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."

Comments

Re:This too was foreseen

[jmorris42]

> Freedom means putting up with shit you don't like.

You MIGHT be a hard core Libertarian and none of your recent posts brings that out well... but you are probably either a lying bastard or self deluded. Odds are you are perfectly willing to 'put up with' things you agree with or don't care about' but quite willing to invoke the power of social sanction or outright government force to enforce things YOU care about on others.

Or are you for allowing school choice... even when it means fundies can skip teaching evolution and condoms?

Or are you against using the power of the State to seize the resources of the successful to give to those who couldn't give enough of a shit to get an education? And just tell em to get a job (and that getting married before having the litter of sprogs is a good idea) and thus take care of themselves and their own without suckling the government's teat?

And you are of course against crap like the Fairness Doctrine, right?

And are you against all gun control. at least anything less than crew served weapons or WMD, right?

Hate Speech? That doesn't exist in your "Freedom is flying yer freak flag" world, right?

And so on and so on. Hope you get my point by now. Just because YOU don't care one way or the other about designer babies doesn't mean as a society we might not need to make a decision that this is such a bad idea we just might want to at least go on the record that this is a BAD IDEA and perhaps discourage it a little? Is bringing up the subject of societal disapproval too much for the everything is grey moral relativists? Once we get that much moral clarity we can consider the question of opening up the bigger can of worms as to whether we can or should regulate it legally.