Slashdot Mirror
Designer Babies
Singularity Hub writes "The Fertility Institutes recently stunned the fertility community by being the first company to boldly offer couples the opportunity to screen their embryos not only for diseases and gender, but also for completely benign characteristics such as eye color, hair color, and complexion. The Fertility Institutes proudly claims this is just the tip of the iceberg, and plans to offer almost any conceivable customization as science makes them available. Even as couples from across the globe are flocking in droves to pay the company their life's savings for a custom baby, opponents are vilifying the company for shattering moral and ethical boundaries. Like it or not, the era of designer babies is officially here and there is no going back."
Although there certainly is a lot of "fashion" and "tradition" in choosing names, it's hardly the nightmare of uniformity that is predicted by those who oppose genetic choice. Sometimes it might appear that everyone is named Steve, but alas, it is not so.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm sick and tired of these designer babies and their fancy jeans and handbags and watches. Enough with the materialism. They should learn early not to value such things so highly.
I like how the summary says that the "designer baby" era is here despite the fact that, hey, we can't actually customize babies yet.
I remember people predicting this, mostly the fundies. They were laughed at. The gist of the flameage was "That won't ever happen, you guys need to STFU and let us scientists get on with the science."
Ok, now it's happened. And as a society we lack the moral fiber to even say it is a bad idea. Forget making an actual judgemental moral decision and declaring it "immoral" or "wrong". We can't even agree it is a bad idea and will almost certainly have bad consequences.
We are so doomed.
Democrat delenda est
Just as we've found that the ecosphere is an uncontrollably complex system that defies simple cause/effect manipulation, we will learn the hard way that simply "inserting" a gene for blue eyes or increased hemoglobin production causes unexpected and undesirable spinoff effects.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
This doesn't seem much more controversial than an abortion. (which, depending on the country, could be considered controversial) How is this unethical? Unless I'm misunderstanding, all it involves is checking ahead of time what your baby's gonna look like.
Think maybe they could design one without the attitude?
I prefer Valentino, always. His reds are magnificent. Although the occasional Coco Channel or Yves Saint Laurent's black with high puffy white collars baby, is certainly fashion.
</bad joke>
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
One of my top 10 favorites of all time; it still holds up.
Download it now and get a glimpse of what we are getting ourselves in to.
Website Hosting
I want mine to look like Alice
What?
"Evolution treats artificial selection as a defect and routes around it"
I'm guessing that it will turn out that blond hair, blue eyes and being cute goes hand in hand with some fatal evolutionary defect and that in 1000 years customer's bloodlines will be extinct.
Just look at the genetic shape that some "pure" breeds of dogs are in. They would never survive in the wild.
Even if it may be inhuman, unethical or whatever, people will want this. It's a new step in human evolution. There is a plus on the ethical side of this: many genetic diseases can hopefully be prevented.
-- Cheers!
as couples from across the globe are flocking in droves to pay the company their life's savings for a custom baby
It saddens me to think that so many people are that shallow. It no longer surprises me that people would risk their financial stability to have a baby with a particular hair color. But it does still depress me.
Developers: We can use your help.
Why go out and hunt for a chick when you can just roll your own? LOL
I remember a story about someone who used a certain modern "scientific" technique to provide a guarantee of baby's gender. If he was wrong he promised the money back. Of course he got to keep the money in about 50% of the time.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
They'll have a huge market in China and perhaps India. China has that history of euthanizing baby girls, so why waste the nine months if you can't get exactly what you want?
Sorry, but this really freaks me. Now we're making a true commodity out of babies. In a way that actually cheapens them; they'll become mass-market items akin to cellphones, when we can pick and choose exactly what color, what "skin", we want them to have, what shape and size, what sort of CPU and accessories.
Can you hear Darwin howling?
When men say they want all their sons to have epic wangs.
"...not only for diseases and gender, but also for completely benign characteristics such as eye color..."
In what sense is gender not a benign characteristic?
With all the sturm und drang at the start of TFA, I expected an enumeration of the hinted-at "perils" of genetic selection. I was wondering how far they would need to stretch the fabric of the universe to find some.
Before someone else brings them up, let me say it: Eugenics Wars. We all know that science fiction comes true. We don't know much about the Eugenics Wars, but we know they will be awful and that they will be the result of genetic manipulation. So be afraid, be very afraid.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
At least these particular cells get to live to become people (and attractive, Jude Law types, no less). I wonder which side those who thought Bush was pushing some moral agenda on embyotic cells (when in reality he formed a bi-partisan commission to study the long term consequences of it, like, you know, this) will come down on om this issue?
Suddenly there are ethical issues when playing with fetal cells? So is destroying potential life for the benefit of others okay, but improving it for the benefit of that life itself not okay? Sounds arrogant and officious to me. The State will decide that all your cells belong to us? Scary.
Posted anon, regrettably, because some people don't know or don't care how they are supposed to use mod points. But I assure you I do not mean this as a troll. I am genuinely interested in intellectually honest responses.
I know, it's not that kind of designer. Though I suppose it's feasible to think that we might one day have this sort of thing; fashion labels designing and selling super cool babies. I'd quite like a Versace son.
Docile, big tittied blond, brunette and redhead. High sexual proclivity low IQ and fast maturing.
Adopt the child of your choice.
One of my younger brothers has severe autism. My other brother and our sister wear dentures. We all wear glasses. My parents wear glasses. My father's side of the family is all alcoholics, except for my grandfather, who is dead of a heart attack in his late 40s. My grandmother has had a triple bypass for her heart attack. On my mother's side of the family, my grandmother has survived breast cancer, and my grandfather is deep in Alzheimer's.
To hell with the crapshoot that is conception. I've long since decided that any kids I raise will be adopted. Then again, maybe this sort of technology will get cheap enough for me to pass on whatever portion of my genetic code that isn't crap.
All you "moral guardian" types are still stuck up on the crazy idea that condoms promote evil, bad sex, and think that the AIDS pandemic deserves nothing more than a crate of bibles shipped to Africa every few months. You haven't got a leg to stand on. Don't tell me the proper way to pass on genetic information.
They'll tell you what characteristics an embryo will have, but that's not the same as letting you choose. Sure, a couple could burn embryos until they happen to get one that meets their requirements, but few couples are so fertile that they could do that.
This is not the moral dilemma people think it is.
I always thought it was rather fun, kinda like eating cracker jacks, you always get a little surprise when it pops out! They want to take all the fun out of having kids!
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
People in some countries committed (and in some places probably still do) female infanticide but oleander seeds and juice are obsolete technologies evidently.
So people go and spend their life savings selecting the most trendy babies. Then the babies grow up so poor they can't afford the health care for the diseases that only they are susceptible to, because the "fashionable" gene pool is puddle deep. They die off, leaving the world to the rest of us.
Sounds self-selecting to me.
I didn't RTFA, but the link says it clearly enough. These are NOT designer babies. These babies are being SCREENED. They're still YOUR babies. You're not going to get a black kid from two white parents. You're not going to get a blond Asian (unless they already have that disposition in the parents).
