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

Parents choose their baby's name

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

Nice straw man you got there.

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.

 

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[saleenS281]

Name your daughter "prostitute", and let me know how she fairs elementary and jr. high.

Names most definitely CAN play a VERY important role in a child's life.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[binarylarry]

I'm betting she'd be very popular.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Lord Kano]

The problem with "genetic choice" is that we haven't been around long enough to know the purpose of all of our traits. If enough people were to, for example, not pass on the sicle cell trait who's to say that humanity won't be wiped out by a malaria epidemic? Of course, that's an outlandish scenario, but it's meant to raise a point not prove one. We just don't know why humanity comes in all of our different variations. It's a dangerous game to start removing traits artificially.

LK

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Shit, that kinda sounds like names are really important.

This has to be Slashdot at it's finest.

because they cannot carry on the family name, so to speak.

Idiocy at its finest.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Kozz]

From Freakonomics (Levitt): "...in 1958, a New York City man named Robert Lane decided to call his baby son Winner. The Lanes, who lived in a housing project in Harlem, already had several children, each with a fairly typical name. But this boyâ"well, Robert Lane apparently had a special feeling about this one. Winner Lane: how could he fail with a name like that?

Three years later, the Lanes had another baby boy, their seventh and last child. For reasons that no one can quite pin down today, Robert decided to name this boy Loser. It doesnâ(TM)t appear that Robert was unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the nameâ(TM)s bookend effect. First a Winner, now a Loser. But if Winner Lane could hardly be expected to fail, could Loser Lane possibly succeed?

Loser Lane did in fact succeed. He went to prep school on a scholarship, graduated from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and joined the New York Police Department (this was his motherâ(TM)s longtime wish), where he made detective and, eventually, sergeant. Although he never hid his name, many people were uncomfortable using it. âoeSo I have a bunch of names,â he says today, âoefrom Jimmy to James to whatever they want to call you. Timmy. But they rarely call you Loser.â Once in a while, he said, âoethey throw a French twist on it: âLosier.â(TM)â To his police colleagues, he is known as Lou.

And what of his brother with the canâ(TM)t-miss name? The most noteworthy achievement of Winner Lane, now in his midforties, is the sheer length of his criminal record: nearly three dozen arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other mayhem."

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[mrchaotica]

You can actually start fashioning humans for specific jobs rather than searching for them.

"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly color. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Chris Burke]

Shit, that kinda sounds like names are really important.

This has to be Slashdot at it's finest.

Pretending not to understand the difference between family name and given name to avoid acknowledging the point?

Yes, that is /. at it's finest.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Miseph]

Fun fact, most people wind up with jobs that are neither terribly glamorous nor pay 6 figures. Police sergeant is actually pretty respectable to those who don't blindly hate cops.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[jayhawk88]

One only has to look at what breeders have done to pure breed dogs over the years to know this is a horrendously bad idea.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[GodfatherofSoul]

But, do you blame the breeders or the dog shows? I know some working class breeders have fought AKC recognition knowing that over time they'd end up with very pretty but very incompetent training stock.

If dog shows for working breeds were performance-based, you'd have breeders working towards the betterment of the breed rather than appearance.

I bought a husky about 10 years ago from a breeder who was a recently retired sled dog racer. Ten years later I went back to her for another puppy and her dogs were very pretty, but not at all trained or bred for racing.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Brickwall]

Not that I'm claiming you said anything to do with first name/last names, Chris, but the real idiocy is the GPP's. The reason girl babies are being aborted/drowned/abandoned across Asia is families have to give other families money to marry their daughters. So a daughter is a financial liability to 1) raise, and 2) marry, and then after that, 3) the woman is then considered part of her husband's family, not her own. It has nothing to do with carrying on the family name.

BTW, I'm married to an Asian woman, who told me precisely this, and we have two spectacular daughters that I wouldn't trade for anything. She told me she would never have married a Chinese guy because of the way she'd expect him to treat her.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[p0tat03]

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.

Nice straw man YOU got there.

There's a difference between infanticide (i.e. killing someone) vs. designer babies (i.e. preventing a hypothetical person from existing). By your logic it's also abhorrent for people carrying genetically transmission illnesses to abstain from having children.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[atraintocry]

Can't you combine anything with Stan Lee and get mutants?

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Libertarian001]

Nice. You left out the story of the woman who named her daughter shithead (sic, desired pronunciation was shaw-teed). And another who named her kids lemonjello and orangejello (le-mon-ze-low and o-ron-ze-low).

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Atario]

I believe this is called the "Boy Named Sue" Effect.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Hal_Porter]

Like that is common here. Sheesh.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[jmorris42]

> I guess if a culture wants to go that way, then it is their own fault when they don't
> have enough chicks for all the guys to marry....and they slowly go extinct...

That is one option. But what if they decide to wage The War For Poontang? Think about it. You get a bunch of your excess male population killed off along with a good proportion of the male population of the victim country leaving it with an excess of females to carry off as prizes. And there is that nice territorial expansion bit for essentially free.

It is a related problem to the Muslim problem. Muslims are permitted up to four wives. Wealthy ones max out leaving lots of poor horny males with almost no prospect of getting any poon. And we wonder why they sign up as suicide bombers on the promise of those heavenly virgins? Those mating practices are a win if you are losing lots of your male population to war or other things, a recipe for disaster otherwise.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Bryan Ischo]

But retards like yourself aren't even a necessary evil. They are entirely unnecessary, but sadly, quite common.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Chatterton]

In some way dog breeding and embryo screening are the same. The embryo screening being just faster at removing what we consider bad things/bad genes. But what is now considered a bad things could be the thing that will save your live or the live of your descendant later...

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Meneth]

"Well, Jayne ain't a girl."

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[the_womble]

Asian cultures are not homogeneous. Even within the larger countries there is huge variation - why do you think infanticide is common in certain parts of India and unheard of in others?

