to adopt your definition, I could claim that bisexuality gives an individual a survival advantage in that this person not only has the same chance of reproducing as a heterosexual, but that the bisexual would also be capable of strengthening social ties through sexual contact with members of the same gender in a way that heterosexuals couldn't duplicate. Since no serious social scientist would attempt to refute the claim that members of a group with strong social ties are more likely to survive and reproduce than members with weaker ties, it's apparent that in this case the bisexual has a better chance of survival than the heterosexual as long as all other members in the group aren't just heterosexual. And we already know that heterosexuality isn't universal.

By your own definition the bisexual has a survival advantage over the heterosexual. In comparison to the bisexual, heterosexuality could actually be viewed as a defect.

Which only goes to show just how silly your claims actually are.

Max

Re:Some things are good some are bad

[sudog]

You don't know what you're talking about. There are plenty of evolved genetic traits that at first don't appear to be beneficial to survival but turn out to be quite ingenius.

Perhaps there is a component of homosexuality which actually *does* contribute to genetic propagation? Are you a scientist who has studied it for the better part of your life or are you basing your conjecture purely on what you imagine is logical?

Think about it this way: If it wasn't in some way beneficial, or a side effect of something else that is beneficial, then after the millions of years we've all been evolving they would have bred themselves completely out of the equation a VERY long time ago.

In a later note you imply it only takes 10,000 years to build a genetic immunity to smallpox. How about millions of years of evolution versus the sizable percentage of the population that is homosexual? How can you possibly conclude that homosexuality is counter-productive when the evidence (ie: their survival throughout the eons) is so obviously to the contrary?

You don't honestly think this is a recent mutation do you?

Thus, your "logic" (if it can be called that) is non-sequiteur and you need to go back to whatever course you think you learned evolutionary psychology or biological determinism from.

*bzzzt* Try again hotshot.

Screening != GM

[Bonker]

All doctors did was select an unaltered embryo that had a better chance of developing into a healthy adult. They didn't change the embryo in any way, nor did they give any advantage to the mother or embryo.

Some doctors encourage people who are at risk of genetically transmitted diseases to have their unborn fetuses screened for those same diseases so that they have the option of aborting early in the pregnancy.

This merely takes that practice a step further, while eliminating the controversy of abortion.

Re:Screening != GM

[Drachemorder]

The way I understand it, they didn't select an embryo at all ... only an unfertilized egg, which was then fertilized and implanted.

To me, that doesn't seem to have many implications (if any) for the abortion debate, since not even the most conservative pro-life advocates argue that unfertilized eggs should be counted as human beings. On the other hand, if they fertilized a number of eggs, selected from the resulting embryos, and destroyed the rest, then there would be a legitimate concern.

This does raise questions of "playing God", though, along with all the classic arguments about using this to select for or against desired features.

Re:Screening != GM

[maxpublic]

Yes, yes, but we all know that the pro-lifer fanatics are fucking idiots whose primary interest is in enforcing their smug religious beliefs on everyone else. No rational person gives a rats ass what they think on the matter.

Max

The best application of science ever!

[evilpaul13]

Think of all the famous people who made great contributions to humanity who wouldn't have even been born if we do this nonsense widely in the future!

Maybe the reason that if there is intelligent life out there among the stars that they haven't found us is because they all genetically engineer themselves into extinction? Afterall, we couldn't leave something important like reproduction up to natural selection and chance, could we? But I'm undoubtedly a just troll for not jumping on the latest biotech bandwagon.

Re:The best application of science ever!

[Indras]

Unfortunately, natural selection is no longer capable of weeding out medical weaknesses on a large scale needed to make evolutionary progress. Most diseases are cured, instead of killing the patient, which would remove the defective genes from the gene pool (sorry that sounds so cruel, but it's true). I think this application of science is a very good thing, because it plays with disease prevention. No human being is harmed in the process, and the result is a healthier baby, and improved genetic quality in the species as a whole. Who can argue?

Re:The best application of science ever!