"There is no gene for human spirit." -tagline for "Gattaca".
Recommended in light of this discussion.
And, yes, when I in my fifties will be making love to a rich insanely beautiful smart blue-eyed silk-black-haired goddess in her twenties that has everything but what she can't have (that a bitch aint it), I will be recalling these thoughts I have now.
Genetics aren't tinker toys that you can just swap out parts for at will. Human DNA is complicated, and I can see a whole group of "Designer Babies" having some freak genome mutation problem 20 years down the road all around the same time, due to an error that hadn't been thought all the way through before all this business started. What a nightmare.
These embryos aren't being aborted. These are being created outside the body, then being genetically tested, then implanted if they have the traits the parents are looking for. The ones that don't have the traits the parents are looking for may be dumped. You may claim society won't put up with it. Well, fine, except that society already does. Fertility clinics already create about a dozen embryos for every child born. The rest of the embryos are usually frozen and eventually disposed of. Because "designer babies" are something that gets people stirred up, it's suddenly a huge problem (just like with stem cells, "Oh shock and horror, they can't be used for MEDICAL RESEARCH! Flush them down the sink where they belong!")
Once we have this it won't be long before we have the Alpha Beta Delta Gamma class babies. Pay more for a more to screen out low intelligence etc.
This will lead to the poorer communities being even more trapped in the poverty trap as the rich can genetically select their children to do better at exams etc. Further entrenching the class divide.
Imagine this in the hands of Neo-Nazi-like race supremists. Scary...
Also, I wonder if this might inadvertantly create "ghettos" of relative lack of genetic diversity which could increased susceptability to disease, much like inbreeding.
Fortunately much less of human behaviour is solely about genetics than current populist fashions dictate.
Ahh, the psudo-intellectual term for calling someone a dummy.
The truth is that names hardly matter that much compared to your child's physiology and anatomy. In some countries, it's not uncommon for parents to kill girls that are born to them because they cannot carry on the family name, so to speak.
So by allowing customization of things like gender, you are literally preventing murder. Win/Win.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm glad someone finally took the initiative and thought of themselves for a change. Someone had to do it first, and I bet we're all going to be sorry it wasn't us.
Oh and oldspewey, I think you're thinking of "phenotype" vs. "genotype". Sadly, if you choose a blue-eyed baby, it won't have a higher chance of getting HIV. Genes can be completely separated, The genome isn't as a tangled mess as you make it out to be.
I for one, welcome our genius Barbie overlords...
One Kwiasatz Haderac to go please!
I guess I'll have a Coke
People already screen your embryos and sperm for certain genetic markers. It's not eugenics, it's called "dating."
it will still go on, you can't legislate against moral repugnance, but at least it will drive it underground, and will happen less
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
even more outrageous..
Name your daughter Aryan Nation... Then name your son Adolph Hitler..
Nah.. who would dare?
(hint- true life is weirder than fiction)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You shed god knows how many skin cells every day, how is _that_ different? Or do you believe contraception is murder because a sperm inside an egg cell is somehow a human being?
Once a baby is actually _born_, I consider it a human being (though even then, Peter Singer makes a good argument that it's not really until it's self-aware, which is a couple of months later). Until birth, it's either a part of the mother's anatomy to do what she feels like (if it's implanted in the womb already) or just a thing in a glass if it's not.
"Disease" and "gender" are benign too, says the father of a little boy with Down's syndrome. Sure we could have offed him and saved ourselves some trouble, but he is a unique, happy person and I will NEVER regret having a "diseased" child.
Although, it doesn't creep me out quite as much as, say, teenagers getting cosmetic surgery.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
HOW GIRL GET PRAGNENT
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Aevolution&aq=f&oq=
is it still evolution when it is no longer utterly random?
Evolution, (as I understand it) requires that a species change randomly, some of the changes will improve the species ability to thrive in its enviroment.
since we now change the enviroment to suit us, we stop evolving.
further, we enable to continuence of genetic material that is detrimental to a pure 'enviromental' survival.
humans stopped evolving a while ago.
now we are directing the destiny I'd say it's even less so.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
We already have people whining about abortion. Just imagine what people will think about "custom babies".
Oh dear.
From the article:
Yet for those of us that are merely "normal", do not despair. Even as we are outmatched by the next generation genetically, a host of new technologies from chip implants to gene therapy may allow us to keep up, allowing us to enhance ourselves in equally transformative ways.
Riiight.... I'm counting on, "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill every time."
Gattaca and all the rest played it out pretty well. Supposed super humans vs the rest of us. The only thing that gives me satisfaction is that we'll not know enough about genes and the dependencies to really pick and choose wisely for hundreds of years... and in the meantime people will be picking things they think sound good only to also accidentally weed out some of the harder to pinpoint genetics (smarts, creativity, humanitarianism). Think all the funky dog breeds. So eventually we'll have a breed of human with bugged out eyes and a nervous disorder. But hey, they'll be blonde and blue-eyed or muscular and tall or resistant to colds but can't fight cancer or something.
Dollar Babies!
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Maybe we can engineer these babies to be more intelligent, thus maintaining our dominion as the most intelligent species on earth when computers begin to progress into the Technological singularity?
I think there's an anime about being able to customize your offspring, Gundam Seed or something like that. They called the humans with edited/selected genes "Coordinators."
All I know is if it creates a universe where I get to fly around in space in giant humanoid robots, I'm all for it.
greed@All_Evils:~#
Move along, nothing to see...
it's not as if anyone here on slashdot is gonna find a woman to impregnate anyways, so why worry? Now, get back to hacking on that female android.
Who gives a shit what you or "society" thinks. I think it is retarded to allow people to call their children "Apple" or "Montana" but, thankfully, I don't have the right to control other people's choices. Freedom means putting up with shit you don't like.
Freedom also means fighting against what you don't like and even fighting with those you do not like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...
Freedom is many things.
Will they be ipod compatible ?
Is it worse than not having sex with ugly girls because you might make an ugly child? :-)
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
What is wrong with deciding you want a baby with lopsided ears or green eyes? What is wrong with (in the future) choosing to give your baby heat receptors and a dog's sense of smell? The idea that nature or God doesn't want us to modify ourselves is seemingly close to universal, but I really don't understand it. People yell hubris, or nihilism. Is it that to want to improve humans is implying we don't already have limitless potential? The reaction is usually so emphatic that it seems there must be some cause. "I want to see gamma-rays, I want to hear x-rays, I want to smell, I want to smell dark matter." Cavil is a neurotic sociopath, but I do sympathize.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
make the best soylent green.
Just wait until they patent the genes for intelligence. If your kid reproduces without the assistance of the medical company they'll be spreading patented genes or something and they'll demand the DNA information of the offspring. Sorta like Monsanto does with crops... Just imagine if these companies only give you sterile kids and require you to go through them to have future kids.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
I for one welcome our smoking hot, blonde, petite, fun, smart, green-eyed overlords with huge tracts of land.
[And if you think I'm kidding, swing one of those overlords my way and just watch how welcoming I can be!]