Dowry customs, in particular, vary enormously between countries and communities within countries. I think there are still places where a bride price is paid, completely changing the economics of it.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Thiez]

Oh c'mon, it'll be awesome! What would it be like to be able to see an extra color? Say, infrared or ultraviolet?

> Once we do this, we'd be wondering what else can we do, individuals with no limbs?

We can do that already, it is called 'amputation' and I don't recommend it.

> individuals with 8 arms?

I'm hardly able to use two arms at the same time, I simply don't have the concentration to effectively use another six. Eight arms are going to be pretty useless most of the time.

> eyes on the back?

Now you're just being crazy. Some genetic stuff is relatively easy, other stuff is pretty hard. Lets stick with UV-vision. Check out this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy : some males (and many more females) are already able to observe four different colors. Adding another color might well be as simple as adding a single gene. Putting eyes on your back would be much more difficult; it would require genetic modifications that tell your body where to put these eyes, how to connect them to the brain, how the brain should process this information, etc. And that is when you ignore the more tricky stuff, such as your normal eyes having a connection with your vestibular system to compensate when you move your head.

It'll be a long time, if ever, before we can create people with an eye on the back of their head, and even then nobody will do it because it is useless. 'A CIA spy with an eye on the back of the head, BRILLIANT!' except that it would become rather simple to identify such spies, don't you think? If you are really that paranoid (and like to overcomplicate stuff), attach a tiny camera to the back of your head and send the signal to your optical nerve.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[eugene ts wong]

Yep. Our family had to give the bride's family a pig and some other stuff. They gave us absolutely nothing.

I believe that both families should give money towards a home for the new family.

In case anybody is wondering, the situation was my brother, from a Fukian [correct sp?] background, married a girl, from a Cantonese background, and her grandmother was the only person insisting on a tradition that nobody else cared about. I can't remember what the cost of the pig was, but it was a lot. We aren't a wealthy family. Both the bride and groom were born in Canada, and none of them really cared for tradition. Her parents were really down to earth, and didn't care either.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Muad'Dave]

In a way, dog breeding is all about performance. Dogs in AKC-recognized shows are _not_ judged on how pretty they are. Each dog is judged against the official, written physical standard for that particular breed, not how well they're groomed or how cute they are. If you've ever wondered how a judge can compare dogs of different breeds in the group competition, that's how; the dog that best meets its standard wins.

Of course since the judges are human, grooming or cuteness sometimes plays a part, but not usually.

Just because you think your second puppy was "...not at all trained or bred for racing" doesn't mean it wasn't a perfect specimen according to the breed standard - if it met the standard, it had all of the traits needed to _be_ trained and excel at pulling a sled. The rest was a matter of training, not breeding.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Asic Eng]

Hi there - I'm married to a Taiwanese lady we have one daughter. :-)

I think what you state is not completely correct. In traditional Chinese culture ancestor worship is very important. If you sacrifice something at a temple, then your sacrifice goes to support your ancestors in the afterlife. Problem is that your sacrifice only goes to the ancestors which have your family name. So if you have no male heirs you are not only suffering without support in the afterlife, you are also failing to provide for your ancestors. That's why many Chinese (particularly in rural areas) feel they ought to have at least one male child - combine that with a one-child policy and you have a big problem on your hands.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[ShieldW0lf]

Trade is a very apt word since these traditions hark back to the days when kids/wives/concubines were considered one's property.

Kind of like marriage in the west. Wow. Small world!

Doesn't it kind of remind you of that "endangered species" article yesterday, which suggested that by placing a dollar value on members of endangered species and allowing individuals to control them a motive would be created to protect them?

Personally, I'm saving money to pay for a surrogate so I can have another child, and since I already have a daughter, I'll probably have them screen for a son.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[arekusu_ou]

Yeah, the cost of marrying off their daughters is the reason why they kill their daughters.

Not the fact that they can only have ONE child, either a daughter or son, and most prefer a son TO carry on their family's name. What the hell is the daughter going to do? Not carry on the families name? That's useful. Even in families with a son and daughter, the daughter could be smarter or more skilled and the moron of a son is still considered a better heir to the family line.

I don't dispute any other point you made about how she expected a chinese guy to treat her. And she may very well have told you that. But financial liability is less significant than the insanity asians feel about the family line. I see a slight importance in European lines but the female's family tree actually matters and I'm not familiar much with African or South American but seeing how African women in some tribes could own and inherit in the past, I'd say they also put some value in the female's family line.

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Locke2005]

if you meet a coder who tells you her name is "Tiffani with an 'i'!", how much are you going to want her on your project?

That depends... how large are her breasts?

Re:Parents choose their baby's name

[Reziac]

I'm one of those weirdassed extra-colours seers [g] To me, a peacock's tail plumage looks more like the righthand example than the left: http://www.bio.bris.ac.uk/research/vision/4d.htm -- not quite that blue, but with the sparklies in the black "eye" clearly visible.

Babies are the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

"Officially here"?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This too was foreseen

[jmorris42]

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.

Re:This too was foreseen

[QuantumG]

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.

Re:This too was foreseen

[interkin3tic]

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.

I find it odd that you're not only assuming it is wrong and bad, but you're saying questioning it at all is a sign that we're doomed. NOT questioning imposed morality and superstition is what will doom us (see the dark ages and crusades, and in fact most wars for proof.)

I wouldn't take it as a given that their nightmare scenario will be all or nothing. We allowed abortion, we are now apperantly allowing this... I'm missing the links to generic big bad thing. Who says anything bad will come out of it? Besides you and them, that is.

This isn't designer babies anyway. The fundies are still wrong.

Re:This too was foreseen

[Shakrai]

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

Within reason. I don't have to put up with being raped. Society as a whole doesn't have to put up with embryos being aborted over hair/eye color if it deems it to be immoral. You really think this is going to fly?