[jamezzz]

Who's to say that this isn't just another phase in our evolutionary process? How many of these great contributors have died from diseases that we may be able to screen for in the future? Had they lived on would they have contributed much more? Having lost my grandfather to Alzheimers and having watched the mental pain that he and our family went through, I can't see how this could be unethical or immoral. On the contrary, I could see it as unethical to prevent people from persuing this preventative measure.

Obviously, there are those who will abuse the technology, since that's true for anything that's great, it's really a mute point.

Re:The best application of science ever!

[egomaniac]

By the same token, who are we to say that your (say) twelve year old daughter's next ovum wonn't contain the best genetic material on the planet?

You're letter her *not* have sex? How dare you waste such potentially valuable genetic material? The second she gets gives birth to her first baby, make sure her boyfriend starts going for number 2. One of her fifteen kids might be the next Beethoven, after all.

I realize I'm being inflammatory, but I'm making a serious point. Every menstrual cycle wastes an egg. Every ejaculation wastes billions of sperm. I don't see a whole lot of difference between wasting them a few seconds before conception and wasting them a few seconds later.

(Yes, yes, I know that some people believe that a single cell can somehow possess an invisible, incorporeal, supernatural entity which they term a 'soul', but that theory is every bit as plausible as saying that the zygote possesses an invisible super-powerful wombat. They might, but considering there's absolutely no evidence in favor of it...)

And we *are* focusing our efforts on curing AIDs and cancer. Solving these problems does not require every single human on the planet to devote 100% of his or her effort to their solutions. That's a pretty inefficient way to operate. For that matter, what are you doing here on Slashdot? Why aren't you working on something more important?

The human race multitasks. Nobody complained about Linus Torvalds writing the Linux kernel instead of working on a cure for cancer. Why are you complaining about fertility doctors working on this rather than a cure for cancer?

I'm sure a lot of people will be pissed off by my opinions, but at least we can all agree on one thing. Super-powerful wombats would be *damned* cool.

Bad example to make an example out of

[hij]

This doesn't even seem to be borderline. From what it says in the Washington Post article they examined the eggs before being fertilized. Cleared eggs were fertilized later.

Even St. Thomas Aquinas can't object to this. The discarded eggs were not fertilized. Of course, he might have been upset that he missed out on the fun part...

Natural Selection?

[Em Emalb]

From the article:
"Without the screening, the newborn would have faced fifty-fifty odds of becoming hopelessly senile by the time she was 40."

This is a terrible thing. I am really sorry to hear that this *might* happen by the time she/he is 40.

Well, IMO, this goes against natural selection. Weaknesses are inherent in all forms of life. And in this case, the weakness is basically being forced out of the child. I don't think this is a good thing, and here is why...

What happens when the governments start screening every child that is born for any inherent form of "weakness"? Will those children never receive the chance to live? Will they be branded "inferior"? This has the potential to be an extremely bad thing.

If you want a child so badly, lady, go ADOPT ONE.

There are literally thousands of unwanted children out there that need and want a family.

What is so wrong about going this route as opposed to paying thousands for a procedure like this? You help a child already alive, and more importantly, you give that child a chance to have a better life, and that is what it's all about.

of course, this is my opinion, and I am sure I will be slammed most heartily....

*cracks open a beer and waits*

Re:Natural Selection?

[xSterbenx]

Well, IMO, this goes against natural selection. Weaknesses are inherent in all forms of life. And in this case, the weakness is basically being forced out of the child. I don't think this is a good thing, and here is why...

I can't disagree more. The point of natural selection is that some organisms are more prone to survival than others, and for the most part this increase in survival is due to a genetic mutation which somehow made the organism more 'fit' to survive. By screening for 'unfit' genes, we are actually performing natural selection ourselves, instead of relying on random chance mutations which more often than not lead to 'unfit' phenotypes.

Besides, when was the last time natural selection was really evident in humans? We take care of our sick, our unhealthy, those of us who cannot survive on their own. According to natural selection, we should not give charity, should not have nursing homes, should not really do anything that does not benefit ourselves. IMO, applying natural selection to humans is wrong in any case.

