Slashdot Mirror
Where To Draw the Line With Embryo Selection?
Tjeerd writes "There is currently a discussion going on in the Netherlands about embryo selection. The process means that when using in vitro fertilization, you can check what kind of genetic defects will definitely become activated during life. When embryos with those defects are identified, they can be avoided or destroyed. The next step the government is considering is to make it possible to select against genetic defects which might become active in life, such as breast and colon cancer. Of course, this is a very difficult discussion; where do you start, and where do you end? People are worrying that there is no real limit, and that you could potentially check for every genetic defect. I think if you're in a situation where you or your family have genetic defects, you surely want to check whether your children would have them too. What does the Slashdot community think about this?"
Wow. My first thought was not to touch your post with a 10 foot pole. I have a birth defect as well and I don't believe that life starts at conception. In any case, I am not the woman either.
If your mother could have chosen a different embryo other than yours, or repaired yours, would you of wanted that for her?
Tough questions, I know. My own sister missed an abortion by -> - much. I cannot imagine life without her.
I would never take anything away from disabled people. Ever. They have made tremendous contributions to society.
EVEN still, I would say that we don't have the rights to tell parents that they must have children with known defects, especially when there is a technical solution proven to work.
But that's not a reasonable argument. Sickle cell anemia is an extreme edge case, and most of the genetic variants we're talking about are unambiguously harmful, at least based on our current knowledge. And if that knowledge changes we'll adjust, but the way I see it is that at the moment we have at least a bit of an edge on the house. That we don't know exactly how much of an edge or which hands we might lose doesn't mean we shouldn't play the game, it just means that there's still some uncertainty. The odds are still for us.
While I'm with you that we don't necessarily know what we should and shouldn't be selecting for or against for the greater good of our race, are you really suggesting that given the choice (which we will very soon have as a species) there is ever any reason to choose to have the baby that's likely to die of colon cancer over the one without that increased likelihood? Keep in mind that natural selection tunes us a lot more blindly and with a lot less consideration for these possible consequences than direct selection - that appears to have worked fine, so I don't think adding a bit of thoughtful choice into the mix will cause us any great harm as a species. And we can, perhaps, start to select for traits that allow us to live significantly longer than childbearing age, which is the point where natural evolution says "screw it, I'm done!"
I say f--- natural, we're imperfectly constructed in a lot of obvious ways that we can maybe do something about for our children, and they could really use all the help they can get...
Last time I checked, China had a problem with overpopulation, not underpopulation. If they did have a problem with underpopulation, they could scale back their "one child per family" population-control policies and start propagandizing about how glorious it is to have a large family. I don't think that will happen any time soon.
It's a lot easier to solve an underpopulation problem (breed like rabbits or allow immigration) than it is to solve an overpopulation problem (try to limit reproduction and try to come up with enough food to feed everyone.)
My truck is like a series of tubes.
I imagine gay embryos will be the first in the trash can. In a generation or two, gays will be seen only in old movies or tv sitcoms like "Three's Company".
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
They may be overpopluated now, but they are heading for a very huge crash in the future if they don't do something about the cultural pressure to have a son (and using sex selection to get a boy). The One Child policy to control the population can work as long as you're not skewing your future generations to be disproportionately male. And not only are you losing the capacity to keep your population stable, you also end up with a lot of frustrated and angry young men who can't find a wife (a problem they are currently facing).
My argument against would be that folks that're "disabled" like me wouldn't have a chance to contribute to society as a whole....
I wonder what the reaction would be like to a couple deliberately wanting to have a "disabled" child. For example, if a blind couple also wanted to have a blind child.
How do you know if a child is going to have a known defect? The tests are not 100%.
See my other post about my story and my friends. We both were told we would have down syndrome kids, though he was basically told it was a guarantee, not us.
Turns out none of it was true. He has two healthy kids with no health symptoms and I have 3 great kids with no health symptoms.
What if you were aborted because you have a "defect"? That would have sucked huh? I am sure your friends and loved ones would think so now, after you have bee a part of their life.
My college room mate had a birth defect, he had a deformed right hand, no real fingers, just a "claw".
He was smart and the chicks liked him. Imagine if he was aborted just because his right hand wasn't "perfect".
While I am not against a women's right to choose. I find it sick to think a kid would be aborted because he may have a messed up hand, or foot, or whatever.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
So are are the things listed here. Wow looking at that gives you quite an indication of the crime rate. In 1960, the murder rate was .005%, and in 2006, the rate was .0057%. The rate hasn't gone up much, but if you watch the news, it seems like it's happening a lot more.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Let's say that instead of someone beating the shit out of me, they're coming at me with a knife -- except that they're a surgeon performing a medical procedure I opted into. Is it still the police officer's job to "protect" me from something I'm doing by choice?
So it should be illegal for me to get a tumor cut out of me -- because a DNA test would show that it's human?