Re:This too was foreseen

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know who you were talking to, but I don't know any legitimate scientist in biology who didn't think this was going to happen by 2015.

What people said was that for traits that people are most interested in doing this for - most commonly intelligence, attractiveness, and physical ability - it's basically impossible at this point (and will likely remain so for a decent while, considering how many loci people are finding in genome-wide screens). However, eye color and skin color are pretty straightforward, and it's silly to think that when it became technologically possible to perform genetic tests on early embryos (which was something that absolutely had to be developed, as it's basically the only way to avoid any number of horrific genetic diseases) that it wouldn't be used for these purposes as well.

The bigger issue is, who cares? Eye color and hair color are completely superficial traits that mean nothing, and skin color (as evidenced by black males leading both major political parties) isn't anywhere near the issue it was 20 years ago. Sex choice is actually a bigger issue for non-American cultures, as you can wind up with the China situation of a very unbalanced population, but in developed countries (that would have the money to afford this kind of screening) I don't see the value of having a boy or a girl being dramatically different.

Re:This too was foreseen

[the_humeister]

You should elaborate as to why you think this is a bad idea.

Personally I think it's a good idea. Being able to screen for genes that cause cystic fibrosis, Huntington disease, Alzheimer disease, trisomy 13/18/21, etc. would allow no one to suffer from such diseases anymore either through picking different embryos or repairing the diseased gene.

It's certainly better than the crap-shoot that we have now for procreation.

Re:This too was foreseen

[neoform]

Wait, making sure your kids have no future ailments or life threatening conditions/diseases is a.. bad> thing?

Sorry, but I'm 100% in favor of non-cosmetic Eugenics. Maybe you'd feel the same if you knew someone with cancer, diabetes or countless other horrible conditions.

Re:This too was foreseen

[Kingrames]

People are not defined by their physical characteristics. Let the parents choose things like this. It may affect WHAT their child becomes but it won't affect WHO they become.

Re:This too was foreseen

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Within reason. I don't have to put up with being raped. Society as a whole doesn't have to put up with embryos being aborted over hair/eye color if it deems it to be immoral. You really think this is going to fly?
Why not? We allow abortions based on sex. And you clearly don't understand the technology here. It's not embryos being aborted, it's embryos not being implanted, much like current IVF technology that already exists.

Re:This too was foreseen

[Anonymous Coward]

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, since the likelihood of a genetic mutation which can resist the new disease is diminished.

Add in the fact that we know startlingly little about how genes really operate and you have the possibility of some serious unknown consequences.

Re:This too was foreseen

[YrWrstNtmr]

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

Freedom to choose, without taking into account the generational implications, may mean stuff we ALL don't like. We just don't know it yet. And by the time we do know it, it may be too late.
Let's take China's (old) policy of 1 child per family. Leads to a glut of boy children. We have no idea what implications that may bring in the next decade or 3. May lead to nothing, may lead to a world war.

'Freedom' is one thing...stupid, selfish, misguided 'choices' that affect us all is quite another.

hmmm....sounds like the climate change vs the anti climate change argument.
Fuck you, I'm gonna build a coal plant and drive my Hummer. "freedom means putting up with shit you don't like"

Re:This too was foreseen

[orielbean]

Much like gay marriage, how does this hurt fundies? Oh, they are looking out for us poor technocratic souls? Moral fiber? We have developed science to save babies that would otherwise die, mothers that would otherwise die, and help children exist with significant defects that would have had them killed by the midwife only a hundred years ago. Moral fiber? Bad idea? I would be thrilled to know that my child could be born without my congential heart defect or a cleft palate! Shame on you for swallowing their reactionary tripe.

Re:This too was foreseen

[DesScorp]

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.

There are limitations to freedom when it comes to other people. And babies are people. 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.

We're headed down a very tricky road here. These "designer baby" choices would be made before conception, but the consequences would last the life of the child, so we have some big issues to debate, not to mention those minor questions of when human life deserves protection and to what degree we should "play God".

Re:This too was foreseen

[Walkingshark]

I don't know, it sounds like a good idea to me. We can start with simple things like eye and hair color, and hopefully move on to eliminating the genetics that cause obesity, stupidity, and depression.

Re:This too was foreseen

[Matteo522]

Are you sure people aren't defined by their physical characteristics?

Re:This too was foreseen

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Sorry, but I'm 100% in favor of non-cosmetic Eugenics. Maybe you'd feel the same if you knew someone with cancer, diabetes or countless other horrible conditions.

I /had/ cancer, and I"m still not sure that I'm in favor of it. The thought of the current relatively minor money-based class separation eventually becoming codified genetically (this service ain't gonna be cheap) is more than a little disturbing.

You eventually end up with the descendants of the wealthy and middle class (yay consumer finance) who are guaranteed no major health problems, and the descendants of the poor who remain prone to the many diseases. These people are already at a disadvantage financially, now they become a heavy burden on a society since the only ones who actually get seriously ill.

How many generations until the healthy class stops paying for them?

Re:This too was foreseen

[vux984]

I don't know, it sounds like a good idea to me. We can start with simple things like eye and hair color, and hopefully move on to eliminating the genetics that cause obesity, stupidity, and depression.

Of course stupid obese depressed people are more susceptible to advertising and consumption in general... so when google buys out the fertility clinics, that will be the default selection... and the question to couples seeking fertility help is... well... do you want a baby or not?

We offer you a child with the eye and hair color of your choice at no charge... of course you'll have to accept that he'll buy everything in sight. Your IVF treatment was paid for by advertisers after all... no we don't offer a paid option without the ads.

If you don't like that, talk to Apple... they'll hook you up with one of their models -- of course they only have exactly 3 models, they'll engrave your name on it though; but that's the extent of personalization, they cost a premium, and this year its glossy silver hair on all of them. If you don't like it, tough...

