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Fertility Clinic Bows To Pressure, Nixes Eye- and Hair-Color Screening
destinyland writes "A fertility service in L.A. and New York screens embryos for breast cancer, cystic fibrosis, and 70 other diseases — and lets couples pick the sex of their babies. But when their pre-implantation diagnostic services began including the baby's eye and hair color, even the Pope objected — and the Great Designer Baby Controversy began. '[W]e cannot escape the fact that science is moving forward,' the fertility service explained — before capitulating to pressure to eliminate the eye and hair color screenings."
It's when fertility clinics start to offer to change the hair or eye color (or other traits) of a baby to be.
I guess I'm just old fashioned.
some people may want their kids to look like them. or not
I mean, if you can get just the kid you want...why not? What are the objections? Hell, when they can start letting you pick if you kid is going to be smart and/or athletic...are they gonna can that choice too?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Would you have been able to sue them if your baby had blond hair when you wanted a brunette?
"No honey, of course mommy and daddy love you just the way you are... never mind the settlement we got because your hair color is wrong. It paid for all this dye!"
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
On the one hand, this is pre-implantation and thus does not require the abortion of a fetus - no harm no foul, right?. One the other hand, it could easily be argued that one is playing god when you begin screening embryos for superficial traits.
Of course, if you choose to make the second argument, then one would also be playing god when embryos are screened for diseases, and thus should be disallowed as well.
kowtowing to the luddites...
... welcome our new genetically superior overlords.
Bring it on!
There seems to me to be a difference between "designing" a baby with genetic engineering or some such vs. simply screening a bunch of fertilized eggs and selecting the one you want. But of course, if the media called it "screening" rather than "designing," people wouldn't get nearly as worked up about it - and they know this, so they go with the more provocative language.
and is unfortunately still prevalent in india, china, and korea, and immigrant communities from india, china, and korea
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/nyregion/15babies.html
they should outlaw sex selection. an absolutely disgusting practice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Me: "All the kids in school call me fat."
My Mom:"You're not fat. You're big boned."
Me: "That's what I said."
I wonder if they'll offer screenings for obesity? bad vision? propensity to tell lame jokes? desire to dwell in the basement past age 18? /.'ers need to know these things...
Looking at that baby designer GUI in the article...looks like that kid will have
:)
orange straight hair
big brain
talks alot
will need glasses
and have blue eyes.
OMG, It's almost CARROT TOP!
I wish I had mod points....
Ok, I admit, I'd want to give the above +5 funny.
Do they allow you choose whether the baby will have red irises, pre-painted black fingernails, a perm that needs no hair spray, and "Whitesnake" pre-tattooed on its chest?
So people who don't meet that could be considered disabled, or worse.
I wouldn't label them as "disabled" myself, but if they were labeled as such, why is it such a problem? On a personal level, people usually do handle contacts with disabled people quite well; the only entities (except little kids maybe) that blatantly discriminate them are called "companies" and that problem will persist no matter which group of people we call "disabled".
After all, God wanted us to discover DNA manipulation... so let's fix the prejudices of greedy companies and be merry!
PS: I always wanted a ginger-haired daughter.
Well, I've always wondered where the line would be drawn, and it's apparently at eye and hair color. To sum up, designing a baby to be resistant to over 70 diseases is cool - and designing a baby to be a particular sex is also cool. But choosing hair color or eye color, that goes to far.
If someone didn't draw the line for me, I'd never know where it goes. I've never been good at placing arbitrary restrictions on things I don't understand, so thank God for the Pope.
Culture is more than commerce
Just screen out the religion gene while you are at it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I think there's a big discussion to be developed in the matter of what you can do and what you should do, but that argument is just dumb.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Yes, there may not be any holding back the tide, but genetic "screening", "designing", or whatever you want to call it has a real danger of helping create even more of a class-based society, this one even more difficult for individuals to breach.
Keep in mind this procedure will only available to those who can afford it.
Want to grow up to become an athlete? Sorry, your parents couldn't afford to select genes that predispose you to becoming tall / strong / better cardiovascular function.
Want to grow up to become a model? Sorry, your parents couldn't afford to give you a slender physique, blond, and blue eyes.
Want health insurance? Sure, but it's going to be more expensive because your parents couldn't afford to eliminate your risk of ALS.
The challenging part is that yeah, if I have the choice to prevent my future kids from developing life-shortening diseases, I've got to do it.
Tough ethical choices ahead of us, imho.
You stereotypers are all the same...
skin color and such to come down the pike.
Of course, if they could prove that sexual preference is genetic I believe we will see some real outrage with "We can guarantee your baby will NOT be gay"
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
IMHO, this is something we as humans have to grapple with ourselves. To me, I experience moral squeamishness when I consider possessing the ability to pre-select my (potential) child's genetic traits. Pre-selecting against genetic problems that would make the would-be embryo unable to live unsupported (and there's a whole spectrum here) is one thing. But to decide if I want a girl with brown hair and blue eyes or a boy with brown eyes and blond hair, and oh, I want him/her to be athletic and have a better than average predisposition towards a high IQ? That's where I get squeamish. Who am I to determine what my child is going to be like to that degree? Yes, those are my genes being mixed with that of the mother's. Yes, that will be my child. But do I have the right to rob my child of the experiences he/she is going to have growing up? If I make my child 'better than average' along with everyone else, am I not just making my child 'average'? I'm tall, overweight, and have bad eyesight. My life experiences have been unavoidably biased around these genetic issues, and I wouldn't trade them in for anything. Those experiences are part of what makes me 'me'. To deny my child that kind of uniqueness and condemn him/her to a life of mediocrity masquerading as 'being designed better than your neighbor's kid' would be wrong to me.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I mean, if you can get just the kid you want...why not? What are the objections? Hell, when they can start letting you pick if you kid is going to be smart and/or athletic...are they gonna can that choice too?
One problem with allowing any sort of conscious selection on the part of humans is the possibility that we'll select against something we think is pernicious, but turns out to be beneficial - or something that has both pernicious and beneficial effects that we don't fully understand. For example, carrying a single sickle-cell anemia allele makes you more resistant to malaria.
Granted, selecting among several embryos to pick one that has X hair color or eye color probably won't approach this sort of danger, but as the technology advances, and people begin to select against all sorts of perceived pernicious traits, we may end up inadvertently eliminating a good deal of genetic diversity, which could prove to be very problematic.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
he is not an example of tolerance and open mindedness.
