Designer Baby Given Go-ahead

An anonymous reader writes "A couple in the Australian city of Melbourne has been given the legal go ahead to breed a genetically modified 'designer' baby to cure their terminally ill child."

Comments

Re:Won't SONEONE Please Think of the Children

[Sloppy]

Should we even save the first kids life in the first place? This one is a thought expirament, I'm not proposing this (I'd be dead in such a case). One can easily argue that medical technology has rendered evolution mute on our species, which is probably why the rates of just about everything bad (cancer, obiesity, diabetes, heart disease, asethma, allergies, etc.) have been rising over the last century. Should we be allowed to play god (genetic engineering) to help us play god better (by curing the first kid who should, purely by evolution, not survive)?

Evolution does not deserve our reverence. A conscious person's desire is far more important than blind nature's thoughtless process.

And if the application of this desire results in a naturally "less fit" genotype, then so be it. A life (I'm talking about the parents' lives here, not the child's) either has no purpose at all, or one of its own choosing. If people choose (by default) the same purpose as mother nature (to mindlessly optimize the fitness function), that would be a pretty disappointing waste of brains, IMHO.

Ah, but regarding the child's purpose... What will this kid think when he learns of his "purpose?" Well, as soon as he's old enough to think, then he'll already have new purpose all on his own. His parents' original motives become irrelevant. I just hope he knows this.

I think it's cruel and, in fact, just plain EVIL to concieve a child for the purpose of saving someone else's life. That right there is treating the kid like cattle. It's a human being.

By that reasoning, is there ever any justification for choosing to conceive a child? Would not any concious decision to create life, be a form of objectifying that life?

I think treating people like cattle is horrible too, but I have no problems with abortion or genetic hacking. I reconcile this by using a perhaps (?) nonconventional definition for "people." Having human DNA isn't enough to quality (nor is it even a strict requirement, though I've never met a person who didn't have it). What matters, what gives (or doesn't give) a being the value I assign to a person, isn't what kind of meat they're made out of. What matters is how they act. Goo inside a test tube, even if it is a potential person, ain't one yet.