Re:This too was foreseen

[the_humeister]

This doesn't really reduce the gene pool an appreciable degree and not necessarily in a bad way either. Can you tell me a good reason for keeping the triplet repeats within the gene that causes Huntington disease or fragile X or other disease that result from expanded triplet repeats?

Re:This too was foreseen

[Suicyco]

Nobody is engineering these embryos. They are fertilized eggs that are then screen for traits, and only the ones wanted are implanted.

There are no mucking with genes being done. Its a passive process. Make X many embryos, and scan them for various traits. Pick the ones you want. Simple, and non threatening to the species.

Humans are not evolving anymore anyway, so what does it matter? We do not exist in a world of natural selection pressures.
 

Re:This too was foreseen

[EdIII]

Yes it is.

NO. It is not.

Eugenics is about controlling which sperm has the legal/moral rights to fertilize which embryos. All of your examples reference such acts.

What is occurring in the article is actions regarding fertilized embryos that had free will, or non-Eugenic motivations, in the choice of which sperm fertilized it.

Don't confuse eugenics with euthanasia either. Or genocide for that matter. Euthanasia is the killing of human beings motivated by the desire to mitigate the burden to society or the idea that is was merciful to the person. You can't confuse that with assisted suicide either as euthanasia exclusively involves unwilling victims. Genocide is the systematic murder of a group of people based on certain traits.

You can argue that eugenics is horrible all you want and that I don't understand history. BTW, not mentioning certain parts of history in a post does not mean that I am ignorant of them. The bottom line is that the actions being performed by this company and the parents involved DO NOT MEET THE DEFINITION OF EUGENICS. It is not the same as the behavior referenced in your examples either.

I don't have reservations whatsoever about choosing among fertilized embryos to throw away those that are diseased and otherwise defective. I can absolutely understand the controversy about choices regarding height, eye color, hair color, sex. That concerns me as well. However, you need to come up with a new word for that though, since eugenics does not apply.

Using the word eugenics here only serves to provoke an emotional response and does not serve anyone attempting to make arguments against the practice of this company as anyone that has a dictionary can see that you are conflating two different situations for dramatic effect.

Finally, if you still cannot understand the definition, let me make it simpler. The words line up vertically with their respective actions and concepts that can apply to them:

Two people meet - They bump uglies - They have child, possibly with defects or disease - Normal child grows up

Segregation - *Eugenics* - Euthanasia - Genocide

Re:This too was foreseen

[Quothz]

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 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?

Funnily enough, I'm in favor of school choice, against the Fairness Doctrine, against most gun control, and against hate speech control laws. I don't favor arbitrary property seizure, though. I note that the wording of your questions is highly loaded, attempting to resolve any debate through the framing of the questions. I choose not to address that issue further.

I'm really not sure why you picked a handful of controversial topics to try to prove that many issues of freedom are simple and obvious. Merely because you feel strongly about these topics doesn't mean that all thoughtful, intelligent people agree.

I don't have a problem with "designer babies", as this article calls 'em. While this company currently is talking about superficial choices like hair and eye color, perfecting the technology could well lead to generations of smarter, stronger, disease-resistant, congenital-defect free children.

Further, I'm afraid that taking legislative control of children's genetics is more dangerous to the preservation of diversity than allowing free choice. Once the finger of legislation is in the pie, there's no taking it out again, and most long-standing governments have made eugenic policies at various points. I have no reason to believe that it will never happen again in nations which have rescinded such stances.

I don't deny there's plenty of arguments on both sides - I was exposed to this debate many years ago in a biomedical ethics course in college. The actual practical application is bound to raise a bit of hubbub and maybe some new insight, but unless someone has a compelling new argument I'm unlikely to see this as a Bad Thing.

Re:This too was foreseen

[princessproton]

I think the point was that he can't give you a good reason, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one. Our knowledge is limited and it may be prudent to keep from mass scale meddling until we understand better, but that's not a reason not to dig and innovate.

Re:This too was foreseen

[mcsporran]

Humanity is still evolving, it is foolish to think we can stand outside of the evolutionary process. It just probably more subtle that examples we see in the wild.

I would suggest that there has been a very strong selective pressure towards resistance to addictive substances. Think of what distilled alcohol did to almost every aboriginal culture who encountered it and think of what Methamphetamine does to someones appearance and ability to survive in the modern world

Also as my ancestors survived the black death, it is possible that I have a greater resistance to contracting HIV, I could be even be immune, and my genes may of already saved me.

Evolution is still with us now, and always will be with any beings that replicate with variation. It is just slow and subtle.

Re:This too was foreseen

[osgeek]

Eugenics got a bad rap because of the fascist nature of the Nazis. From Wikipedia: The word eugenics derives from the Greek word eu (good or well) and the suffix -genÄ"s (born), and was coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883, who defined it as "the study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations"

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.

Besides benignly selecting for better traits in our own embryo sets, I'm hoping that we can eventually genetically change ourselves in place with retro-viruses or something similar.

Re:This too was foreseen

[camperdave]

Humans are not evolving anymore anyway, so what does it matter? We do not exist in a world of natural selection pressures.

Granted, we have taken a lot of the natural selection process out of the equation, and substituted a lot of artificial selection, but rest assured, we are still evolving.

Re:This too was foreseen

[TooMuchToDo]

Granted, we have taken a lot of the natural selection process out of the equation, and substituted a lot of artificial selection, but rest assured, we are still evolving.

Just under the wrong criteria.

Re:This too was foreseen

[ternarybit]

It's a bad idea because the potential for disastrous mistakes, oversights, and miscalculations to cripple future generations is staggering. Sure, your designer baby might never get Alzheimers, but who cares if it won't even live long enough to get it because of some deficiency caused by mis-manipulated genes?