The first thing I can think of is, be careful for what you wish - you just might get it.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
So, who's renting Gattaca this weekend?
...not to cry or whine (I do enough of that myself), to sleep eight hours a night, and to be a child genius in business who will actually MAKE me money. Yeah... I'd pay for that.
They'll have a huge market in China and perhaps India. China has that history of euthanizing baby girls, so why waste the nine months if you can't get exactly what you want?
From a scientific point of view that ought to be an interesting process to watch as it unfolds, although from a humanitarian point of view it is a very sad one. The one-child policy is already causing a serious gender imbalance problem in China. If cheap easily performed pre-birth genetic screening becomes available that problem would escalate into a disaster. In India euthanization and selective abortion of girls is already a routine practice among the lower castes among other things because of the dowry issue. The lower castes can't afford genetic screening anyway so it would probably change the picture much in India, selective abortion and simple exposure are both cheaper options. Both of these countries already have a gender imbalance problem approaching 10% and growing rapidly. Perhaps polyandry is the answer?
Go watch the movie GATTACA http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ The basic premise is in the not too distant future a company has come up with a way for parents to determine all of the genetic qualities of the baby so that when the baby is born it is already determined what it will become/do in it's life based upon it's DNA. Prior to birth they know if you'll be a physician or a garbage man. "Natural" babies, those with no genetic selection are unheard of. The plot is a "natural" born character tries to fool the system into thinking he's got the DNA to be an astronaut...
Interesting concept.
I'm surprised that no one, at least in the comments that I can see, has mentioned Gattaca. Surely I'm not the only one whose first thought was, "Wow, this sounds an awful lot like how the society in Gattaca got started going so wrong."
They said they are working on an advanced shower curtain.
Exactly my thought. The media, religion and anti-genetic engineering groups built up such a scare over a horrible future in which we had genetically modified human babies that they couldn't wait for that particular inevitability to actually happen. They'd made the word "designer baby" into such a scare word that they wanted to use it now, dammit.
So, what happens when they find the genetic marker that indicates homosexuality?
Will it be okay for parents to not select an embryo because he/she might grow up to be gay?
A tangent: your mentioning the dowry issue makes me wonder whether anyone has ever proposed public subsidies of dowries for poor families in India? It sounds crazy to a Westerner (who might think that eliminating the dowry system would be more appropriate), but I imagine it might be a reasonable position for a "socialist"-leaning Indian politician to take.
Boy, people just can't wait to get up in arms over this, can they. First off, as has been pointed out multiple times, they're no actual "design" going on here, just "selection." Second, do people actually think they'll be more than a tiny percentage of babies conceived using this method? Are you missing that this must be carried out using IVF, with all the fertilization outside of the womb and embryo re-implantation? It will be a huge hassle and quite expensive. For many couples, it can already be a long experience just trying to conceive in the regular way. Some people will do this, but you'll never know anyone who did, unless maybe they were already getting IVF.
Call me when they get an IUD that can screen the sperm and the egg and possibly do in-utero genetic manipulation. Then maybe I'll go protest with you.
So much for just having sex with intelligent, healthy, good-looking women. Oh, also, I for one welcome our new bioengineered baby overlords.
Even as couples from across the globe are flocking in droves
Just how big is a drove, anyway? They would have to be pretty large numbers for this to make much difference in our gene pool. Yes, the price is going to come down, and genetic manipulation is going to become de rigeur in the future just to prevent the worst diseases, but we've got some time yet.
When it does become common and cheap, it's going to have a ton of very interesting side-effects. It could wipe out racism, for instance: when a black couple can have a white child or vice versa, how does a racist know whom to hate? And instead of wiping out genetic diversity, it could add to it greatly. There are plenty of people who give their kids weird names because they hated being one of 5 Jennifers in their class; how much more likely are they to get creative if they had the same *face* as 4 other people in their class?
Being female certainly impairs a human's driving ability. My wife is currently on her fourth car. The rusting corpses of one through three are laying in junkyards around this area.
Anton: Vincent! How are you doing this Vincent? How have you done any of this? ...
Vincent: You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton -- I never saved anything for the swim back.
There may be more truth to gattica than we care to admit.
What happens when your faith-born baby is considered a De-gene-rite?
Are Fathers Optional?
Seriously, read the article.
I have 3 kids. All are gorgeous and free from any genetic defects. I got lucky, but so what? I am FIRMLY against any manufactured competition for my offspring. Do it naturally, I say!
Seriously though, knowing that my spermies and my wife's eggs are worth a few million... TOTALLY awesome.
In the movie "Where the Heart Is" Natalie Portman plays a character named Novalee Nation and she names her daughter Americus Nation. When asked "why Americus" she says she wants her daughter to have a strong name.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
My wife and I couldn't come to an agreement on what color to paint the nursery. I wanted red and she wanted green. We got tired of arguing about it, so we finally agreed just to have a red-green color blind kid and tell him the room's purple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca
Ok, now it's happened. And as a society we lack the moral fiber to even say it is a bad idea. Forget making an actual judgemental moral decision and declaring it "immoral" or "wrong". We can't even agree it is a bad idea and will almost certainly have bad consequences.
That because not everyone believes designer babies are bad. While there are some things to be concerned about, such as eliminating sickle cell anemia which protects people who have it from malaria, there are some who would like to have a child with certain physical traits. The NAZIs gave eugenics a bad name.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I always said I wanted a custom designed baby.
Then I saw my son. He's perfect. He's also wicked smart and has a crazy sense of humor. And he just turned one last month.
99% of the time, nature just does it better than we do.
They're using their grammar skills there.
...welcome our blonde hair, blue eyed Aryan overlords...
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
They can't magically wave a wand and give your baby genes you didn't already pass along. You may be able to select the best embryo out of a bunch, but if you ain't got it, neither will your embryos.
Bioethics is nonsense. 99% of it is either "this is ungodly" (or the hippie equivalent, "unnatural"), or "if homeless crack addicts can't afford it, no one can have it". Why communists and religious nuts should get to decide what medical treatments I get buy with my money is beyond me.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
skin cells are not genetically unique, and are not a stage in human development. A human can only be defined scientifically, and scientifically a fertilized egg IS Homo Sapien... the development stages you are referring to were pulled from Peteje (sp) development stages, proven to be totally false years ago. Frankly, we have no idea when consciousness begins, and this arbitrary "birth" delineation has NO scientific backing.
The child is in NO way the "mother's anatomy", her anatomy simply supports it. Like after the birth, she should have no right to deprive the child of that support. It's called neglect and its child abuse.
Pro-Choice isn't about science. All the science points to the Pro-Life argument. Pro-Choice is about ignoring science on the same level as those text books that showed carefully set up photos and claimed that they proved that "Negroes" had smaller craniums.
In any event, this argument isn't just about the haphazard creation of humans life (its life by the definition of science, and of the human species, so don't you dare argue) and then it's callous "termination." Its about cutting evolution short. Allowing people to chose the physical traits of their children means that survival of the fittest will be totally irrelevant. Further more, you put the choice into the hands of the average Joe, who doesn't even understand basic physiology.