Do not make a white male with blue eyes. We are the scum of the earth according to half the earth. /sarcasm (please detect)
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
You are saying by changing 0.00001% of your genetic code to affect a phenotype is "playing god." By that argument, ANYTHING humans have done over the course of our presence on this planet to alter your phenotype (these are the proteins that are expressed giving you all your traits, such as hair color or round red blood cells or whatever) is "playing god." So, if you dye your hair, are you playing god? If you take medicine to lower your blood pressure, are you playing god? If you move to a more tropical environment and eat only fruits so you lack the bacteria to digest milk products, are you "playing god?" And besides, how is changing something superficial like eye color MORE like playing god than downregulating the expression of the Her2 molecule (which has been linked the breast cancer)?
Think about how you have obtained your opinion on why this sort of procedure of gene targeting is evil--was it from a credible source?--or is it rehashed opinions from your childhood religious or conservative leaders--or even movies like Gataca that you've seen. There were MANY periods of time where the utilization of science was thought to play god. Why do we even allow vaccinations? After all, a vaccine causes a phenotypical modification of new antibodies that would not have necessarily occurred naturally (or in "god's will" as you would argue).
And another huge point. We have freedom of religion in this country right? Don't I and others have the right to not believe that ANYTHING we do is "playing" god's will or not believe in a god's will? By altering a small genetic sequence in a cell to change the pigment phenotype in an iris of a child is not playing god. And if it is, there are far more things humans have done to "play god" that you should worry about.
"Engineering. Where the noble, semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream." -Sheldon
If we're not meant to "play god" Why di He create us in His own image? seem's to me it is his own fault.
Can you still screen for Republican genes???????
However the reverse is also true, can you prove he does?
*Assuming there exists a devil to be the advocate of. All views contained within this post are the views of the writer and not representative of the devil, his networks or the republican party.
This and its more controlled forms would last for two or three generations tops. Eventually people will get pissed off enough to realize that its idiotic to let someones parents choose their child's looks based on what the popular culture of their parents finds beautiful and attractive, with no regard for the fact that none of the kids will be able to meet the criteria of beauty in their own popular culture. It will be like the quest for super thinness and super buffness times ten. Several generations with no selfesteem.
Someone is gonna go, "guys, seriously this isn't working, and we are all ugly too boot."
You mad
I don't understand the Pope's objection. The body is nothing more than a meat machine that holds the soul. If we have the technology to improve the machine that houses the soul, what is the problem? Jesus Christ. The disciples fixed the broken machine all the time in the new testament, back then it was called a miracle. Now we have the technology to improve the lives of all future children it would be a crime not to remove genetic diseases. Why does the church insist on allowing unnecessary suffering just so that they can provide comfort to the person who is suffering? Wouldn't it be better to eradicate the suffering in the first place?
This is great and if being gay is genetic then they can screen for it
That will allow your kid to not have to grow up with all the trouble that comes with it.
Mod me troll, Please. But atleast you are now thinking about what I just said.
Come to Scotland and say that!
Another point is that there are selections based on genes that, if used in a wrong way, will bring problems to us as a race - eg, if everybody chooses to have a male child, etc. It doesn't mean that will necessarily happen, but I think that should be avoided for obvious reasons.
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
Wow, I can't believe the Pope objects. We all now how objective and open to change he is. If the Pope objects there must be something wrong.
if it is wrong, it must be outlawed
don't confuse sex selection of a fetus with something like abortion or drug use, which are activities which are not outright and straightforwardly wrong
in the case of abortion or drug use, you can make moral arguments for the acceptance of these practices (if not condonement)
but there is no moral argument that can be made for sex selection. go ahead, try to make one where the activity can be viewed as necesary or acceptable according to any sense of humane interest
yes, as you imply, the practice will still go on even if outlawed. this is not a reason to make anything legal, ever
the reason for this is if there is a compelling need for the activity that will always continue to reappear, like abortion, then some sort of legal space must be made for the activity
but sex selection is just a barbaric practice that should end. tkae for example: foot binding. if you outlawed foot binding in the 1800s, it would still go on. but there is no ongoing compelling need to bind women's feet. and the practice dies, as it rightly deserves to. same with sex selection
outlaw, let it die. of crouse some fools will still do it. but unlike abortion or drug use, it is not an activity that will continue in its own right, for its own reasons. its merely a stupid custom that should and will die, and deserves to die
just because someone will go to an extreme to do something wrong is no basis for allowing that activity. law and morality must be made on a valid coherent argument as to why the activity should be tolerated. for abortion and drug use, those arguments can be made. for abhorrent traditional practices like cliteroectomies or sex selection, no coherent moral or legal argument can be made for acceptance of these practices. they should simply be forced to die out
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If humans were disease-free, War Of The Worlds would have ended in a very uncool way.
All these bioconservatives are quick to doubt the good will of parents and assume that eye color is merely a matter of aesthetics. However, studies have shown that ligher eye color is linked to a higher incidence of age-related macular degeneration and uveal melanoma. Shame on this clinic for bowing to popular outrage instead of fighting for parents' rights and the health of future generations.
in every society
simply for the happiness of the members in that society
if you choose to have less females, you automatically doom a whole population of males to a lonely life, who do not deserve that treatment
the choice not to have a female baby is not made in a vacuum that has no effects on anyone else
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Forbid anyone from breeding unless they are very lucky or very smart, and in a few generations we will have a population of geniuses and very lucky people.
To get into a position where u can forbid people from breeding is the hard part.... first there would have to be a total global economic collapse before u can seize power like that.... maybe after the Puppeteers leave
"even the Pope objected"
Is it surprising that the Pope objected? He's very conservative, and doesn't even approve of contraception for people with HIV. Does he approve of IV fertilisation at all? If god wants you to have a disabled kid...
But it never seems to outrun ignorance and religion.
- Adolf H, Herman and the Gang
[ I think I can claim an exemption to Godwin's Law here, or can I?]
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Back in my college days I did research on how to skew the sex ratio in horses in favor of females. An ugly mare can still be used as a brood mare but a male that isn't in the top 1-2% of perfection is basically dog food.
So I blundered in with the help of a research scientist at my college and a local vet and achieved a 75% success rate. I thought it was a good thing. Cutting down the number of unwanted animals, raising the profit margin on running a horse park. It was cheap, safe and many times it worked. BZZZZT! The practice (and me) were almost universally despised. Not just dislike, genuine hatred. I routinely got threatening phone calls, even one death threat.
Small breeders said it would just be another way for big breeders to keep them out of the market, a small subset argued it was playing with nature, that was mainly the religious whack jobs. The breed registry threatened to delist any animals born via the procedure and when the found out there was no way to tell the embryo had been screened, threated to ban any park caught using it.
If people go that berserko over horses I can only imagine the reaction applying some of those techniques to human embryos. But it's been going on a lot longer than most of you realize, though wisely not in this country. Whether humans or animals I can guarantee the practice is hugely profitable.
Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with screening embryos to reduce cancer and inherited disease, but you might want to consider getting a bullet proof vest if you're going to publicly support that position.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
What if its a government book that states you cannot have procedure X because you don't requirements Y, or Z? Or, you can have it, but not until political grouping A and B have sufficient opportunities first?
Religion or bureaucracy, does it really matter if the end result is the same?
The difference between religious and government rules is that the later is enforced at the point of a gun
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
doesn't make it right.
in a society, you've just doomed an entire population of males to a lonely sad existence, for the sake of what benefit exactly?
the decision to have a male rather than a female is not a decision that exists in a vacuum and effects no one else
it in fact debilitates the whole of society by making a whole population of innocent males have a miserable lonely existence. its downright evil
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why yes, yes it is.
What do I care if my eternal existence after I shuffle off this mortal coil is in utmost torture? Once I die, my existence points to a null reference.
Which reminds me, I've got to talk to someone about the awful garbage collection on this planet.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It's not something I would like ever do. I consider myself old fashioned in many ways. But at the same time, I wouldn't even dream of imposing my ideals on other people. And frankly the idea is rather fascinating even if it is a bit Frankenstein-like.
And in practice this could also lead to other things as well. Screening against genetic diseases or ultimately, screening to promote useful mutations that could make living on other planets more possible. This sort of thing is just at the beginning stages and the surface has barely been scratched. We're just monkeys hitting rocks with bones relatively speaking.
How does a genetically selected child feel about him/herself? It's hard to know until we find out. Screening for better resistance to disease, better general health and a lot of things make children happier. I had two half-brothers who both lived beyond their predicted life expectancy and it was a VERY miserable life for the both of them. They had muscular dystrophy and to keep them ticking, they did all sorts of horrible things including fusing their spines and putting them in breathing machines. They were not comfortable or happy. (The kicker for me is that the MD gene was already identified before they were born and the choice was made to have children anyway... to me that is sick and disgusting especially after watching the results first-hand.) So I can appreciate the viewpoint of screening and selection even to some extremes.
I have three sons. They are all in good shape physically and mentally. One outgrew asthma, the youngest tested positive for all sorts of allergies and seems to have outgrown or overcome them all. But I consider that to be lucky, not evidence of some superiority or another. But how nice would it be if your children don't need to suffer the way we did? Got an "obesity gene" or two? Screen for it. Skin that freckles too much or is otherwise too white? Nose too big? Crowded teeth and need braces?
The only problem I have with this is that only rich people can afford this kind of thing and if it came to the point that only good-lookin' people were wealthy and the rest of us ugly people were poor, then I'd say we would have a problem that would be pretty hard to dig ourselves out of -- a genetic caste system.
If you knew that you were going to be born with all of your imperfections. Would you allow yourself to be born? Then why would you choose for someone else?
thereby guaranteeing everyone has a chance to find a wife/ husband?
allowing people to skew the ratio, for the sake of retarded beliefs, dooms thousands of men to a miserable sad life
the cost, of forbidding people from having the right to pick the sex of the fetus, is far outweighed by the benefit of a happier society
in your view, allowing people to pick the sex, this creates a miserable society. there is no benefit to your viewpoint that outweighs the horrible costs
as for your worship of the idea of a free market, i think recent economic history repudiates this viewpoint. the problem with the notion of a "free" market, ie, one with no rules, is that some people will inevitably wind up abusing structural defects to game the system and reap rewards that come at the expense of dramatically impoverishing others
in other words, to actually have a free market, you actually need enforcement, you actually need rules, to keep a market truly free. preventing people from pickign the sex of their fetus is just another example of a rule, that you need to enforce, that lets people be truly free. in this case, free from a miserable loveless existence
you have to ask yourself about the cost/ benefit of every freedom you allow. i think i should be free to kill whomever i want. this is a freedom i should never have, because the cost is that someone else must give up their own freedom, their own life
in this world you actually need to limit people, create laws, and enforce them, to maximize freedom. because some things people think they are free to do, are actually activities that impinge upon the freedoms of others
true freedom doesn't exist in a vacuum. every action you do has the potential to limit someone else's freedom. so you in fact need to limit people's freedom, in order to maximize everyone freedoms, when it comes to activities which decrease other people's freedoms
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How long will it take for some couple to find out the baby they selected didn't have the traits they selected. Presumably, these clinics do not work for free. And as soon as any sizable sum of money changes hands, it won't be long before some jilted couple decide they and their now unplanned kid deserve compensation.
When is a unique individual created? Forget religion, just answer this from science. You know the answer - sperm, egg, fertilization, dna & all that. This whole question is about speaking up for that unique creation, which we may have facilitated to occur in an insanely stupid place (a test tube), and literally placed on ice. So then, unlike state in the summary, the problem is about picking and choosing who lives and dies, WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT. How can that possibly be difficult to understand?
"Kind of off-topic: but I think we're going down a slippery slope when we start screening DNA. It works against the process of evolution. What if there's a new fatal disease that only people with the breast cancer trait are equipped to fight?"
I would respond that the minute humanity developed the printing press and started practicing medicine which sustains people well past their natural point of death, evolution as we know it went out the window. I aggree with your point, but you've LOOONG missed the boat on that one. Any modern medical procedure cheats evolution so by your logic, we should abandon all medicine - again a point I aggree with since overpopulation is responsible for most of the worlds problems - but its not a solution any "sane" society would adopt - short of being faced with extinction as an alternative.
@svendensen
"Personally I don't want some religion to tell me what medical procedures I can/cannot have because they think their holy book would approve/disapprove."
+1 to that buddy
@nasor
"There seems to me to be a difference between "designing" a baby with genetic engineering or some such vs. simply screening a bunch of fertilized eggs and selecting the one you want. But of course, if the media called it "screening" rather than "designing," people wouldn't get nearly as worked up about it - and they know this, so they go with the more provocative language."
A BIG +1 to that.
And finally @Radtastik
You are absolutely right that this will create a class society - that Gattaca movie was nothing short of a prophecy IMO. My counterargument is that if you awnt to make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs. In other words, should the rights of those unable to afford such procedures be put ahead of human progress? Such technology may be expensive at first, but with use will be come stanard with time. Is it proper to deprive our race of a jump in evolution in terms of physical and mental capabilities just in the name of fairness? And if you answered yes to that question, I would ask you what planet you've been living on... life isn't fair. The universe is hostile. Life feeds on life feeds on life. Evolve or die. So on so forth. Like it or not, cybernetics and genetic engeneering IS the next step of human evolution since natural selection has been so weakened by modern medicine.