Re:Natural Selection?

[Indras]

Well, IMO, this goes against natural selection. Weaknesses are inherent in all forms of life. And in this case, the weakness is basically being forced out of the child

Two problems with these statements. First of all, all medical technology, safety equipment, processed foods, medical procedures, etc. (ad nauseum) goes against natural selection. In the human race, natural selection doesn't exist anymore. Also, Alzheimer's Disease isn't usually something that can be filtered out via natural selection, because it usually begins affecting a person long after (s)he has passed on their genetic information to the children.

Second, nobody's forcing weaknesses out of anyone in this experiment. They are preventing a child from being born with a disease, not creating a bunch of children and killing off those with the disease, or creating one child and modifying their DNA after they're born (virtually impossible, since it must be changed in every single cell) to remove the gene.

I don't see anything wrong with this morally.

Re:Natural Selection?

[WinPimp2K]

As someone pointed out earlier, this has no impact on "natural selection" as the disease being screened for doesn't show up till long after the woman was capable of having offspring.
Natural selection would mean each of her children would have a 50 percent chance of carrying the gene AND passing it on to their kids as well.

As was also pointed out, this happens BEFORE the eggs are fertilized. Unassisted (the old fashioned way) reproduction would not lend itself to this approach and would certainly leave no point of entry for your government intervention. If governments decide to get into the "species improvement" game, they don't need such a medically expensive method. Just consider the German eugenics programs of the 1930s, or the PRCs more recent "healthy birth" laws which may or may not be a eugenics program favoring the ethnic Hans.It certainly is an attempt by a government to eliminate babies with undesireable traits.

As to the adoption argument, well people are funny that way. Most people would rather have their "own" children - its that little bit of immortality they get through their kids. And so many would rather spend the money (if they have it - or good insurance). If you personally find yourself in the position that this woman was in, you and your partner may make your own decision regarding reproductive options. But please stop trying to limit the choices available to others.

Re:Natural Selection?

[gehrehmee]

Weaknesses are inherent in all forms of life.

Furthermore... weaknesses are one of the things that define us. If I was more physically adept, for example, I would have certainly been more likely to have focused on that element of my life as a child. Instead, I found that I, socially, was very different from the people around me. That forced me to seek out and use my other strengths, and make them a more important part of who I am. I sought out different peer groups, different friends. My family's different because I'm different...

I think when you really consider it, our weaknesses are as much a contributing factor in who we are and who we will be as our strengths. And I believe any attempt to fiddle with that is going to be detrimental, both to individuals, and to the society they go on to live in.

Re:Natural Selection?

[jgerman]

Yes I do have to slam you for this, because it makes no sense.

Number one, don't start blabbering about natural selection. That wen't the way of the dinosaur years ago. The world today does everything it can to keep weakness in the gene pool. Diseases are treated so that they thrive, rather than being allowed to be filtered out. Diabetes for example. Civilization can be defined as the force that attempts to get past natural selection (on an individual basis at least) by keeping the weak alive. I'm not saying this is good or bad it's just the way it is.

Secondly, adoption is another way that society keeps potentially harmful genes in the pool. Orphaned children most likely come from parents who, for some reason or another, could not function in society, and the chances that these children will not be able to function as well.

Keep in mind I'm not expressing a stance on the subject here, only that the further civilization progresses, the more it grows away from natural selection.

Re:Natural Selection?

[bitrott]

Indeed? A dog crapping in a forest is no more natural than a chemical plant, or a geneticists lab. We are all in and of nature. There's percievable order for sure, but how do you know this possiblility isn't the order of tomorrow? To what ends? It's the journey there that's keeping luddites awake at night. It's the ends that keep me in a coffee shop all hours of the night debating crap philosophy with my peers and equals.

Re:Natural Selection?

[raldanash]

Well, IMO, this goes against natural selection. Weaknesses are inherent in all forms of life. And in this case, the weakness is basically being forced out of the child. I don't think this is a good thing, and here is why...