To see the results of this stupidity, just look at dog breeds... Pugs can barely breath, Greyhounds have major hip and leg issues, and have stomach issues, many dog breeds are susceptible to heart issues... but at least they look good.
Sorry to Godwin, but the Nazi's thought they were genetically superior, and tried to control evolution. Look at all the health issues that Arians are more susceptible to. We do not understand the code enough to say what 90% of it does, and yet we want to tinker with the other 10% for the sake of VANITY? Yes, I understand that the code is not directly changed, but over a few generations, the effects will be felt.
The problem isn't that females are being born to these people, the problem is that they are willing to kill them because of that.
After an entire generation of all males I think the stigma against females will evaporate rather rapidly. Let people do what they really want long enough and they'll figure out when ideas are bad or simply unfeasable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think diversity works great with ensuring the fitness of life.
Ah but that assumes everyone, or at least most people, will want their babies to have the same characteristics, which I seriously doubt.
2.We have a lot of ancient genetic material just sitting in our genome and that we don't fully understand to simply erase it.
I agree but I don't think we have the ability yet to remove so called "junk DNA".
3.Could we in fact create a new race of humans that would end up conquering us and turn us into the new Neanderthal?
The only way I see this happening is if governments try to force people to only have children that meet's the government's specifications. Even then though different governments would have different specs.
4.Would our tampering release a susceptibility to a common illness that our genes protected us from previously?
Of the four issues you bring up this is the only one that I think is of any importance. However if genes that decrease susceptibility to diseases are removed from some babies, as I stated above I doubt most people would want their children to have the same characteristics, then those who do have them removed will be less likely to survive to reproduce.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This idea is ugly. If people are going to make such shallow decisions about the eye color of their child, what fucked-up decisions are they going to make rearing it.
Nullius in verba
watch the movie.
"Even as couples from across the globe are flocking in droves to pay the company their life's savings for a custom baby..."
If they are stupid enough to spend their life savings on this, then they probably needed their services to begin with.
Even if it's your own child, you can't do anything you want to them. If you suddenly decided that your little girl would look nice in earings, fine, not many people will care if you get her ears pierced. If you suddenly decide that she would look better without ears, then you have a problem. The law doesn't allow for you to just go and cut them off.
Oh really? It may surprise you but worse things happen to babies. Read, I know this is /. and people don't read, this "Ms Mag" article "Making the Cut... It's a girl!... Or is it? When there's doubt why are surgeons calling the shots?" It's about how docs perform surgery on babes because those babies have ambiguous sex organs. They are called intersexuals and come in different varieties. Some even have both male and female sex organs.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Come on, admit it! You also want to f***k a green-eyed blond Asian babe with double-dees.
Table-ized A.I.
- I'm not enough of a Libertarian to abandon efforts at requiring a better life for some. There's still a Liberal in me.
If you're not enough of a libertarian, small or capital "L", you're not a liberal either. Those who started liberalism would today be called Libertarians.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Only right wing wackos care about the fairness doctrine these days. I wonder why that is.
Because it's not just right wind wackos who care about the fairness doctrine, left wing wackos also care about it. For instance Al Franken. Bill Clinton and other Democrats want to bring it back.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Our babies were delivered via Caesarean section, which meant we got to pick the birthday.
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
And how much will "high probablility of hung like a horse" be worth?
OMG, I'm glad I didn't drink something when I read this, my monitor may of ended up all wet. I just started the movie "The Witches of Eastwick" and in it either Michelle Pfeiffer's or Susan Saradon's character says how her former husband was hugh and she couldn't take it all.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Anyone else thinking this is very close to the movie Gattaca?
Since most families do not have a parent at home available to teach (a situation that may be about to change due to economic collapse)
The thing is is an economic collapse means parents have to work longer and or harder, not less. Only if one looses a job will a parent be at home. I'd think it'd be likely though that that parent would be out looking for work because they need the money.
I would suggest that education results could be improved out of sight by eliminating administrators, ie have much smaller schools, teacher run.
Smaller schools might help but I think what would help more is decreasing the teacher to student ratio, less students for each teacher. I also think allowing students to learn at their own speed would help, faster learners won't be as bored and they could help slower students.
Screening for genetic tendency to intelligence and then processing those kids through the current cattle factory schools will probably not result in an improvement, but produce a mass of high capacity under performers virtually identical to a mass of low capacity under performers.
Why? Do you really believe a lot of parents would choose to have children with low intelligence? I'll admit some may but others would want children with high intelligence so they could take care of the parents in old age. Myself, I'd want my children to reach their full potential in whatever they decided they wanted to do.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
GATTACA?
Gattaca! Gattaca! GATTACA! :-)
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
so this is the way the world ends /.
so this is the way the world ends
so this is the way the world ends
not with a bang, but wth a story in
I am SO cool I can keep meat fresh for a WEEK!!!!
> You shed god knows how many skin cells every day, how is _that_ different?
Skin cells don't become human beings the way embryos do. (And if you did somehow manage to turn skin cells into embryos that would develop into a human, people would want to protect them at the point they started developing into humans.)
Shock, horror! The religious right has a problem with a process of natural selection in a civilised world too safe for the survival of the fittest to thrive. Rich successful geeks will be able to afford to ensure their smart children are also beautiful & sporty. Those meatheads too stupid to appreciate the value of this won't benefit. A delicious irony if every there was one.
I've said it before and will say it again, natural selection is a meta process; change the environment to make it safe and natural selection it's self will evolve.
Martin
Reducing the gene pool is bad for the longevity of the species. As the gene pool becomes more homogeneous the risk of a species exterminating disease increases
Who says the human gene pool will become homogeneous? Sure some might choose blondes with blue eyes but others will choose redheads with green eyes. And others may not make any choices.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If this will close the market for, erm, certain products that are marketed through spam, I'm all for it.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Can someone explain it to me? I don't get why this is bad. Aren't diseases a bad thing, and shouldn't basic principles like "wanting to be unique" keep things fairly different? At most I can see things going in waves like names do. "Oh no!" the parents will scream "Blue eyes are totally last year, we'll definitely need to go with brown."
My mom's second son (my younger-brother) died when he was 8 months old due to a stroke a genetic defect passed by my stupid fathers' side (who also died a decade ago due to stroke).
I have a 4-year old son who's thankfully free from it, but i will never forget the fear i had when our doctor predicted the defect MAY be passed from my dad to my son (as a parting shot and a heirloom i guess).
I haven't tested myself for the same, since am afraid of the results and i want to be happy (of course my life & medical insurance provider got to know my history and raised my premiums by 128%. They promised to reduce it if i voluntarily underwent a DNA exam and proved i didn't have it, which i refused: they can goto hell).
We are not planning on any more children - EVER. The pain and the tears are enough. We have ONE child who's free from the family curse.
Yes, and this so-called designer baby provides us the opportunuity to scientifically make sure we don't conceive one who's going to die in a year.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Eventually someone is going to have the unfortunate pleasure of deciding at which point cake mix can _legally_ be called cake.