The question you SHOULD be asking is, are we going to be at the forefront of this next evolutionary step or are we going to let other nations beat us here as well? If they do, you can kiss our world dominance good-bye for good. Students abroad are already healthier and smarter then anything our public school can produce. Do we give up this advantage as well?
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
I don't see how this is all that much different than having a baby with a blond, or someone with green eyes. The only difference here is you'll know what your getting instead of pot luck.
If they were actually changing those attributes, I suppose I could see an issue with that (well..maybe not..it is only hair color and eye color after all), but this seems kind of silly.
I really, really hope this gets to the point where you can go into a clinic and get the good old Fallout 3 or Mass Effect character creation screen. I mean seriously, how awesome would that be?! My kid is definitely getting +4 to luck, then I can send him or her (I haven't gotten to the sex selection screen yet) to Vegas!!!
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Einstein or Newton would (will) have never been born.
But whatever. Let humanity fuck itself, at this point I'm just going to watch from the side how things go down the wazoo.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The parents have no way to know whether the kid will want to be a model or a genius. And even if they hit jackpot, this is a NORMAL kid, it will have the same chance or possibility as other kids, and will be within the gaussian curve of population. Now if they ENHANCED a kid by changing its gene that would be something different.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
that people abort a fetus at a later stage simply because it is female is a reason to allow it an earlier stage
of course, you are right, some will still do that. but simply because some people will do abort a late stage fetus for a vile reason is no reason to allow it at an ealier stage
in reailty, if a parent can't destroy a fetus at the earlier embryo stage, then that vast majority of them will simple accept the fact they can't pick the sex of their child after all
look at it this way: if you outlaw murder, people will still murder. so because people will still murder, you should make murder legal? poppycock
you make a moral and legal stand about what is right. that some people will still break those rules is no reason to change your sense of what is legal or not
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But when their pre-implantation diagnostic services began including the baby's eye and hair color, even the Pope objected
I'm pretty sure the Pope was objecting the entire time. Last year, they even made it official company policy that IVF=abortion.
Moderators: Before moderating a comment Insightful/Informative, check to see if a child post has already refuted it.
you even said why it is a big deal yourself in the last sentence
why do a bunch of innocent men deserve a sad lonely miserable existence without a wife, simply for the sake of a barbaric and pointless belief?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
'Zieg Heil!' the fertility service proclaimed -- before capitulating to pressure to eliminate the eye and hair color screenings.
I would like to thank the academy for the honor of the Godwin with which I am being bestowed. I with full foresight call eugenics purveyors Nazi scientists.
Any who participate or who knows someone who participates are sinners and will go straight to the Pit upon death, to live an eternal existence in utmost torture.
To Christians, acceptance of Christ guarantees forgiveness of any sin. If this is true, you're lying. If it's not true, you're deluded - but we won't hold that against you since if it's not true you're one among millions. Either way, please peddle your personal judgment elsewhere -- your beliefs as posted have nothing to do with the religion you [apparently] claim to follow.
Some say that this is "playing god" others are saying it's changing "evolution". The thing is the majority of people will continue having babies the normal way ... i.e. randam act = random child.
Having gone through the IVF process with my wife, it is an expensive and emotionally draining process. Not to mention the physical stress it places on a woman's body. The point is, for such a small percentage, I don't see it really impacting the future of our species that dramatically.
---
Got sand in my keyboard
CORRECTAMUNDO!!!
Evolution is defined as natural selection of random mutations. It's surprising just how many geeks, who should be very familiar with what "random" means, will still advocate the idea of genetic selection and manipulation of offspring. I personally think it's from reading too many sci-fi novels in which "genetic manipulation" results in supermen or the like.
Once our society begins selecting and/or rejecting offspring based on their genes, or we begin manipulating our genetic codes, evolution stops. We won't have moved into another kind of evolution. We won't be make our evolution more efficient. We'll have stopped evolving altogether, at least in the only way we understand the evolution of organism.
In technical terms, we will have moved humanity from a local random search to a heuristics based local search. The difference cannot be emphasized enough. Here we have a local random search for better organisms that has delivered incredible(literally to some) results over millions of years. Yet people are proposing replacing that system with heuristics that have no other qualification other than certain people think they will lead to improvement. Genetic manipulation advocates fail Optimisation 101.
Some will argue that parents have the right to procreate in any way they choose. But as I've advocated before, rights do not scale up. Just because it seems right that one person should be able to do something, you cannot just inductively apply that logic to the entire population. And when you grant a right, that's exactly who you grant it to. Everybody.
I'd liken genetic manipulation to interbreeding. Some people think it should be moral to marry your cousin or even sibling. They can even make a good case for why they should be entitled to do so. But if you scaled that right up to the entire populations, we'd all end up inbred, sickly and probably mentally retarded within a hundred or so years. Genetic selection promises much the same outcome, except genetic homogeneity will occur on a population wide scale.
Inductively scaling procreation rights up can easily lead us to a tall, trim, blue eyed, blond haired, heap of flu-ridden corpses. The very fact that this clinic offered such frivolities as eye and hair colour screening shows that this is exactly what will happen if we replace proven randomness with such vapid heuristics.
May the Maths Be with you!
Think about the implications of couples decided to only have male babies for any reason, and there are many: Males statistically get paid more, more athletic, CHINA, etc. etc. We could have an extremely lopsided society full of sexually frustrated males. That compounded with penis envy and more competition in the field of computer science could mean terrible wars. Also, it may force many to become homosexual, and that would anger God and the republicans. We'd all be smited. But in all seriousness, the socialogical impacts could be profoundly negative, in ways not even imagined, if this practice was widely adopted. Fulling with nature on this fundamental social level could really screw things up. Thoughts?
Mr. and Mrs. Jones, we've been able to isolate the genetic material, and we see two possibilities. One will likely be very intelligent, but will prefer spending time alone on a computer to social interaction. The other will be physically fit, to the point of being a star football player. He won't be very intelligent, but he'll be very outgoing and should easily fit into all the popular crowds. Which one would you choose?