Who are we to assume we know enough about this to put *human lives* at risk?

Re:This too was foreseen

[Workaphobia]

Society as a whole doesn't have to put up with embryos being aborted over hair/eye color if it deems it to be immoral.

I'm heavily pro-choice, but that made even me cringe.

Re:This too was foreseen

[falconwolf]

In this case the "shit you don't like" is a de facto eugenics policy. I would have thought we'd learned from the last century that eugenics is very problematic.

No we didn't learn eugenics was a problem. If anything what was learned was that a group of people, whether it's the government or not, should not try to to exterminate those they don't like in an attempt to create a super race like the NAZIs did.

No rational person wants to place blind trust the state to enact a eugenics policy allowing it an extreme degree of control over the physiology of the newborn.

Read this thread of which this post is my last and you'll see I don't trust government. Here's another. So I don't trust government, whether dealing with eugenics or not. But I am willing to allow others to make their own decisions on whether or not to design their own children.

Similarly, no rational person wants the same thing to happen by proxy as rich people design their children.

Why not? Please give rational reasons why people should not be able to make their own decisions on whether we will "design" their own children.

The point about names is a good one. Giving a child a horrible name is a form of mild child abuse.

And who decides what's a bad name? You?

Designing a child as one would design one's home interior (and that's how a lot of people who would do this think) would be much worse.

Citation needed. Can you prove this or are you just making it up?

Falcon

Re:This too was foreseen

[Deanalator]

A lot of people saw gattaca, and pulled out the message that we should abandon all genetic research before it destroys us all.

In the beginning of gattaca, the narrator even mentions that "genoism" laws were passed, but in the movie we see blatant discrimination.

The message that I got out of that movie is less about genetic engineering, and more about discrimination in general. If we as a society just flatly ignore certain discrimination laws, then of course society is going to go to hell in a short amount of time.

It seems like there is this whole branch of scifi designed to terrorize people about the horrors of technology. The creators seem to think that we would all be better off if we abandoned technology and all went back to live in caves.

If I had the opportunity to have children who were smarter, faster, stronger, and with laser eyes, I would do it in a heartbeat. What is the point of life in general without progression of evolution?

Re:This too was foreseen

[jmorris42]

> In the beginning of gattaca, the narrator even mentions that "genoism" laws were
> passed, but in the movie we see blatant discrimination.

Because the idea that laws from a legislature will overrule laws of physics is dumb. It's the sort of thing Democrats do.

> The message that I got out of that movie is less about genetic engineering,
> and more about discrimination in general.

Wrong. Discriminating against people because they are of African descent is just dumb. Discriminating against someone because they are physically weaker, less intelligent, less emotionally stable, more likely to contract diseases and will generally die younger is a totally different thing. And that is where genetic engineering leads. I am not opposed to Eugenics because I don't think it will work, I oppose it because I know it WILL work.

Our whole civilization can be summed up by these immortal words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Genetic engineering tosses ALL of that in the trash. All men are created by the Company with whatever inequalities the customer orders. Their ass is the property of the customer who commissioned them but the copyrights and patents on their design belongs to the Company. If it's defective just kill it and try again, hopefully we catch the defects before initial customer delivery.

And as for Happiness? We commissioned a miner and mine it damned well better do, who cares if it enjoys it. We can just breed the 2.0 version to be too stupid to care if too many revolt or commit suicide. So what if it causes a few more losses because they won't be able to understand some of the safety rules, we will adjust the design until the cost benefit is right.

Re:This too was foreseen

[jmorris42]

> imagine people were saying similar things when racial discrimination laws were passed.

They happened to be wrong. Not saying there aren't actually some variation between the races but any differences in the averages appear to be safely inside the deviation bars.

> Do you think we ought to throw those laws out as they'll never work and blacks will always be discriminated against?

Actually..... yes we should dump those laws because they can't work. Racial discrimination isn't much of a problem anymore because people changed, not because some asshole in Washington passed a law.

Racial discrimination ended because it was a false outdated notion we are quickly discarding that was totally incompatible with "All men are created equal..." Progress doesn't happen all at once, it just took a little while after those words were set down for society to catch up to all of the implications. And while everyone isn't exactly 'equal' we are close enough that the concept of equality before the law makes so sense it could form the basis of the most successful nation in human history. Throw in a bunch of genetic supermen and some custom designed semi sentient drones into the population and those ideas are null and void. Discrimination DOES make sense because people won't even be close to equal anymore. When the dumbest superman is smarter than Hawking, wiser than Mark Twain and will likely still have the body of a Greek God when he is a hundred years old the question of whether us mundanes should even be allowed to vote is a valid one. We probably won't like their answer.

My argument is that we really should think through the consequences of genetic engineering before we do it instead of rushing into it and having to figure it out after a few bloody wars. What guiding principle replaces "All men are created equal" is something we should have worked though before we make everyone unequal. What rights do created beings have? Does it depend on whether their mental functions have been altered? How?

> You seem so sure that it will end with complete dehumanization.

Because tech is always changing. Human nature doesn't. At least not yet.

Re:This too was foreseen

[Shakrai]

Ironically, those very same people who often chose abortion for convenience are the same people who will choose nanny state socialism (Democrats). If you cant understand the irony, it would just take too long to explain.

I do love that irony. Apparently the individual can be trusted to decide when to terminate a pregnancy but they can't be trusted to wear a seatbelt without laws mandating that they do so, handle a firearm safely, or decide what types of food/chemicals they want to ingest.

Re:This too was foreseen

[gillbates]

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

Which is exactly what this clinic is promising to do away with. Come to them, and you won't have to deal with anything you wouldn't like to see in your children.

I'm wondering how many of those who flock to this clinic are asking for a homosexual child.

I'm wondering how many are seeking children of a certain ethnicity or skin color.

I'm wondering how many are seeking children of a certain sex.