A good point. We are changing the germ line in ways we might not know. And we all have deleterious genes. Here is mine in full disclosure:

Hypercholesterolemia

Because hypercholesterolemia is dominant 50% of my children will have it (statistically). My family doesn't have a history of heart disease (the side I inherit from, which is my mother's side people tend to get heart disease ... in their 90s since they often make it 100 like my grandfather and my 115 year old great-great-aunt)-so I don't know how bad hypercholesterolemia is for us. My cholesterol is 380, so is my mother's and my sister's. My two brothers and obviously my father don't have it.

But when I have children, I plan to make sure they don't have it by screening or selectively aborting. But I also wonder-if I don't have a history of heart disease, why??? I don't know. Do we know all the ramifications of hypercholerolemia aside from the heart-disease related ones? Cholesterol is a hormone that affects several processes...including brain development.

Nonetheless, it is a choice individual parents will have to make. Society shouldn't have to pay for it-you pay out of your own pocket. But change isn't always bad. Throughout most of human history people have been on the verge of malnutrition. Now that's not the case, and the obesity "epidemic" is spreading into the Third World. I'd rather take an obesity epidemic than malnutrition.

Also, remember that not all humans will take advantage (or will be able to do to money) of the new services, so we'll have a reserver of "untouched" human genes in that population. Taking into account that throughout most of human history there were fewer than 1 million of us, I wouldn't worry about genetic uniformity.

Fear of the unknown shouldn't hold us back. We should move forward, with caution, but move nonetheless. There is a chance we might fall of the cliff's edge, but the fact is the only other choice would be to attempt to hold still indefinately, and impossible task.

By the way, would we make a big fuss if the women has simply recieved an egg donor???

Re:What else can be found

[Bonker]

Not only the diseases, but when (and if) we can pre-screen for intelligence, strenght, certain characteristics, won't we be creating a 'super human-race'?

Very simply, you can't screen for most human traits. Period. Sorry, go to the back of the line.

Besides the fact that most traits are caused not by one gene, but by the interaction of dozens of genes and the proteins they create, you have to consider that almost all human traits develop in accordance to someone's environment.

Thusly, if Albert Einstein had been raised in an environment where he wasn't exposed to mathematics or the written word until he was 30 years old, he probably wouldn't come across quite as bright as he was. If he had been raised in an environment where he was not exposed to speech-- The so called 'Forbidden Expirement'-- he probably would come across as being pretty retarded.

If Michael Jordan had not had the opportunity to work hard in his youth and become athletic, he probably wouldn't be the sports superstar he is today. He couldn't just 'develop' those traits and skills later in life.

Say you're an intelligent but pudgy software engineer/couch potato type and you actually manage to get the doctors to screen embryos and sperm most likely to create an athletic individual. If the child created may have a better chance of becoming atheltic, but if he follows his parents example, he will probably be just as pudgy.

Now the one trait that you *can* screen for is gender, mostly because the relationship between X and Y chromosomes has been fairly well observed even if the science behind all the related protein interactions has not been fully plumbed yet.

This raises some scary possibilities, especially in parts of the world where reproduction is controlled by government (China) or families are encouraged to have male children. (Quite a bit of the world, actually.) Having a gender imbalance will do a number on women's rights.

So now a healthy baby with an unhealthy mother?

[spicyjeff]

So the mother has an ailment which means by the time she is 40 she will become senile. The child will just be 10 years old at that point. How is a senile mother supposed to raise a 10 year old child? Once again selfishness of the parent seems to have won out over long term best interests for the child.

Terminology beats thought

[joss]

Just using that phrase "designer babies" determines the conclusion. Put out a poll...

"are you in favor of designer babies" - no

"should potential parents with inheritable diseases have the right to pre-screen their embryos for those diseases" - yes

Then we get the "look at all the wonderful cripples like Hawkins etc...." argument. Well, the foetuses you discard have at least as much chance of turning out well as the ones you keep. There are plenty of great humans who have nasty genetic diseases, but we have no way of telling what geniuses we've missed because the lack of screening meant some doomed half-wit runt got born instead.