By the way, I have cystic fibrosis, and while it does suck, it's who I am. I like being a geek; I don't know what would have happened had a been a healthy strapping young lad.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
take footbinding
when footbinding was first outlawed, it still went on. it only gradually faded away
of course just outlawing something doesn't make it automatically disappear. it takes time
and some things that are outlawed, simply out of moral zealotry, never go away. like prohibition and alcohol. if you outlawed abortion for example, abortion would still go on. why? because there is a need, and there will always be a need, by women and girls who get pregnant and don't want the child, to try to get rid of that child. so you let abortion be legal, because it will not just fade away. abortion will go on forever, whether legal or illegal
meanwhile, some practices are best described as barbaric cultural artifacts: clitorectomies, foot binding, preferring male children, etc. these do not go on forever. there is no underlying need for them, only cultural tradition. so if you outlaw these practices, they do not continually reassert themselves, like drinking alcohol or having abortions. the desire to drink alcohol will never ever go away. its very easy to make alcohol, and very easy to discover its pleasurable effects. therefore, no matter how much you outlaw it, it will still go on
but the desire to wrap your girl child's feet to keep them tiny? that DOES go away: there is no underlying need that is fulfilled by the activity, only a stupid traditional belief that has no continuing ongoing basic human need or desire that is fulfilled
so you are completely wrong. you exert change in society by making something illegal. that's completely effective, and completely valid way to change a cultural tradition: outlaw it if it is evil and barbaric, and it will genuinely fade away, as it should. AS LONG AS there is no underlying compelling reason to continue the practice, only simple cultural tradition, then the tradition dies, forever
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That, and if someone didn't like the eye/hair color, they would destroy the blob of cells which some people consider to be a person.
That's where you went off track.
This article is talking about choice. No population will achieve unanimity in choice (the Germans tried to do so by force but it was not accepted universally), so there will always be diversity in the final selection...
What you are talking about is systematic destruction, removal of an option because you (or someone else) does not like it. There is w world of difference between the two things.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
in a population of a few females and lots of males, the males will tend to murder and kill each other out of simple miserableness and a desire for the females, thus reestablishing the natural balance
but that observation doesn't explain why we shouldn't just tell people they can't pick the sex of their fetus!
that way, you have a natural balance of the sexes WITHOUT ALL THE MURDERING ;-P
in other words, there's a better way to restore the balance without lots of evil and miserable lives: good laws and a sound public policy and enforcement
you make the choice for a happy society, and you enforce the laws that create that happy society. or: simply letting the chips fall where they may creates a lot of human suffering
the point is to avoid the suffering right? or do you not care that you are letting a lot of people suffer... for the sake of a retarded archaic cultural custom?
how about we just murder the retarded custom? why is that not a superior approach to allowing a bunch of guys murder each other and in general have miserable lives?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Medical records are supposed to be confidential, so when a set of parents asked for their embryos to be screened for hair and eye color who is going to know. Most likely, the clinic will just stop advertising this service. Much like the way doctors practice euthanasia in states that don't allow it.
Beside, having blue eyes are a medical problem. Blue eyed folks have more eye problems than brown eyed folk.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
-1, Godwin.
The same logic, that's used to justify abortions, ought to discourage any attempts to regulate, what women choose to put inside their bodies. If no one can order an abortion clinic to close, why do we accept "public outrage" affecting a hair-color selection service?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
the topic is selecting a fetus on the basis of sex. i will ignore all the other points you are making about fetal selection because they don't matter either way as to the topic at hand. the topic is: selecting a fetus on the basis of sex. every other point you are talking about on the mechanics of fetal selection is just a completely different issue that doesn't argue for or against sex selection
but on the topic at hand, you are saying
"If the couple says "try a boy first", is this immoral? I would argue that it is morally neutral"
no, it is not morally neutral. it is morally neutral if it has no effects on anyone else. but if you have a society with more boys than girls, you are dooming a bunch of innocent boys ot a miserable liveless life
it is NOT morally neutral to allow people to pick the sex of their fetus. allowing them to do that has obvious and easy to appreciate immoral effects on society: a bunch of miserable loveless men
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
with apologies to Monty Python... but as far as I'm concerned on this issue... the Pope is right... and the selection process shouldn't even screen for sex either...
"Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 15.3)." WTF??????? This filtering is getting ridiculous... I was going to quote the entire song... but couldn't get round this stupid block...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
and why is this even relevant to the modern generation?
idiots in pointy hats count for nothing. the guy (the office) stopped being relevant around the turn of the 20th century.
there isn't a bearded sky wizard. there also isn't a santa claus or tooth fairy or easter bunny and people, once dead, don't rise up again (only to go back into hiding until some undisclosed time).
if you were told the jesus story and the names were all changed, you'd never believe in it and you'd think it was at the same level as oden and thor.
break free of the old delusions. "free your mind and your ass will follow."
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Want to grow up to become an athlete? Sorry, your parents couldn't afford to select genes that predispose you to becoming tall / strong / better cardiovascular function.
Want to grow up to become a model? Sorry, your parents couldn't afford to give you a slender physique, blond, and blue eyes.
Those are a really poor examples. Even if you give a child those attributes they may not have the dexterity or will to really perform in sports. By the time you kid grows up blond/blue eyed models may be as common as dirt - all you have is an attractive female.
Whatever you select for physically, is no guarantee of future success in anything - it's still up to the person to make those attributes work. It may help a little but (in sports for example) it's not going to overcome someone with real drive for the subject.
Want health insurance? Sure, but it's going to be more expensive because your parents couldn't afford to eliminate your risk of ALS.
Not seeing the problem here. You should be able to pay more up front to pay less for insurance over a lifetime, although that would in reality be a small factor in what you would pay compared to things like you being a smoker.
You should have to pay more for insurance if you are a higher risk. If I choose to take up sky diving as a hobby I should pay for more life insurance, I am a greater risk - any kind of insurance is all about balancing risk, and any attempt to skew away from that leads to financial ruin in the end. The universe is not made to treat everyone equally and pretending like it should always fails eventually.
The challenging part is that yeah, if I have the choice to prevent my future kids from developing life-shortening diseases, I've got to do it.
I would have thought there to be a natural moral imperative to do so. Do you *want* your kids to get ALS? Do you not want them to have every advantage possible? If you want kids you should do what you can to insure success. Nature does this all the time and I don't see why we as a species have to hamstring ourselves. If you are scared about people gaining advantage through genetic screening then why not go the other way and say all children should be raised in group homes so as not to have the advantage of a loving family? That's unfair too, not everyone gets that.