The list goes on, but basically what this whole thing is about is reintroducing the racist, sexist, homophobic tendencies of society under the guise of progress. The Nazis tried this in the 1930's with their eugenics programs, and it ultimately led to someone concluding that Jews weren't fit to live. We all know how well that worked out, and I think this is even more sinister. The problem with "designer babies" is that by removing the perceived imperfections from a majority of the society, as a society, we never learn what it feels like to be marginalized, oppressed, disadvantaged, etc... The grand consequence of this is a general loss of compassion and inability to empathize with the less fortunate. Which in turns leads to a greater separation between the haves and have nots, and paves the way for tyranny.

One gene != one characteristic

[oldspewey]

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.

Re:One gene != one characteristic

[mysidia]

They're not "inserting" a gene. They're screening out "candidate" babies that don't have it.

I.e. there are lots of embryos, they pick the one that randomly got the characteristics they want and throw out the rest.

However, there can still be unintended consequences. If people do this a lot and tend to make the same choices, the genetic diversity of the human race will be reduced, leading to greater susceptibility to widespread disease and genetic problems in the generations to come.

Re:One gene != one characteristic

[interkin3tic]

If people do this a lot and tend to make the same choices, the genetic diversity of the human race will be reduced, leading to greater susceptibility to widespread disease and genetic problems in the generations to come.

They're not choosing on the vast majority of the genes in the human genome. Your hair color, for example, doesn't really confer any selective advantage when it comes to resitance to infectious disease. Diversity, even among those superficial genes, also probably won't be lost. A lot of the genes people want to select for are already rare, if this catches on I'd expect red-headedness to increase dramatically (its at something like 1% right now). And there's going to be some auto-balancing anyway: if everyone wants to have blue-eyed blond-haired children you know what's going to suddenly be a lot more attractive to that generation? Brown eyes and brown hair. And they'll select that in their children.

Sky: still not falling.

Re:One gene != one characteristic

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

They're not choosing on the vast majority of the genes in the human genome. Your hair color, for example, doesn't really confer any selective advantage when it comes to resitance to infectious disease. Diversity, even among those superficial genes, also probably won't be lost

Wait, do you have some insight into genetics that you've been holding out from the rest of the world? Or are you trying to say that because we have only found one purpose for a given gene means that there must only be one purpose?

attitude?

[Libertarian001]

Think maybe they could design one without the attitude?

Re:What's the big deal?

[interkin3tic]

Good point, this is in no way -designer- babies, there's no design, just rejection of the ones you don't like.

When we start being able to specify that our kids have wings or eye lasers, THAT's when things get awesome/scary.

Billion Dollar Baby

[iminplaya]

I want mine to look like Alice

Let evolution reign

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

There's no stopping this

[tsa]

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.

Re:There's no stopping this

[elashish14]

Remember when antibiotics were developed and they were hailed as the great solution for bacterial infections? Now look what has happened - yes, we've solved some problems (many, even), but we've made others much worse.

So let's take a minute to think of the can of worms that we're opening. 1.) How are we supposed to determine whether something is a disease and whether it should be screened for? 2.) What if there's some genetic/evolutionary advantage to many of the "diseases" we hope to prevent? Obviously, no one wants to stand up and say that there's an advantage to -insert horrible disease here- but it's impossible to predict the future and what may be advantageous. 3.) We're also bound to get idiots that want their kids screened for stupid things like being short or stupid. There's probably a potential danger in this as well, not to mention that it's stupid.

Anyways, as far as treating diseases go, we should be mindful that if we don't want to mess with the gene pool (as many believe that we shouldn't), we should consider non-genetic alternatives to treating problems. Furthermore, we should be excited with the advent of new technology, but we should be very careful in how we employ it (in particular, how much). These aren't necessarily my opinions, but it's important to at least play Devil's Advocate.

Re:There's no stopping this

[Z80xxc!]

As an example, people with sickle-cell anemia tend to be resistant to malaria. So, there are bad diseases with potential benefits associated.

Life savings?

[truthsearch]

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.

Re:Life savings?

[cowlum1]

As some earlier posters have pointed out, this is a good opportunity for couples to diagnose and remove genetic diseases. Many families have known genetic ailments they would like eradicated.

Hair colour and eye colour are often advantages/disadvantages in life. Shallow or not im sure most parents will simply do whats best for baby.

Re:Life savings?

[0xdeadbeef]

If not hair color, then intelligence? Who are you to say which traits are trivial and which are worth enhancing?

Re:Life savings?

[twostix]

I look forward to the ability to remove the ugly, awkward social misfit segment from society.

It's bad news for Slashdots future though.

Ironically it's the awkward social misfits who are the loudest proponents of this. Seems like tech is some sort of religion to them.

"Yes Mr and Mrs Smith, your embryo has all the genes to ensure it will forever be a pseudo-intellectual, who will be quite ugly for their entire life, will never fit into greater society will have a miserable adolescence and although will be exceptionally bright in some very narrow areas, will be forever burdened by the desire to feel superior to everyone around them. Plus they'll constantly use terrible strawman arguments to try to advance social issues of which they have no ability to mentally grapple."

"Oh well, maybe next time, best remove it we certainly don't want a child whose going to be unhappy!"

Re:What's the big deal?

[Shakrai]

This doesn't seem much more controversial than an abortion. (which, depending on the country, could be considered controversial) How is this unethical?

I consider myself a pretty die-hard pro-choicer but I'm extremely disturbed by the notion of aborting your embryo because it doesn't have the eye color you wanted.........

China and India

[macraig]

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?

Re:China and India

[binary paladin]

Who flagged this as insightful?

If you don't want to "cheapen" your baby and make one the old-fashioned way, do it. If I want a redhead with green eyes, I'll do it. Who gives a shit? Suddenly having choice in something that used to be arbitrary is somehow bad now? Should we actually get to that level of customization it'll be an epoch of sorts and we'll either get through it or something will go terribly wrong. Life and the universe will go on.