;). It may be better for society to put up with more expensive food, rather than allow "fuel for humans" practices.
:).
There'll be lots of people disagreeing. And lots of people saying it's such a stupid and arbitrary point ( and they would be right that it is).
But it would be even more stupid to not decide.
If people want to continue to give humans legally more rights than animals, then they will have to be very careful where and how they draw that line. None of this present sloppy stupid shortterm or even kneejerk thinking.
Because if you give it some thought, you should realize that where and how that line is drawn has less to do with technical considerations, and more to do with legal, societal and symbolic considerations (and in some countries religious considerations).
Weigh the potential long term harm vs gain, benefit vs cost - not just in $$$ terms. But in terms of the sort of society that you will end up with.
If we can say "Humans are special" and think it not ridiculous, I think it's equally not ridiculous say that a fertilized human egg is special and should be given more respect (even though it's just one or two cells).
Saying "it's just a fertilized egg", is not recognizing its symbolic worth.
Ceremonies and symbols are not worthless. Wedding ceremonies and symbols have remained popular (even over thousands of years) despite their _cost_. And I daresay society would have diminished if they go away, and everyone just "signs the registrar".
Similarly, while you can treat food as "fuel for humans" or "human feed", the long term consequences of doing so can be significant. Sometimes even the short term consequences can be significant
If we are not careful, maybe the future nonhuman intelligences might consider us no different from other animals and find us not interesting enough to keep around. Having some amusing practices might allow us to be retained as pets. It'll be hard to get them to share the ridiculous notion that humans are special, if we don't believe it ourselves, or act like it. Of course we better not be too obnoxious about it.
Think long term
If the movie Gattaca hasn't convinced you that this is wrong: I don't know what will.
My page.
You seem to assume that you can just produce all combinations there. You can't.
E.g., out of two black haired Japanese parents you can't feasibly produce a redhead, because (A) neither of them has the gene, and (B) it's recessive, so the baby would need TWO such genes, one from each parent, to actually get red hair. The probability that _both_ the egg _and_ the sperm have that mutation out of nowhere, is pretty much nil.
It might work if both parents had the gene as recessive, but that's not a given. And then you can't want your second child to be a blonde.
The same problem hapens if you want, say, blue eyes for the kid. There is exactly one version of that gene that actually produces blue eyes. If the parents don't have it, that's that.
Of course, I suppose the wife could get some help from the milkman or whatnot ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There are 3 things I might select for, health, high intelligence, and physical fitness.
I had a palaentology professor who described the interesting puzzle of a type of ocean bacteria which uses a tiny magnetic crystal to determine which way is up (the Earth's magnetic field having a vertical component). What the biologists could not figure out is why a small fraction of each generation would be born with the crystal the wrong way around and then swim down, instead of up, and perish. Surely evolution would have corrected this error?
What the palaentologists did was use the crystals that fell from the bacteria when they died to measure the direction of the magnetic field - this in part lead to the discovery of the flipping of the field every 100k years and suddenly things became clear. What was a bad genetic mutation 99.99% of the time suddenly became essential to the survival of the species after the field flip. The few percent with the wrong crystal then became the survivors.
So convince me that in selecting the "perfect" health gene and high intelligence gene we are not also potentially removing other genetic traits that might appear to be useless at the moment but which may offer resistance to some future virus or similar threat? Not to mention the social problems of trying to find a road sweeper or janitor when we are all giving birth to baby Einsteins.
By continuing to anthropomorphize, the term "selection" is more like the term "creation" than its most vocal supporters will admit. Each is just a step on the road to this moment and the ones that follow.
I, for one, welcome our new gene wrangling overlords!
> This isn't designer babies anyway. The fundies are still wrong
Designer babies are on the way though, and I say it's good.
We are regularly told that mankind has now taken over the reins of evolution from nature, but this is the sticking point. Unless we can create better children and hence transform ourselves directly, then the ailments of homo sapiens will be with us forever. The creation of a better species (for everyone, not just for a select few rich people) is a necessity as part of our progress as an intelligent and civilized species, towards becoming a more intelligent, consequently more civilized, and a more healthy one.
in the nine months before you became human?
Unix System Administrator
In this role you will need:
* Expertise in UNIX system administration
* Fluency in at least fifteen scripting/coding languages
* Experience running mega-traffic web services
Requirements:
* 5+ years experience with UNIX systems administration
* Outstanding analytical abilities
* One hat, black
* Certificate of designer DNA type 12.7 (ISO 90613028-5: Genetics adjustment: HCI no lower than level 4 and Complying Personality level 8 or higher)
Randomly/naturally designed people need not apply.
My "designer" baby was one that lived.
How about sitting down and thinking about what following "want"s will produce. Then acting accordingly. The main problem is if my wants = sales pitch of slightly drugged pit viper salesman, I will not choose correctly. I'll get bit every time.
People have been moaning for centuries (entirely prematurely) about civilization and medical advances hindering the Human Evolution in general, and producing enfeebled specimen in particular.
This development can not only ensure that hereditary diseases and frailties (like e.g. Down's syndrome, susceptibility to diabetes, obesity, depression, various forms of cancer, a weak immune system, haemophilia, color blindness, and the need for extensive orthodontical treatment) can be reduced or avoided, but it can also be used to select for intelligence, athletic ability, sexual attractiveness, and long-levity.
Seen in this way, Humanity may be the first species on Earth that will be able to steer its own evolution without resorting to measures like infanticide.
Whether one likes this development or not, it's there and at the very least it's interesting.
So there's no natural selection for humans anymore?
A short, overweight, half-blind, alcoholic with a naturally disfigured face is just as likely to find a partner and have children as someone healthy, tall and handsome?
There may not be as much life-or-death selection going on but sexual selection is just as natural and just as much of a driving force for evolution...
AFAIK, Tarp the legislation included one line about anything close to buying bank stock, but now the US owns parts of many banks. I know of no money actually going to buy bad mortgages. As to which course would have been better I cannot say. I mention this b/c what may have been the bonus afterthought could become the central focus. Never underestimate the desire of people to please self before real benefit to others. And don't underestimate the potential damage of such course. What will parents do with such tools? If $$$$ gets you in the door, that still doesn't weed out all psychos. And since what parents do for and to their children usually is best indicator of child's stability etc., I would recommend a psych evaluation of any parent who checks any box other than *no dread diseases*
Let people do what they really want long enough and they'll figure out when ideas are bad or simply unfeasable.
Unfortunately, if you refrain from doing too much of a bad thing, it will never become critical.
Has there been revolts against Kim Jong-il? Saddam Hussein? IIRC, people were sacrificing their lives to serve as Saddam's human shield. These in a country where torture by high voltage electricity is the norm.
I've also heard: In some places, female children had their vaginas sealed up with hot iron, by melting the flesh, leaving one tiny hole. This practice had been carried on for some time, and apparently continues to be done.
I first heard about this one fine day in 2002, and my appetite went away for many hours.