In the end it's not going to give a huge advantage to the rich because as much as you design the initial person, environment is a huge factor in the person you eventually get. Mixing genes from Winston Churchill, Ghandi, and Mother Teresa does not mean you'll necessarily get a good leader, or even a good short order cook. The rich have been able to spend money foolishly for all time and you would do well not to deny the natural impulse.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
male fetuses are preferred over female ones in these traditional cultures. but arguing for the continuation of that practice ON THE BASIS OF EQUALLY IMMORAL CULTURAL PRACTICES is a self-supporting logical fallacy. you are basically saying "we should continue allowing preference for males because the society in question continues to have immoral beliefs concerning females"
the question then becomes: how do you change the whole set of cultural beliefs that recreates each other? you are saying i'm ignoring the cultural context in which the immoral practice is being made. i am saying: who fucking cares about the cultural context. yes i understand WHY it happens. but understanding WHY it happens does not explain why it should be tolerated, it merely embeds the practice deeper in society and makes it more difficult to change. but it does not remove the argument for changing it. see?
the whole point is to destroy and remove the wrong practice, no? then: simply outlaw sex selection of the fetus. of course it will still go on. when footbinding was outlawed, it did not disappear overnight. it takes time to change a culturally ingrained practice, but it does not remove the moral imperative to change it!
the society at large will be forced to reexamine its poor atittude towards women and girls when it is not allowed the immoral outlet of sex selection of fetuses. that it has poor attitudes towards women and girls is no argument to allow the continuation of sex selection of fetuses
if you can make a coherent humanistic argument as to why something should be wrong, then outlaw the traditional cultural practice. that it is diffiult and deeply ingrained does not in any way argue for the acceptance of that practice. if it is wrong, it is wrong. if it is wrong and deeply ingrained, it is still wrong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What's wrong with trying to get the eye color or hair color you want?
There is a big downside: loss of genetic diversity. Having as wide a gene pool as possible is a very good idea if you want a species to survive the next serious pandemic. Limiting diversity for sensible reasons (like no genetic diseases) is fine because there is a clear, obvious benefit. Limiting diversity because you want your baby to have blue eyes and blonde hair is not because there is no real benefit. Choosing a baby's gender is even worse since it can lead to sever social problems if one sex is prefered over the other.
"I know what you're thinking, 'cause right now I'm thinking the same thing. Actually, I've been thinking it ever since I got here: Why oh why didn't I take the BLUE pill?" -- Cypher, "The Matrix" (The only movie in the series...the other two are dead to me.)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Frakkin' SLASHDOT 2.0...I meant this to be a reply to someone else's post. [headdesk]
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
to stop the practice
of course not being allowed to select the embryo means some assholes will go further and kill a baby or abort a later term fetus for retarded reasons
but none of these facts means that sex selection of fetuses should be allowed
i'm just afraid that because you think people will go to further extremes to get rid of female children, that you think sex selection should be allowed
no, the existence of assholes that will go to further extremes to not have female children is no reason to allow sex selection in embryos
some people are desperate when they are broke. some will rob in order to get money. but if you don't let them rob, then some will kill in order to get money. so since some people will go to further extremes, we should allow them lesser transgressions? no: you don't kill or rob, and the fact that some will kill, is no reason to allow someone to rob
if it's wrong, it's wrong. that someone will do something more wrong if you don't let them do something mildly wrong, is no reason to allow them to do something mildly wrong
the effects of skewed sex ratios is real and obvious: thousands of lifetimes of loveless miserable men with no female to love. so no, you do not get to pick the sex of a fetus, regardless of how extreme some people will go in order to do that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It seems to me possible that if people select their offspring intentionally based on genetic information, then we will tend to have less diversity of outcomes, which will impact evolution, and will also perhaps reduce our species' survivability.
I used to think so too, but if choices made are of a cosmetic criteria then I doubt there will be less diversity. Take hair colour for instance, some want children with blonde hair while others want black headed children, brunettes, or redheads. Meanwhile some may want athletic children while others want intelligent or creative children. Quite simply not everyone wants the same things.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's great that your kids turned out well, and I don't doubt that the surprises were thrilling. But how can you deny other parents the chance to give their children whatever advantages they can, as they see them?
On the issue of the forces we do not understand, yes, they are out there. We do not understand everything yet. But we understand a great deal more than we did 200 years ago, and it is a fair guess that we'll make a comparable amount of progress in the next 40 or so. Then genetics will not hold great mysteries for us. We will be on to something even more profound, like how matter came to be or why light has a speed limit or how many universes there are...
811.29.3.2
The summary insinuates that the pope is only finally coming down on IVF now that they're selecting for certain eye and hair color, but this is not at all true from what little Catholic doctrine I'm familiar with- particularly the Humanae vitae encyclical from 1968. Quote lifted from http://www.catholicinsight.com/online/church/vatican/article_475.shtml:
"In summary, the Catholic Church condemns as gravely evil acts, both IVF in and of itself, and stem cell research performed on IVF embryos."
Obviously not everyone has to agree with this stance, but the Catholic opposition to IVF and everything that comes with it is NOT new.
Can't screening be done before the eggs are fertilized? To me a fertilized egg is a human at that point so whether it is implanted or not you are destroying a human life. I would imagine that there should be a way to choose what traits you want from the sperm and egg instead of messing around with a fertilized egg/human.
You got the touch!
because they have been given lives of happiness, relative to societies with less freedoms and personal protections
in other words, if you want population decline, you give people happy lives, and they naturally choose to have less children
of course there are other ways to population decline: let people have brutal beliefs and practices as you say they should. and so they have lots of children, and these children go on to leave brutal short miserable lives
for some retarded reason, you think this is superior
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The end argument to this is simply that eugenics in any form has had no positive history. That in it of itself should be a least a cause for pause before proceeding. And: The fact that you have people still considering traits like hair and eye color in the 21st century after centuries of racisim and exploitation tells me that we're still not ready for this power. We are going to screw this up guaranteed. It starts with eye and hair color, then it goes down the slipperly path of ethnic/"racial" traits. I for one believe this should only be used for people who have confirmed genetic defects so as not to bring into the world a child that will suffer needlessly.
The only problem Gattaca brings up is that it's a bad idea to discriminate based on rule of law and the attitude towards those naturally born.
Genetic selection doesn't automatically mean people will form said attitude, or enact legislation against those "naturally" born or not.
"The market" will decide because anyone with a risk of heart issues will no longer be pilots or astronauts. Anyone with a risk of short tempers will no longer be encouraged to be police officers (because of liability issues when screening).
The issue in GATTACA was that people stopped remembered that "a chance of having", or "at risk of", or "more likely to" became "will do this" and "will have that". That's Vincent showed: just because there was a chance or higher probability of something, doesn't mean it's predetermined.
There is a HUGE difference between KILLING someone with a disease and make someone with a disease better. I would have thought this would have been obvious to anyone with the morals of a rat. Apperently not.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Any who participate or who knows someone who participates are sinners...
What? Since when was it a sin to know someone who committed a sin? I too would mod this funny, and I am a Christian. Come on man, you give genuine Christians a bad name when you post crap like this.