25,000 years from now there's bound to be a severe paradigm shift (and probably many). People who fear this sort of thing are just afraid of change. Nothing's stopping anyone from getting a random hand dealt to them with a new child. I'd prefer, however, to weed out a ton of bad genetics. Is it really so terrible for me to want to not have to play the odds for having a son or daughter with the same leg deformities I have or the same crooked teeth or poor eyesight?

And who said Darwin cared? You say that almost religiously, which I think is hilarious.

My genes are shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:My genes are shit.

[ElectricTurtle]

I'm stunned to see so much unselfish, practical wisdom. Speaking as an adopted child, I have always held that it's how you raise children, not where they come from that matters. People are so egotistical about how important it is for their kids to be their biological product, even if it means knowingly putting those kids at risk. Some parents even seem to be proud of the defects they pass on, like blindness or deafness is 'special' in a positive way. (I'm not saying that such people should be ashamed. Traits are not things to be proud or ashamed of. Only actions can be rationally appreciated or denounced.)

Why is this a problem again?

[Taibhsear]

People already screen your embryos and sperm for certain genetic markers. It's not eugenics, it's called "dating."

Wait, I have a better example

[way2trivial]

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)

Re:Wait, I have a better example

[mrchaotica]

You know, if there's a better way to ensure that your kids won't be racist, I can't think of it...

Are you catholic?

[ZmeiGorynych]

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.

Re:Are you catholic?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound a little bit confused, perhaps you should take a biology class or three? The zygote/embryo/fetus/infant/adult/old-fart is a complete, living, genetically-unique, human organism. Skin cells, on the other hand, are not living individuals (human or any other kind.) Neither is a strand of hair, a nail clipping, or a sperm or an egg, by itself. However when a sperm fertilizes an egg, at that precise moment, a new human organism comes into existence. You can use whatever justification you like to say that it isn't a "person" or deserving of "legal rights" or whatever your argument is, but please, drop the bogus biology. Misinformation and faulty science doesn't help your cause.

Misrepresenting the views of your opponents doesn't further your argument either. It is true that Catholics believe that unjustly (according to their standards) terminating the life of a human organism is murderous. They do not, however, believe that the use of artificial contraceptives constitutes murder. They oppose contraception for other reasons, but do not call it murderous.

Re:Are you catholic?

[Maelwryth]

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).
I used to take the same position......right up until I saw a baby born (and watched her grow) who was going to be aborted (pre three months). They are children, "potential children". That being said, I have no problem with abortions. I don't have a problem with eating meat either. I do have a problem with people trying to avoid responsibility for what they do by pretending it isn't what it is. If you kill a fetus, you have killed the potentiality of a child. Don't mess around and try and justify it, that is what you are doing. If you eat lamb, it was a baby animal. Same thing in my eyes. People should stop justifying what they do and just take responsibility. If there is no god, then there is no absolute morality. It is your choice.

Don't feel I am trying to attack your views in this. From the tone of your posting I would say your opinions are exceedingly close to mine with a few exceptions. If anything, I just hold the potential as more important than you because I watched it manifest once.

Re:Are you catholic?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the father of a 4 months old baby daughter. We had planned on getting children and prior to this we have had 2 abortions because the embryo did not develop properly. And by that I mean that they did not develop with a cranium. "Children" like this can develop until birth, whereupon they die after a couple of hours due to the fact that they do not have a brain. A "natural" miscarriage had not happened, hence the abortions. A messy business all around.

During this process I learned a few things by listening to doctors, going to genetic consultations and by reading up on the subject. Most of the human embryos (more than half) that are started, dies in some way inside the womb. Usually so early that the woman never realizes she is pregnant. The reasons are as varied as the embryos, and quite immaterial to this topic. The point is that "natural" pregnancies are a chancy and tricky business with less than 50/50 chances for each pregnancy to have what you may call a child that is able to live outside a womb (some would argue that this would make children even more "precious").

Why are pregnancies tricky and chancy? Because it has developed over millions of years through a process called evolution. A process that is far from perfect, but that works. If anything the trickiness of having children is a (another) strong argument against the creationists (if we ever needed any more) who are determined to believe that we are "perfectly" created by some kind of supreme being. If so this proves he made a hash of it. But this is again a sidetrack to this topic.

The "holy grail" of a "designer baby" is that you are able to take what is the "best" genes in each parent, prune away dangerous recessives and damaged genes and then hope that it works. It is with the current technology quite impossible to do this. For this the variables are just too great.

As a person born with near-sightedness and a couple of other issues (which we all have), I would not mind having my genes a bit altered. And I would definitely consider it with any future children if the technology is actually viable (which it is not). Alterations that don't work at all, will for the most part be terminated in the womb. Other will die afterwards (just like it is now. No difference). And maybe some will grow up and be able to have children of their own. It is evolution.

Re:Are you catholic?

[foniksonik]

I'll bite.

When is a thing more than a thing? Can I put you in a glass jar and consider you a thing? How about if I get enough people to agree with me that as you're stuck in a jar right now and can't participate in society... you're nothing more than a sac of water filled flesh? Sure if we let you out you might do something interesting but that's in the future and we're talking about right now. How do we know you'd turn into a human when we let you out? Are you even self-aware inside that jar... we can't hear you talking (it's cute how she moves her mouth like that as if she's talking) and all those convulsions you're making could just be automatic responses.

I'm not saying abortion is wrong, I'm just saying your logic is flawed and your self-deception is transparent. Abortion is stopping a process that would otherwise (in a typical scenario) end in a fully aware human being. That is a fact. If you want to delude yourself into thinking otherwise fine, just be 'self-aware' enough to know that it's just an excuse.