Already happening, a Deaf couple is trying to have a deaf child by not using embryos that have "hearing", not sure how they make the selection. Their reasoning is that deafness isn't a disability and they want a child that has they can "share their experiences with".
You mad
You're absolutely right.
But I think that this has more to do with the longterm consequences for the human race. What happens if all humans are genetically selected and accidentally a necessary gene for the survival of humanity is lost?
You know, I think I'll tag the article "whatcouldpossiblygowrong".
'IMHO, if a DNA test says its human'
That definition would make it illegal to throw away your toenail clippings or to spit.
Easy...when it hits the atmosphere and can survive.
Personally...I think some of the extreme measures they're using today to keep super premies alive is a bit out of line....but, hey, that's up to the parents to what measures they want to enact. It isn't the governments responsibility. The govt is very limited what its responsibility is, at least in the US...based on the Constitution.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So I take it you're a fan of infanticide by exposure then? After all, if it can't survive...
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
A real religious person wouldn't mind anyone doing anything like this. They'd think of Mat 7:1 and go about their ways.
Of course, those pesky little parts of the bible that tell you not to meddle with other people's affairs is usually left out by those self proclamed, holyer-than-thou people. Sorry, but I don't like to be forced to believe in someone else's imaginary friend.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How about the various form of twinning that occur, which in rare cases leads to one twin actually becoming part of the other, and needing to be removed so that the fully grown twin can live? That other twin (which cannot survive in any scenario) is human, and it is its own entity
There are two entirely different scenarios being posed. In the situation above, you state that there are two human lives at risk - how do you balance between them. It's the same as saying "You're wife and child are dangling from different cliffs. Both could fall at any moment. You have time to save one - which do you choose?" It's a moral dilemma, a no-win situation - whichever way you choose, a human dies, and your choice will be based upon this knowledge.
This is entirely different to "There is one human life, and a bunch of cells. We can do whatever we like to the bunch of cells, because we don't define it as human". In this case, there is no weighing of the life of the embryo, no moral decision - it's considered junk, and treated like it.
At the risk of sounding flamebait-y, this is the same proposition raised during the time when black slavery was acceptable. If you define "human" in such a way that it excludes blacks, then slavery isn't any more wrong than keeping hunting dogs. They're just animals after all. Whenever you start splitting hairs over what is and isn't human, you begin toeing a very fine line.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
As our knowledge of genetics inreases, eventually there will be choices like: This one might kill him by leukemia before he's 25, but if it doesn't it'll guarantee that he never has heart disease.
Some parents will opt for full out safety and take no risk at all. Their kids will turn out supremely average in all respects, dull.
Others will take every risk associated with every possibly beneficial gene and so opt for the chance at a super-kid that might inherit various diseases, but will also have a shot at brilliance.
There will be all levels of in-between choices as well.
In short, there will be no line.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Because whether or not something is homo sapiens is a different question from whether or not it is a person. Boring debaters will point out here that if we're just going by DNA, fingernail clippings are homo sapiens.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
How about all of the embryos that for one reason or another are destroyed by the body itself? Should we be trying to protect those as well? Should we spend money on protecting the "unborn" instead of say, cancer research?
If either of your 2 cases were greater than .001 % of the abortions in the world, you would have a point. But because of a few rare cases, all pre-born humans get no protections?
Look up spontaneous abortion. It's a lot more common than the medically-induced kind. Some estimates put about half of all "pre-born" humans as being discarded in this way, usually because of chromosomal abnormalities.
Until the 'baby' can survive separation from its host, it is nothing more than a glorified parasite (ooh, watch the replies I get for *that*) - the 'baby' benefits from drawing sustenance from its host, the mother, and the mother is affected detrimentally.
Sorry, but only when the 'baby' can survive separation should it ever be considered in its own right - and this is why there are limits on late term abortion.
Yes, and that argument is self-evidently silly because you're presupposing that there is a difference between "you" and "your fingernail clippings" when your criterion for deciding what is or is not a human just IS having human DNA.
Do you have human DNA? Yes. Does your fingernail clipping that you just clipped this morning? Yes.
Well then, if 'having human DNA' is the criterion for deciding humanity, both "you" and "your discarded fingernail" ARE human, and it doesn't do you any good to say "No, I'm human, that's just a fingernail clipping."
That argument misses the point because it changes your definition of what constitutes a human. First you said it's "stuff with human DNA." And then we point out the absurdity of that criterion, you change your definition to "A fully grown human specimen" which implicitly DENIES humanity to the very thing you were trying to attribute it to, that is, an undifferentiated clump of human cells.
If we incinerated that fingernail clipping, we would be incinerating ITS "entire DNA", now wouldn't we? And yet you don't care one bit about this, because it's manifestly not human, even though it has human DNA. And yet you DO care about a set of undifferentiated cells that you probably couldn't even see unaided.
To put it succinctly, the "having human DNA" argument just doesn't even get off the ground, regardless of your attempts to backdoor in some other criteria, like *actually being a human*.