And while I'm ranting... Gattaca wasn't that scary. I'm in favor of a world where more people look like Uma Thurman.

Anyway, I better quit before I start proposing full scale eugenics and saying "just because Hitler gave it a bad name doesn't mean it's wrong, after all, if his policies had been implemented Hitler would never have been born in the first place..." that would ruin any credibility I have. Oh shit, too late, just kidding, but I do have a gut reaction against the "this is what nazi's wanted = bad". Decent roads and punctual transport would get discarded too with those arguments.

Personally, I have more faith in nature combining things in the right way than a bunch of fuckwit genetic engineers. But, I don't think it's fair to tell people "it's illegal for you to try and avoid having a child who dies early - I'm not comfortable with that". You know what - nobody asked you to be comfortable with it, it's none of your business.

A pretty good thing on average

[Nurf]

I think being able to adjust ourselves genetically is a good thing on average. We just have to be careful that we dont:

1) Decrease the overall genetic diversity of the population. ie. Mass produced specific genes are probably a bad idea.

2) Create people that can't mate with "normal" humans.

As long as (2) applies we are adding to the gene pool, and it think there are enough people having kids the natural way out there that (1) will be very difficult to make happen (gene-implanting virus epidemics aside).

The possibility exists that a modification could be made that ends up having bad consequences for the recipient decades later. This is the nature of reality. The risk means that people will think twice before doing it, which should provide some handy negative feedback. You have to consider the probabilities.

Would I be willing to make this choice for my offspring? Yes. I indirectly make this choice by picking a mate anyway. I won't make a choice carelessly, and I would only do it if I saw real benefit for my kids. Many choices you make in your lifetime have a significant impact on those around you. It's the nature of life, rather than the nature of this particular problem.

For those that would point out that my children would bear the lifelong burden of my choices, I agree and say "So what?". It would be one of many such choices, and I feel no moral qualms about making them. It is my responsibility to do so.

Just to be clear, I know we are currently in the "remove things we know to be bad" stage rather than the "designer water-breathing" gene stage. I'm just looking ahead a bit.

I find most of the complaints against this sort of thing to be in the gut-feeling-looking-for-a-pseudo-logical-argument category. The remainder have so far made points that haven't convinced me.

Give it time.

[Spamalamadingdong]

Very simply, you can't screen for most human traits. Period. Sorry, go to the back of the line.

Yet. The number of tests is going up rapidly.

The real difficulty you're going to have is that the number of usable gametes you're going to get falls exponentially with the number of chromosomes you're trying to select for. After you get to four or five traits you've got a choice: either you're going to have to be able to pick individual chromosomes and build custom nuclei, or you're going to have to select a "best-of-N" instead of a pure optimum. The "best-of-N" preserves large elements of chance.

Besides the fact that most traits are caused not by one gene, but by the interaction of dozens of genes and the proteins they create, you have to consider that almost all human traits develop in accordance to someone's environment.

This is still not bad. If it gives parents a shot at having a child who'll do best in their environment, or allows parents the knowledge that their child will do best if they provide a certain environment, it's all for the better. The same tests which show what environmental influences are best will help children who aren't specifically selected for certain traits to get the best out of what they've got. This is coming whether you want it or not; the technology is essential to tell what drugs will benefit individuals and what side effects they might have, and the other knowledge will follow behind it. Soon we are going to have the knowledge once reserved to deities, whether we want it or not; we had better be prepared to act on it humanely.

Recap, 2nd class citizens.

[BrookHarty]

Lets recap some of the big concerns.

1. Insurance companies not insuring norms. (I hate the term, but it fits)
2. Low-income families cannot afford screenings, genetic divide.
3. Normal People replaced in the workforce, 2-3 generations from implementation.
4. Screenings will filter out "Genius" and "Artists"
5. Unseen effects after multiple generations of "Altered" humans.
6. Altered humans breed for specific tasks.
7. Rights for Altered and Normal humans.
8. Social interactions between enhanced/altered humans.
9. Economic benefits for enhanced/altered humans.