Abort a pregnancy because you are not prepared to raise the child. Abort because the child will be treated poorly by society... pick a reason, you'll need to live with it.

BTW I think contraception is definitely the way to go. Tens of thousands of eggs and billions of sperm are there explicitly to be lost to biology's natural processes. Contraception does nothing more than put those processes on a different schedule or manage how they express (ie: re-absorbed by the body).

Re:Are you catholic?

[qubezz]

Thank you, o lone sane voice...The non-viable fetuses you had to terminate are more likely due to bad luck and environmental factors than due to the genetics of the rugrats-to-be (and we have a lot more toxic environmental factors now then ever before). Miscarriages can often happen from the smallest chemical imbalances during the first week or two after fertilization that may affect the development - we've perhaps even evolved the 'miscarriage' gene because it is evolutionarily costly to deliver young'uns who won't make it to reproduction age. However, you do raise a good point.

The problem is that in modern times we can't apparently let an infant die, no matter how hideously deformed or mis-developed (since 'belief' still trumps 'logic' it seems). If you don't let the surgeon put the heart back in the body and put the misfit in an incubator, you go to jail. The solution is to 'pick a good egg'.

Consider two parents who both have the recessive gene for cystic fibrosis. Is it wrong to select an embryo that doesn't have cystic fibrosis (25% chance of a child getting the disease), or even ensure that the child won't be a carrier (50% chance the child won't be affected, but will carry the recessive gene). This is not genetic engineering, this is removing a mutation that has the distinction of being recessive, so it can continue through the generations to destroy lives. I had two elementary schoolmates, brother and sister, both with cystic fibrosis (the parents won the lottery with a 1 in 16 chance both would get it). They are both dead now, but at least they sure did suffer.

Now if you could cull a crop of eggs from your own seed, and pick the unlikely match-up that didn't have bad vision, wicked crooked teeth, asthma, predisposition to depression, addiction, or murder, or maybe even mental retardation, why not? Maybe even pick the pretty one. I wouldn't mind being made of better genetic stuff. Natural selection doesn't work anymore, since we can't leave the bad ones behind when the tribe moves on (and the 'most fit' are the ones who aren't reproducing).

Re:Are you catholic?

[Linktoreality]

A fetus is not a living thing until it meets all the criteria of a living organism, first and foremost of which is "Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#Definitions Until a fetus can survive on it's own outside of the mother's body, it is not alive.

Patented Babies coming to you!

[Tuoqui]

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.

Go watch GATTACA

[HockeyPuck]

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.

The Homosexual Gene

[Spasmodeus]

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?

Convenient way to settle disputes

[MillionthMonkey]

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.

Re:So then you argue in favor

[phanboy_iv]

Nope. It just avoids the deeper, more serious issue of a culture that is alright with killing people because they're female. 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.

The 99% Solution

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:The 99% Solution

[TheLink]

Well what might happen before that is some of the female babies might start looking so cute (and behaving soooo adorably) that the parents decide to keep them anyway.

You might also end up with female babies that tend to not cry and wake up their parents in the middle of the night.

Re:The 99% Solution

[xilmaril]

putting aside how horrible an idea that is for a moment, let's face that that's certainly what is happening.

In india, their are more boys than girls now, which is something of an oddity, and in some communities the new generation are so predominantly male than they're having to do reverse-dowries. As my brother put it, "sooner or later they're going to run out of girls to subjugate, and they'll have to stop treating girls like dirt. either that or the guys will all go gay, but oh wait, that's against crummy traditional values too."

Re:The 99% Solution

[Asic Eng]

Optimistic, but I don't think that's the way it will go. Traditionally, if a country has a surplus of males they go and conquer a neighboring country. War reduces the number of males, and the conquered country provides the women for the rest. The Chinese sign for peace is "" - a women in a house (not sure if that will show up on Slashdot, but you can just google for it). I think that's a well-chosen sign.

It may not happen this time, but a surplus of unhappy males always creates a volatile situation. Partially the problem is solved by Chinese importing women from neighboring poor countries (like Vietnam), but while that may help in China it obviously creates a problem elsewhere.

Re:The 99% Solution

[geekoid]

Your brother is wrong. What happens(or has happened historically) is that you ahve a bunch of angry young men that need an outlet; which means war. Either internally, if the government see this, then it will be an external war.

They'll still treat women like dirt. It takes an open atmosphere to voice opinion to change that.

Re:Are you an idiot?

[ScentCone]

we have no idea when consciousness begins

But we certainly know when it hasn't. For example: when there's no nervous system it's safe say there's no conciousness. A fertalized egg, or even a clump of 100 cells, doesn't have the wiring for consciousness. There's no there there.

Lack of choices, though

[Moraelin]

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 little story in how this is dangerous

[Roger W Moore]

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.

Warning... offensive comment to some coming

[Shivetya]

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.

Re:What's the big deal?

[ProfessionalCookie]

Get off the fence? "Choice" is choice. Why does it matter to you why someone chooses. If there's only a few righteous reasons to abort and embryo you probably ought to consider why the unrighteous reasons are unrighteous.

Re:So then you argue in favor

[neomunk]

cayenne brings up a good point. Maybe he was trolling *shrug*, but as of this moment the post is marked troll. What you mods (and the people who agree with a troll mod) need to realize is, whether he was serious or being sarcastic you're REALLY going to be hearing that conversation, in real life, coming from people you know and love, and they're going to be discussing serious real-life options in a serious mindset.

Brace yourself folks, this one is going to be a trollercoaster on par with Roe vs. Wade, the civil rights movement and invading Iraq. Opinions will be firm, worded strongly and civility will suffer.

just think about it

[Joe the Lesser]

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.

Different kind of "nil" ;)

[Moraelin]

"The probability that _both_ the egg _and_ the sperm have that mutation out of nowhere, is pretty much nil."

Welcome to the evolution creation debate.

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.