Slashdot Mirror
UK Report Suggests Designer Offspring
chromakey writes "Several news agencies are reporting that the UK is considering allowing parents undergoing fertility treatment to select the sex of their unborn babies." Also covered in Q&A format by the BBC. From the article: "At the moment in the UK, sex selection is only permitted if there are strict medical reasons. This could be because there is a serious sex-linked disorder in the family, such as Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy."
China already has a problem with this already. Due to their one-child policy, many families had sex-based abortions. In particular, since sons were much more popular, they would abort daughters. Now, China has about 120 men for every 100 women.
This might not seem like such a serious problem on the surface, but it really is. Among other things, China now has an extremely active underground wife selling system, in comparison to other countries, at least. Since there just aren't enough Chinese women to go around, men are willing to break laws and pay high prices to get a wives.
It seems like that the difference in population also makes discrimination more likely. There's no clear evidence on how the discrimination would work out, but discrimination is usually more common in disparate populations.
Just to be a Devil's Advocate, I can think of at least one reason. That would be the inevitable inbalance that would occur in the sexes. In China right now, with it's one-child policy, there is a large inbalance in the number of male versus female children. There will be thousands (millions?) of young Chinese men that will not be able to find a mate, simply because there aren't enough women around.
The inability these men will have in finding a mate could have huge negative consequences for the entire Chinese Society. These negative consequences would be one reason why government should be able to prevent you from choosing a male over a female child.
In developing countries, there is already a serious imbalance in male/female ratio, with about 800-900 females per 1000 males. Fortunately, the trend is a little bit reversed in developed countries. If the designer babies techniques come to developing countries, it will further push the female/male ratio down.
One would assume that with fewer women, the women will have additional power, but in male-dominated societies (in many developing countries), lower number of women may in fact lead to more oppression of women (they may end up viewed as "precious property").
It is very scary.
S
It's happening in China. One child -- it had better be a boy to carry on the familiy name.
There are some potentially severe consequences to increasing the male population. One is that we can anticipate that a country with surplus males may well choose to be militarily more aggressive, since male cannon fodder will be a relatively low value commodity.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But there are countries, or rather cultures where girl babies are given up for adoption until a son is born. Or the family just keeps getting bigger until a son is born. Or a woman who has not born any male children is divorced or disgraced. Those are societies where getting the gender you want on the first try would be a net benefit to all concerned. Aint technology wonderful? If it doesn't simply make our lives easier, it can at least make our stupidities less burdensome!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Disclaimer: this post may offend some of you. I have no problems with children who have special needs and I respect their parents. However, I am willing to do anything possible to end up as one of those parents.
My girlfriend and I were talking about genetic selection of babies. She is a religious person and at first she did not approve the idea of selecting a child based on its genes. However, this changed right away after she started working some special ed. kids.
Let's call my girlfriend Ann. Ann is a therapist; she works for public schools in order to help kids with different aspects of education. Some kids need help with handwriting, some kids need assistance due to injuries, some kids need a little push when it comes to physical education. Ann helps them out. However, there is a growing number of kids with genetic disorders who need extreme help and who are in the school system. These are by-products of tobacco and alcohol companies, kids of ex-drug users or just unfortunate parents. Nobody wants them. Nobody wants to deal with them. Because our public schools are designed to accept everyone, these kids end up in an environment that can't really fit their needs. Parents drop them off and let Ann deal with all this shit. The same parents are ready to sue the living shit out of the school system if their kids do not progress. Moreover, not a single public school that I know is able to accomodate kids with special needs due to financial restraints. Would I want my kids to have a chance of living that life? Two words: fuck that.
After working with many special ed kids for years, Ann and I have concluded that we'll screen our potential babies for genetic disorders because we simply do not want to deal with a kid who has Down's Syndrome or something along those lines. If there is a possibility of a genetic disorder, why not eliminate it? I do not want to end up with a kid who acts like Timmy from South Park; the society can live without such a kid just fine as well. The school system where Ann works spends a lot of time on kids who can barely tie their shoes. Some of those kids will lose their skills and degenerate. It is so sad to see those poor souls... I would hate to have a child like that. A child that can't really understand, a child that can't be a part of the mainstream life, a child that will be always a second class citizen. As somebody who had a speech problem as a kid, I know what it feels like when everybody makes fun of you and I saw only the tip of the iceberg! I would hate to see my kid to go through numerous humiliations, classifications, doctors, special ed instructors and then endup earning minimum wage at some sweatshop or Burger King.
The bottom line is that this is up to you. I choose life, but life that is capable of living and not suffering. After what I have seen and heard from the people who do with special kids for living, I made up my mind.