If there was a procedure that was relatively safe and painless that let a woman remove unwanted (insert PC term here) from her womb, implanted it in a artificial womb, and allowed it to grow to artificial birth, allowing real life; would you still think Pro-choice so important?
The streets will be filled by clones of Hollywood celebrities who can use each other as shaving mirrors. :)
Expecting somebody to disregard their own values and morals in decision-making isn't just unrealistic, it's immoral :)
Democracy
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Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Struck a nerve, did I? Tell me, do you find it hard to breath with Obama's cock lodged in your esophagus?
While I didn't read the article, I did see the movie a few years back. It was kinda boring, so I do not support this.
I'll just go ahead and godwin this thread right now too: You know who else had a program to breed designer babies based on hair/eye color? Mod it funny or troll. Either way, history comes back every time and the movies/literature tell us how it'll happen.
Taking control of our own genetic future is the only way we'll evolve the human race without also needing the severe stress of massive population reducing mechanisms like war, disease, asteroid, etc.
(1) Only for those that can afford it (the G7 / G20).
(2) We've been so wise in the use of technology in the past....
OK this is a company doing it, and they are doing it at the IVF step. However people have been screening their babies for a while now. It is standard procedure to test for some genetic and physical defects in all Western countries, be it by an ultrasound or genetic testing. Most couples faced with the news of a Down syndrome or Spina Bifida simply abort.
I'm not shocked by the screening of eye or hair colour. If parents want to be stupid and think it matters they are probably going to be stupid, overbearing, objectifying parents anyway, and my god, think of the children!
The good thing is that their children will probably learn that their parents "designed them" and this is going to be used against them come adolescence, count on it.
As for screening for things like smarts, athletic capacity & whatnot it will perhaps come in due time, but it's not a simple issue. Parents prone to screening for these things probably are not going to get what they are looking for, i.e. a child that does what they want.
In addition I believe this is going to be a very low-key trend, as IVF is not fun, unlike sex.
Or certain European royalty or American Bluebloods?
The real key issues will be...
I don't want a gay baby. Now I haven't bought into the whole being gay is genetic. However should it be proven otherwise how long before the more radical groups affiliated with gays decide it is offensive or an affront to their rights to have this gene designed out of offspring? I have always been under the impression that if it could be determined to be genetic and then detected that it would turn the whole issue of abortion on its head. Look, we have already seen societies who have no qualms about aborting female babies so it is not a stretch that if being gay is offensive to some that these people could choose to abort simply because of that trait. Throw in other issues like known birth defects and it really becomes messy because we already have groups that protest that and I am not just pointing towards fundies. Look, during the last election we had people openly question the Palin's choice to have a child they knew had down's syndrome. Some of the reactions were downright hostile.
So now we have the idea of designer babies gaining more traction. Well the flipside is being able to determine when a baby already conceived has traits the parents don't want and in some societies society doesn't want. That is when the real moral issues come about.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Ever see Idiocracy?
I see it every day in the public schools.
Call this flamebait, but sometimes little Johnny needs to be left behind.
This is elitist as hell, but I would rather have one Einstein than fifty Chris Washburns.
And a shiny penny to the first person who correctly identifies the reference without the use of a search engine.
... evolution is a longlasting, slowly moving process, which is not conducted by any way other than "1. mix genes, 2. born, 3. see how it copes, 4. go back to 1.".
The mass scaled industrial engineering of breed, first ruled by MendelÂs laws only, then by mapping the genetic imprint and rearrange its facilities, does change the evolutionary process quite significantly.
It denies the stronghold of evolution, mainly that it does indeed falsify its creations to the limit. But it does so in a completely unbiased way. Genetic engineering instead relies solely on the impact of the reordering, at the same time denying falsification. Why? because the reordering itself is already labeled "good" in terms of impact, although no proove nor any evidence is given whether its true. A good starting point to think about this is genetically engineered crops and their impact on reproduction once they are out in the wild. The conventional breeding technologies are already responsible for loosing almost 90% of the worldÂs genetic resources.
It is pretty simple: Noone has an idea of what this might mean, when humans start to retract themselves from the evolutionary process - which is by its true nature not processable nor conductable.
There might not be too much of a win here, ending up with just stereotyped cloned male/female bodies.
to bad he dint live to see a short story of his become reality.
oh hey! .. isnt there a gene for longetivity too ?
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
We know exactly where that will lead: social instability. More crime as the supply of wives and girlfriends dwindles, more marriages between older men and younger women, and possibly the government becoming more aggressive by putting more of these men in its military to utilize their aggression for public purposes.
What this doesn't change is that Gattaca was a truly awesome film.
MOD PARENT UP. People with actual experience with this topic need to be listened to.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I'd like a non-defective pseudogene psi-GULO, please. I'd want my bespoke child to be able to eat nothing but bacon for a month without getting scurvy.
> It's life by the definition of science, ... so don't you dare argue
Design is where you build something. This is simply eugenics at a microscopic level. And simply evil.
Irish Potato Famine.
While I would generally agree with your point, there is a flaw.
You're assuming that the gene removed would be passed on. If the gene we're preventing from being born is one that causes death or severe mental retardation, then it's more about having a baby that won't suffer/be crippled. Why give birth to one that wouldn't be able to reproduce anyway because it's dead in a few years or too retarded for romantic interest.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
The big problem i see is as you push for the upper end of strength/ intelligence the chances are greater that you will end up with a person that is unstable. So lets say you code to max out Intelligence and Strength to create a superstrong Einstein type person. Give that person 20 years and chances are you will see him on some burning city street with his arms spread and head tilted saying "WHY SO SERIOUS ????" (oh btw hes the reason the city is burning).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Humans give themselves too much credit I think. Technology is a product of consciousness, certainly, but both are tools of natural selection, with us as the vessels. As natural products of the universe, can we really do wrong even in our seemingly shortsighted moments? Maybe pretending that we can attain wisdom at all is the first mistake...
You should be pro-choice because pregnancy is a personal issue that should not be controlled by anyone other than the mother who has to bear the burden.
I'm pro-choice, but I don't feel it's my place to judge any particular abortion. I just recognize that the government shouldn't be touching that issue with a ten foot pole because it will always lead to injustice, so might as well let the families make the moral choices because it really doesn't affect the rest of us.
If a girl has an abortion to me it's not much different than having a period. Potential is lost. It's a very gray area though, which again is why I wouldn't want me or anyone else making the decision for another family.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
my humblest apologies for typing to fast and screwing up my grammar.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I'm not Maelwryth, but I'd say for the point of view he espoused, yeah, it's just that there are important differences in those potentials. Those differences arise from the probabilities of those potentials manifesting.
An individual sperm has an obnoxiously small chance of become a birthed-human, but the potential remains. A fertilized egg has a pretty low chance of becoming a birthed-human, and a fertilized egg that is attached to a healthy host has a pretty good chance of becoming a birthed-human. Chance, chance, chance. All potentials, but with widely varying amounts of potential.
I have known someone who's day job was to work in a residence for old people where half the occupants had it, and from the stories he told me I take it that you, were you to work for a few months at such a residence, would quickly abondon the notion that such a patient really is a full person. Or a person at all, if the decease has progressed far enough.