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
"i am going to rob you
and if you don't let me rob you, i will kill you and take your money
based on that fact, you should let me rob you"
that's your argument in a nutshell: because i MIGHT do a worse transgression, you should allow me to do a minor transgression
reality: 1% of those denied the ability to pick their child's sex at the embryo stage will leave a baby in a dumpster
and because of the existence of that 1%, you say we should allow all the rest do a practice which results in skewed sex ratios and thousands of men with miserable loveless lonely lives
this is not a moral argument you are making, this is giving into bullying by a tiny minority of immoral assholes: "i will get what i want the easy way or the hard way, so let me get it the easy way"
no
how about you don't get what you fucking want if what you want is evil?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Once our society begins selecting and/or rejecting offspring based on their genes, or we begin manipulating our genetic codes, evolution stops.
Well if 'your society' means the whole world then granted you're on the right track. But this kind of technology is so far away from being offered to anyone outside the richest few within the richest societies it's a niche market at best. Do you think the majority of Africa, China and India (combined population of over 3 billion, i.e. half the current population of the globe) are getting access to fertility treatment let alone trait selection? Maybe it happens soon, but I doubt it will happen soon enough for any problems of genetic homogeniety to go under the radar . . . And lets be honest the rich have always had a problem with genetic diversity so I personally have no issues with the process speeding up ;)
Not all uses of sex selection are for social reasons. For example, I am male and have an X-chromosomal genetic disorder that I'd very much like to avoid giving to any of my (as yet purely hypothetical) children. Ergo, for my putative offspring to be healthy [or at least avoid the disorder I've been afflicted with], they would have to be male as well. So it might be appropriate to look at things with a bit more of a nuanced view than "it's absolutely evil and should be totally banned."
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Everyone seems to be using GATTICA as the potential 'what could go wrong' but Larry Niven actually hit this pretty hard in "A World Out of Time". In summary, all people with congenital/hereditary conditions were not allowed to have children and lifespans improved dramatically. There's a lot of other social issues in there but I think that one speaks more strongly about the potential for genetic screening being used in fertility clinics.
Back on topic. Why a person decides or doesn't decide to carry a child to term or even let the embryo develop is a private issue. It's that person's choice and decision. Yes, I'm pro-choice obviously. I don't feel every life is sacred or that life begins at conception. I'm not suggesting going back to the Roman practice of exposing (abandoning to the elements) an unwanted or unhealthy child. But as long as people are able and allowed to reproduce without any kind of oversight why should there be any kind of oversight for NOT reproducing? Seems a bit hypocritcal, doesn't it?
If someone doesn't want to emplant an embryo because the child may have brown eyes then there's a lot bigger problem there than the initial screening. It starts with a person who is so determined to have a child that they are at a fertility clinic but is refusing a potential child because of the color of their eyes. That's shallow beyond words.
A bizarre statement, considering the Pope's opinion of IVF in general.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Pre-selecting for females is unnatural and inhumane, but gelding the vast majority of males because you just don't need that many studs is perfectly ok? Yeah, that's real logically consistent!
People have a real blind spot when it comes to horses. In the US, they have basically outlawed the use of horses for any kind of food as "inhumane". As a result, now many more horses than ever are starving to death. Yeah, that's much more humane!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If you have a large population of men without women, they're going to want more women. The most obvious way to get them is to kill some of the other men and take their women. Especially considering that many of the places that value men more than women aren't the most civilized to begin with.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Maybe allowing the screening of traits isn't such a bad thing. If the parents that wanted blondes also wanted smart kids it could help to increase our average overall intelligence. There's a lot of truth to the movie Idocracy ... the dumb breed much more prolifically than the smart. This is evidenced by the over all lack of "nookie" for the /. target demographic. We like to think that although unintentionally celibate, we are at least smarter than your average bear :)
Diversity is a survival factor. Any practice that becomes widespread enough to effectively limit genetic diversity is limiting the long-term survival potential of the species. In cellular terms, individuals that insist on making unlimited perfect copies of themselves are known as cancerous cells. Not good for the survival of the organism as a whole.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
#1: "i am going to rob you
and if you don't let me rob you, i will kill you and take your money
based on that fact, you should let me rob you"
that's your argument in a nutshell: because i MIGHT do a worse transgression, you should allow me to do a minor transgression
reality: 1% of those denied the ability to pick their child's sex at the embryo stage will leave a baby in a dumpster
and because of the existence of that 1%, you say we should allow all the rest do a practice which results in skewed sex ratios and thousands of men with miserable loveless lonely lives
this is not a moral argument you are making, this is giving into bullying by a tiny minority of immoral assholes: "i will get what i want the easy way or the hard way, so let me get it the easy way"
no
how about you don't get what you fucking want if what you want is evil?
#2: and... yes, sex selection is evil, period, always
you point to some HYPOTHETICAL future where sex selection is innocent and won't affect sex ratios. two horrible assumptions on your part:
1. that people would select girls and boys equally, as if the biases that could exist that would prefer one sex over the other are magically contradictory. if you consider all of the hypothetical reasons that could be given, they would inevitably skew to girls or boys. how can i be sure of this? because there is no intelligent reason anyone could ever give for doing this, only shallow and selfish reasons. and these whimsical reasons always skew to fashion and trendy thinking. which means the reasons will always occurs in herd like behavior, meaning people will always trend to prefer boys, or girls, in groups, thereby always affecting sex ratios
2. you examine your hypothetical future where the reasons for choosing a boy or a girl are not the traditional reasons going on china. what are their reasons? "girls are cuter". "i always liked boy babies". "girls are a hassle". etc.
in other words, all of the reasons they would list are horribly shallow or otherwise dysfunctional or outright selfish. there is no REASON, emphasis on the concept of "reason", real today, or in a hypothetical future, where preferring a boy over a girl is morally neutral and harmless. all of the reasons are essentially flawed when examined. allow people to pick the sex they want, and all of the idiotic reasons that would naturally exert themselves for doing that would result in skewed ratios. there is no reason that could possibly be given for picking the sex of a fetus that is morally neutral
3. finally, lets make believe there really is a hypothetical good reason to allow someone to pick a girl or a boy. ok, now how do you separate out the good reasons from the bad reasons? you can't. you need to allow people to pick the sex of their child, or not allow them too. if you allow them, all of the bad reasons naturally swamp out the good reasons, and you wind up with skewed sex ratios, since people always act in shallow trends and herdlike behavior. are you going to tell me that people act on their good reasons for doing something like this in a majority?