I think if we could have 3 rules/laws, there would be no worries.
1. DNA Privacy laws.
2. DNA Discrimination laws.
3. Free screening and genetic altering.

Would really be a bitch that my kids cannot get into college, or find work because I could not afford these screenings. They are denied life/health insurance, or any other things we become accustomed to in our daily life. While there are some DAMN good uses for this, this is a very fundamental change to our existance. We need to have basic protections put in place.

Or maybe, we are all over-reacting?

-
Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge. - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)

Playing God?

[clary]

The problem with this assumption is that you don't know what other things you're screening out when you screen out the disease. A somewhat contrived example of this is Stephen Hawking. Of course no really knows the cause of ALS, but suppose it turns out to be genetic. Stephen Hawking would have been screened out of existance, and consequently all of his contributions to science.

IMHO, by doing this kind of thing, we pretend that we are God and that we can forsee every possible future. In my opinion, this is foolishness. We are too focused on our inconveniences, and spend too much effort in the avoidance of struggle. We almost universally fail to see the good that can come out of those struggles.

This is no more playing God than deciding whether to have a child or not in the first place. If Hawking's parents had not had children, then he would not have contributed to science. All our choices have consequences we cannot foresee, not just the ones that use fancy new science. Get over it, and try to make the best, most ethical choices you can.

That said, there may be other good arguments against gene screening. But this one just doesn't hold water.

Beyond this Horizon

[markmoss]

A very long time ago, Robert A Heinlein wrote a book, Beyond this Horizon, where superior babies were produced by screening the entire parental genomes to pick out the best combinations. It's like this, on a much larger scale. No genetic modifications, no splicing in foreign genes, just picking out the best eggs and sperm. That's a whole lot less likely to cause unintended consequences than tossing in new genes, and if the genome was well enough understood, it should be good enough to nearly eliminate double-digit IQ's, chronically ill, and the genetically criminal within a couple of generations.

There were "control naturals", people whose ancestors had never used this genetic filtering. They received a governmental stipend to compensate for their disadvantage. Heinlein never really discussed _why_ they existed, perhaps he thought it was too obvious. Sometimes those genes you would normally filter out might turn out to be strongly advantageous in different circumstances -- heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia are virtually immune to malaria, for instance.

Finally, note that this book is the most utopian of all Heinlein's work, and the most boring. A perfect society is one where "interesting" things don't happen to people, so getting a story out of an almost perfect society is difficult... 8-)

Re:Beyond this Horizon

[praksys]

If I remember the story rightly I think Heinlien did give an explanation of why "naturals" remained (and were even subsidized by the state). He thought the natural population was needed to preserve the possibility of new beneficial mutations arising.

If all you do is select for genes that you know to be good, and you never deliberately add new genes (i.e. no engineering or splicing), then the chances of new beneficial genes entering the gene pool seem pretty slim.

Re:Speaking as a parent

[prisoner-of-enigma]

but that's just it -- what it MIGHT be." No, IS. People are already applying this philosophy to more than eggs.

I'm going to respond by restating my earlier comment: any system can be abused, and any system WILL eventually be abused. That does not make the system a problem, it makes the abuser a problem. Blaming geneticists for the idiocy of the above-mentioned French "mother" would be like blaming Ford because some idiot got drunk and decided to mow down some school children.

People with ridiculously poor decision making skills DO exist, as do people with highly developed decision making skills. You should not penalize the latter because of the former. While I abhor what was mentioned above, she's done it, it's apparently legal where she lives, and I have no say-so in the matter. Neither do you, other than your opinion which you have stated.

I won't get into the abortion angle because that wasn't the point of my post. I was not advocating the aborting of babies with genetic "defects", I was advocating the total opposite: using genetic screening to prevent such defects from ever becoming reality in the first place.