That doesn't mean that I'm advocating killing them. However, if I ever discover that I've got Alzheimer's I'll kill myself before I become mentally incapable of doing so. Because I have to take the feelings of my friends and family into account, and the cost of society, and I think it would be the right thing to do.
Who are you to decide what criteria are the right criteria? Human actions can change selection pressures in all kinds of ways. For example, the human way of life has changed radically and humanity will be evolving under these new selection pressures. Are these pressures wrong? Why? Aren't we just adapting to our new way of living?
What about pensioner-age problems that probably arose because there was a slight benefit (or even were don't cares) in young adults. Back in the days these were kept, but now they genuinely bother. We could wait until the millennia have passed until evolution does its job, but what if that doesn't work, for example because we get children early in life? Just selecting ourselves makes things happen now, and with much more certainty. Is this a wrong selection pressure? Why? We're just adapting to a changed world where people get older on average.
And if people make wrong (in the evolutionary sense) selection choices? Well, they'd get less kids on average (that's what wrong means in this context) and within generations they'd be supplanted by those who make the right choices.
Remember, you can't stop evolution. You can change where the selection pressures lie, but you can't stop it. We can only change the substrate that evolution is working on, but in the end the fittest will always survive and evolution is smarter than you are.
Gattaca came out in the '90's.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Let me preface this with a disclaimer. By "playing god" I don't mean anything religious. Simply in the sense of interfering with the natural order of things.
There have been many movies made about the dangers of genetically engineering humans. Be it from choosing what egg gets fertilized or actually modifying the genetic code in some way. All of these movies ended in disaster; but they are movies, that's kinda the point. They would be boring if they didn't.
Ever since humanity discovered medicine, (be it leeches in the middle ages or modern surgery) we have been playing god. We save people who would have died. Evolution only works if the weak die off, and we have been preventing that.
As a species our evolution has been slowing down, possibly even starting to regress. There have been studies recently saying the current generation will probably be the first in history to live shorter lives than the one before it. You can blame things like fast food for this, but if we didn't save the people who get a heart attack from eating this junk then it wouldn't be as common to eat it.
If you want a movie that shows how our saving everyone including those who would have died off normally is a bad thing look at Idiocracy. It's a B movie, and it's got plot holes but the general idea is plausible, and that's a frightening thought.
Now I'm not suggesting we stop all medicine and let the "weak" die off like in Darwin's evolution model. What I am saying is we are doing half the job now and we need to take full control of our evolution, and that's where designer babies come in.
There is A LOT of room for abuse of this kind of technology but there is also a lot of good that can come of it if done properly. If we can find the gene that causes a disease, and replace the babies that would have been born with it, with babies that will be healthy as a species we improve.
We do lose the posible discoveries that the unhealthy baby may have made, but we also gain the posible discoveries that the healthy baby replacing it will make.
-Brian
... Only outlaws will have designer babies.
A lot of people here are talking about Gattaca. You should also watch Idiocracy. It's a more minor movie but it shows the other side of the problem. Gattaca shows the issues with doing designer babies. Idiocracy shows the problems with not doing it. You should think about what problems are worse and what ones are more likely to happen.
Instead of whining about the "liberal" media (which was completely complicit while Bush took a monkey wrench to the country) you should read about the real power brokers...Democrat AND Republican. And why we're all screwed.
huray! what a fantastic age is comming!
... Michael Jacksons(?!). Well some designs will work out better than other of course...
... and she has got my nose!"
...?!
Guess how many people will design their kids to
be just like their favorite idol!
Just imagine millions of Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie look-alikes - worldwide. little Obamas, Madonnas,
then there will be these exciting copyright-infringements:
"
"I will sue her unless the nose is turned upside-down within a week!"
how IT is changing the world - http://max.zamorsky.name
So when he said "Like it or not, the era of designer babies is officially here and there is no going back." was he speaking about science or the destruction of moral and ethical standards.
Soon as the Botany Bay is completed.
The sad thing about "designed" babies is that "natural selection" of the human race is not going become "outdated" but "old-fashioned".
I was looking for the correct response. There it is right above this post. Quantum is normally smarter than that reply, I hope you won't judge him too harshly. We all have our own blind spots.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
to "select" ten yes/no genetic features, you'd statistically need to throw away (filter out) 1023 out of 1024 embryo's. And implanting an embryo doesn't give 100% certainty on a pregnancy.
And then there are the features where only 1 of the 4 possible mother+father gene combinations is wanted (several genetic diseases fall into this category).
It's a right-wing boogeyman. Instead, we have the Money Doctrine, which dictates that wealthy media conglomerates are granted perpetual licenses to use the public airwaves.
That I agree with. That's why government started licensing radio. Originally the airwaves were homesteaded. Prior to the establishment of the Federal Radio Commission in 1926 the airwaves were homesteaded, the first person in a specific location who broadcasted on a specific frequency courts ruled had the right to that frequency. Wealthy businesses and people didn't like this though so they pushed congress to require licensing.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I don't think the $20,000 fee should be considered life savings. Many cars cost that much.
Beautiful custom kid grows up, fails to fit the mold already cast for him by parents, becomes depressed, disfigures his own face because it's a fraud that was forced on him. Say hello to a whole new slew of mental disorders and domestic tragedies related to this. Parents need to realize that their children are not toys to amuse the parents and are not vessels through which parents should try to live vicariously. Let the kid be born naturally as he or she has developed naturally, don't try to define who they are or who you want them to be before they're even born.
And last I checked, "let them murder a few million babies, they'll realise their folly eventually" wasn't considered morally acceptable...
Why were you checking? Because if you'll recall way up at the top of the page, the article is about genetic selection.
I'm saying, let people select what they want - if Chinese want only to have male infants, no trouble as they can build them to order. There is no murder then, only a somewhat creepy override of natural probability. After a generation or so they'll see why life with all males may not have been the best course of action.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Not really. There's a massive difference between:
A) the chance of you and your wife doing it, by repeatedly getting her pregnant and screening the embryo to see if it matches your expectations
B) the chance of some mutation happening across billions of individuals and millions of years
To illustrate the difference: a 1 in a million chance per pregnancy is unfeasible for case A. Even if you got her pregnant on every ovulation, you'd need an average if 4 million weeks. The same 1 in a million case is peanuts for the world's population. There are about 4 people born per second world-wide, so 1-in-a-million chances will happen on the average every 250,000 seconds = approx 70 hours = more than once per 3 days.
Simply put, what's feasible for _one_ family is entirely different from what's possible for the whole species.
2. Here we're talking about the chance of getting a very specific mutation, wanted in advance by the parents. Evolution does't have such predestined outcomes. It can yield literally billions of different mutations which are just as ok, if they pass the natural selection test.
To illustrate the difference: think of getting a mutation that gives one green eyes. For "designer babies", well, if the parents really wanted blue eyes, it's the wrong one and the foetus will be discarded. For evolution it's a non-issue. The baby will be born anyway, and since it gives no other disadvantage, the mutation will survive just fine.
