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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."
There's a very good reason for the ~ 50-50 split. 20 years from now, we're gunna have a bunch of British men looking overseas for mates. We CANNOT let this happen! Once women hear that accent, it's OVER. We don't stand a chance against their sexy sexy voices.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Maybe there's no problem in developed countries like the uk, but I shudder at the thought of less developed countries using this and selecting male kids like crazy.
China already has a huge problem with a surplus of males, and they don't even allow you to choose.
Will code a sig generator for food
It's hard enough for the average /. reader as it is, now we have to have a doctor's note?
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.
Could one apply the logic of free choice here?
I'm thinking of the abortion debate. One of the things people say (not the only thing, of course) is "There are differing opinions on the ethics of abortion. Some of these opinions borrow from religious teachings. We should allow abortion, since doing so allows people to decide on ethics (which may depend on religion) themselves." Thus, 'Pro-Choice'.
Couldn't the same apply here? Some people may disagree with 'designer babies' (in some cases for religious reasons) while others don't have a problem with them. That is, could one be 'pro choice' on designer babies? Does that make sense here?
I'm not saying designer babies are an idea I'm completely comfortable with, but it's an interesting point to discuss nonetheless.
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
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
This is how it starts...
It ends with two dstinct races of humans, those not genetically engineered, and those that are, super-intelligent super-fit blond blue-eyed products who won't want to mix their bloodlines with the inferior 'naturals'. It will also be an indicator of economic wealth because only rich families will be able to afford designer babies.
So the awful legacy is we now have another criteria that will be used as a weapon for racial and social discrimination, just like skin colour or religion.
The worst part is that this will be the first time there will be some scientific evidence that the physical differences are actually significant, which will make colour/religion-based predjudice look like a walk in the park.
People have been able to shift the sex ratio for years. All you need is a centrifuge and the appropriate density gradient. Since the Y chromosome is much smaller than the X, Y sperm are significantly more buoyant than X sperm (nearly a 10% difference) and can be separated from one another and used for artificial insemination.
The only difference here is that they verify sex by PCR so that it now works 100% of the time instead of only 90.
I'm no British law expert but the old method was probably perfectly legal as it would be difficult to mandate what one can do with semen (your disgusting imagination may be inserted here).
I can hear "Every Sperm is Sacred" now....
"Several news agencies are reporting that the UK is considering allowing parents undergoing fertility treatment to select the sex of their unborn babies."
Choices apparently include everyday, three times a week, hard 'n fast, and special occasions only.
Think the dating scene is bad now. Think about how it would be if there were one girl to every three guys or vice versa.
I like the vice versa, actually. Haven't you heard the song "Two girls for every boy" by the California Beach Boys?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Of course, these aren't really big wars in the WWII style of things.
Historically, war happened when one ethnic/language group wanted things (usually land) that belonged to another ethnic/language group. Who is an ally - somebody who speaks your language. Who is an enemy/subject - somebody who doesn't.
When the English took over a French town in the middle ages you wouldn't have an underground resistance - the peasants had the same lot as always they just paid their taxes to a different unelected king. If there were a result the troops would have probably just killed anybody with a French accent.
The problems in Iraq and Israel are related to modern warfare - when one country wants to exert influence over another without totally dominating them.
In WWII a Japanese person walking towards a US checkpoint was probably considered a target. Fast-forward 50 years and in Iraq friend and foe all look the same.
I'm not sure whether numbers or technology would win a true war. That is a war in which both sides stand to completely lose - when all the stops are pulled out. The allies bombed Dresden because it was a real war. That would never happen in Iraq (I'm not talking about isolated bombing mistakes that collectively kill a few thousand people - I'm talking about an intentional planned attack whose goal is to kill off most of the residents of an entire city).
I'm not sure whether a country that ran out of women to marry would be a serious problem - maybe it would. If they don't mind interractial marriage I wouldn't want to be a male in a neighboring province, though.
My main point is that I wouldn't draw conclusions based on modern limited wars and apply them to theoretical future unlimited wars. War knows no limits - at least on the part of a party that thinks it might lose. The US isn't worried about losing in Iraq, so it can afford to play "nice" (if you can use such a word to describe war). Sadaam was willing to pull out all the stops, however (such as human shields). If this were Germany vs Britain in WWII, however, and there were Germans standing on bridges, the bomber pilots would probably have welcomed the extra carnage.
If you want to study unlimited warfare you'd do better to ignore Iraq and look at Africa instead. Technology there is a bit limited, but there are certainly no limits on how it is employed...
You don't have to wait. In India and China the sex imbalance has been growing for over a decade. The peasants used to just smother unwanted girls at birth, now the middle class has ultrasounds and aborts them. That's one reason why there is a market for kidnapping and selling women to be wives of men in rural areas where there aren't enough to go around.
China grapples with legacy of its 'missing girls' "From a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to 100 girls in the early 80s, the male surplus progressively rose to 111 in 1990, 116 in 2000, and is now is close to 120 boys for each 100 girls at the present time"
Ratio of girls to boys in India continues to decline "The sex ratio, calculated as number of girls per 1000 boys in the 0-6 age group, declined from 945 girls per 1000 boys in the 1991 census to 927 during the 2001 census... In 2001, four states--Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, and Gujarat--fell into the category of having fewer than 800 girls per 1000 boys for the first time. In Punjab the decline was in 10 of the 17 districts, whereas in Haryana state almost all districts recorded fewer than 850 girls. In Fatehgarh, in Punjab, the number of girls declined to 754 per 1000 boys."