Or in the words of Richard Feynman: "You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!"
That's exactly the difference we're talkig about here:
I. Creationists come all the time with ideas like "what are the chances of exactly us being created by accident?" But that's like the license plate here. We're just one of the billions of different species, and billions of different mutations each. It didn't _have_ to be us, and it didn't have to be any particular mutation. We're just a random thing that worked.
We're not even the best thing imaginable. E.g., birds' lungs are much more efficient than mammalian lungs. We would have had an advantage if we had that other type of lung but we didn't, because that random chance didn't happen.
Evolution doesn't call it in advance "it's going to have to be blond with blue eyes." It just tosses the dice and see what works better out of the random results. Maybe it'll be green hair and yellow eyes instead. If it works, it works.
II. Whereas here the proposition is precisely that the parent say in advance what they want to get. They want blond with blue eyes, for example. Now the aim isn't just to have anything that works, but a given combination required in advance. A lot of otherwise viable combinations for the evolution scenario just became "wrong" for what a given mom and dad want. That makes the chances a lot shittier.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The point is, people already make shallow decisions about the eye color of their child. By making shallow decisions about the eye color of the person they have children with. How is this different?
That movie was speculative fiction. There appears to be considerable confusion on this point.
Absolutely.
I take a stance that abortion has nothing to do with life (either ending or preserving it). It's about preventing unwanted children.
A child forced onto a parent or parents who don't want it is far more likely to be abused and end up either a criminal or a drag on society.
A child forced onto a parent or parents who can't support it is far more likely to end up being taken by the state anyway, run through a series of foster homes, and end up socially maligned.
Now you can come back at this with any number of counter-stories about how this one did well for himself despite being beaten every day of his childhood, or that one who became successful even though she was run through a number of orphanages and foster families: there are always exceptions. But generally, bringing an unwanted child into the world is far more likely to add a burden to society as a whole than otherwise. Better off to kill it early than take the chance.
Besides, there's more than enough people in the world already. Myself, I'm in favor of anything that reduces overall population growth, especially if it's as impact-free as preemptive execution.
Life is cheap. Those that say life is sacred say it (and believe it) because they don't want to face the idea that their own life is cheap. I'm willing to take a far more practical view. And yes, my life is just as cheap as everyone else's.
I don't see why thick ankles should indicate future weight problems. If anything, I would expect the opposite. It seems that a group of 60 kg women whose ankles measured 24 cm in circumference (and who measured 172 cm in height) would have a lower average body fat percentage than a group of 60 kg women (height: 172 cm) with 19 cm ankles. This would suggest that the thick ankled women from the first group have a higher basal metabolic rate, making it harder for them to become obese.
Maybe you and your doctor friend are are making an erroneous association between older women who suffer from edema, and a younger subset of women who happen to have sturdy frames.
I know that if I had the choice, I'd prefer to be at minimum screened. And if I was going to turn out butt-ugly, I'd prefer that my parents designer-baby me up. The only toes I can forsee this concept treading on are the toes of the religious, who might object to "but it's playing god" or "but god made your kid a mutant for a divine reason" or whatever the hell the excuse of the decade is -- I can't pretend to be able to understand the thoughts of these people.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
Pretty much, it's just that most of those things aren't considered unethical. The difference between ethical killing (for example, squishing an insect, or [arguably] killing an animal for food) and unethical killing (murder) is always going to be arbitrary. The abortion debate exists because there's no consensus on when ending a life becomes unethical.
You've got it backwards, if you want to make something illegal you need to convince me it is inherently dangerous.
Are you SURE that you want to take this attitude for medical procedures? Really? Excellent idea for criminal law though.
This is more of a semantic issue, but I don't think that many biologists would claim that dogs are exempt from basic products of sexual reproduction such as hybrid vigor.
The Backcross Project link that you provided in one of your previous posts shows how the principle of hybrid vigor was applied by Robert Schaible to improve the health of his Dalmatians. If hybrid vigor did not exist in dogs (i.e. a diverse pedigree conferred no advantage), then it would be perfectly acceptable to sire many puppies with the same stud. Hybrid vigor is merely the converse of inbreeding depression. True, heterosis is no panacea. Biologist have observed hybrid depression as well as more neutral products of heterozygosity and outbreeding. The fact that outbreeding is not a surefire way to insure genetic health shouldn't lead us to conclude that hybrid vigor is non-existant (or non-existant in dogs).
The person who wrote the last link in your post has some strange ideas about genetics.
e.g. Puppies cannot have genes that the parents DON'T have. It isn't possible.
Hasn't Jennie Chen heard of mutation?
Another error:
What happens when you mix 2 bad sets of genes? You get puppies with bad genes! Duh! 2 unhealthy parents don't make 1 healthy puppy, unless it was a miracle.
Someone needs to tell Jennie Chen about epistasis, regression towards the mean, and heterozygosity.
technically, what do you do, create lots of embryos, and kill the ones that do not have the genes for blue eyes, blond hair, high IQ, whatever ...
This reminds me of the gas chambers of the second world war.
Who forces pregnancies?
Other than rape or incest, I've always heard the term 'consensual' How is it forced. Do you agree that my wants take a back seat to your needs? I feel that way.
Procreation is a *very* powerful tool easily used and abused. Take rape for instance on one end of the spectrum and take this Parent article as the other end.
If a behavior can be shown to cause harm to others, is said behavior a) wrong b) my choice c)other?
In short, will My *want* of unprotected sex cause harm to others now or in future? If so, Why do it? It's not a *need*
And as for the second point, what is basis for saying life is cheap? b/c abundant? easily reproduced? not unique? easily terminated? or low cost of hitman?
Unplanned Pregnancy in the United States Nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned. More specifically, of the 6.4 million pregnancies in 2001 (the most recent year for which data are available), more than 3 million were unplanned.1 Of these, over 2 million were to women age 29 and younger accounting for nearly three quarters of unplanned pregnancies overall.
And you are correct in saying that is how it is in the world. It is.
Actually death is cheap. Life is expensive. Compare 02 cent .22lr vs $400,000 quad bypass
And you will be benefited by pulling up your friends/associates/neighbors It's also called a pyramid scheme....which actually argues for more population, not less.
But really, the reason I replied was to ask what it means when you say, "I don't believe in free will?" I hear that all the time when I talk to people about religion (all religions have it to some degree) but what do you mean?
Oh, and one more thing. which in a way argues your point, but I found enlightening and saddening at once. Did you know that a 9mo old orphaned chimp that is given loving attention by a human female 4hrs/day will have a higher IQ than an average 9mo old human babby [sic] I learned that today.
The strong/rich/powerful/gun-toting/etc people survive, and the rest don't. Thats the way the world works, and we call that natural selection.
When any medical breakthrough occurs, the rich people get access first. That has always been the way.
Just because this is the case, though, don't think that the liberal hippies will just shut up. We have rich people who try to help the poor now, and I see no reason to believe that that will change in a world with designer babies.
Thank you for replying.