i'm sorry, you just can't let the whimsical thinking that drive fashion trends drive sex selection. it will always occur in TRENDS (thus there will always be a skew in the sex ratio) and you could never isolate the bad reasons from the good reasons. therefore, you can never let people pick the sex of their babies, because when you do that, sex ratios will drift
you are creating widespread social misery for reasons which are never more than essential whimsy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but its acceptable for example when someone breaks into your house at night and you don't know their intentions
cannibalism is absolutely evil
but its acceptable if your airplane crashes in the mountains with no food for months except for a bunch of dead bodies lying around in the snow
there are exceptions to everything. picking the sex of a fetus is, yes, absolutely evil. and there are exceptions to that too
so i turn your pronouncement on its head: just because there are extenuating circumstances which make exceptions to everything in this world, does not mean you shouldn't take a forceful stand against something truly vile in the general case
so, i say: picking the sex of a fetus is absolutely evil. that you point out extenuating circumstances and modifications in context of rare situations doesn't change the fact it is still absolutely evil in the general case
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1% of those denied the ability to pick their child's sex at the embryo stage will leave a baby in a dumpster
and because of the existence of that 1%, you say we should allow all the rest do a practice which results in skewed sex ratios and thousands of men with miserable loveless lonely lives
this is not a moral argument you are making, this is giving into bullying by a TINY MINORITY of immoral assholes: "i will get what i want the easy way or the hard way, so let me get it the easy way"
no
how about you don't get what you fucking want if what you want is evil?
1% of those denied the right to pick the sex the easy way will pick it the hard way. and the existence of those assholes does not mean you should allow all the rest to be allowed the easy choice
if offered to 100 traditionally-minded couples: "i will sort your embryos and pick the boy for you", 90 of them may choose to do that
if offered to 100 traditionally-minded couples: "you can have a boy if you murder this girl baby bheiond the shed": 2 of them may choose to do that
the existence of that extreme fringe who will do the truly heinous does not excuse a more mild form of an essentially evil practice
and besides, we are talking about traditional practices which are usually limited to the rural and the poor. the rural and the poor are not going to be able to afford expensive sex selection services. there is an economics quesiton in play here. you are presenting the flawed argument that girl babies won't be dumped in the garbage if sex selection were legal
reality: if sex selection were 100% legal, you'd still get babies in the dumpster. because the people who do this are MOSTLY POOR and can't afford this expensive service
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A couple owns the sperm, owns the egg, and owns the womb. Property rights say you should be able to do anything you want this property unless you are actively hurting someone. Having one eye color or another is not hurting anyone.
how retarded is this asshole? a society where an innocent segment of the population must be murdered in order to get a woman?
and then i noticed that your username is "cro magnon"
so now i see you are just talking common sense for your prehistoric species
carry on ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From http://oneminute.rationalmind.net/designer%20babies/
Genetic screening via sexual selection has been practiced since the dawn of life itself. No one suggests that we should pick a mate entirely at random, so the objection to genetic screening and engineering is due to the element of technology. Their objections are not to "designer babies" as such, but to the use of technology to improve the lives of human beings. They apply equally to a child whose genes are altered after birth, or to an adult. The logical conclusion of this neo-luddism is the opposition of all man-made improvements to human life as "unnatural."
even the pope objected? The pope objects to in vitro fertilization as immoral and beneath the dignity of the human being. Why would it be surprising to anybody that this is also objected too.
Simple fact, why wouldnâ(TM)t they do this? I mean either the embryos created in-vitro are human beings and should be treated with human dignity or they are a few cells of interesting chemicals. In the first place in vitro fertilization itself if immoral , because it requires the destruction of human beings and sanitizes the creation of human persons in an unhealthy way removing it from the natural beauty within which every human person has a right to be created. Or in vitro is not immoral because all you have afterwards are some interesting chemicals. Choosing the characteristics of those chemicals is supposed to be immoral why?
In my mind the answer is obvious in vitro fertilization is itself immoral, the pope would agree.
I think this hair, eye selection just makes it more obvious that what we are dealing with here are not simply , eggs, or embryos or chemicals, we are dealing with human beings who should be treated with the respect due to human beigns.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Frankly, giving the current prevalence of capitalism, it seems unlikely that most people would be able to afford the wholesale genetic rewriting of their children for the sake of vanity. So given that our unequal distribution of wealth is a problem unlikely to disappear at any point in the foreseeable future and that companies will almost certainly charge for the service of changing your offspring's DNA, you will, most likely, find that distribution of wealth enough to create a heterogeneous genetic population before we consider religious differences, cultural differences, personal preferences, aesthetics, trends, and fashion. And let's not forget that are significant populations who would likely choose not to engage in genetic engineering.
Society's geared for it already, just start some divergent evolution with something like this and away you go!
Not that I'm against "designer babies," *meaningful* evolution in humans has basically stopped now that we've overcome pretty much all of nature's selective pressures IMO...I was just pointing out how your argument could work both ways.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
if you outlaw murder, people will still murder
but you still outlaw murder, because its wrong
if you outlaw sex selection, people will still sex select embryos/ fetuses/ babies
but you still outlaw sex selection, because it is wrong
with me so far?
by analogy to YOUR argument, since people still murder even though it is illegal, we should make make murder legal
why do you think you speak for fact and logical deduction? your entire line of reasoning is flawed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"If you need IVF, then you are deficient and should NOT reproduce! "
Actually, my understanding (and I may be wrong) is that about one in six couples have varying degrees of fertility issues - and both are fertile, but not very well with each other. They are not exactly defective, but have not picked the correct mate. It suggests to me that we may be seeing some signs of speciation.
Is there any work ongoing to determine if the human race may be splitting into divergent species? Because if speciation is occurring, I think we can safely assume that evolution - the old fashioned kind that God intended - is still alive and well.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Which is still a choice. The couples may have wanted a child with a certain hair and eye color combination, but if subsequent testing showed that despite their choice the cells didn't take the choice and the parents decide not to have the child, the destruction of the cells is still a choice.
That's a person's choice over their own cells.
Not the systematic banning of an entire class of cells (say, no blondes) for all humanity. Not a ban on people making specific choices who want to get pregnant in any one country.
It's still personal choice from below vs. destruction by banning from above.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
sex selection in the situation of horribly debilitating sex-linked conditions
if someone is screened and is positive for a sex-linked condition, and they have a fetus of that sex, they should have every right to not have that child based on that fact. absolutely. agreed
but all other reasons are invalid
simply because there is no way to screen for the reasons. they are all whimsy. and even if the reason could be show to be perfectly harmless, it would be swamped by all the bad reasons that would result in skewed sex ratios
prove any of the following statements wrong, and you prove me wrong:
1. if allowed to choose the sex of their fetuses, most people would do so for whimsical reasons. seems absolutely true to me based on simple human behavior
2. whimsy and fancy follow shallow trends. again, seems absolutely undeniable. on shallow whimsical thinking, people act in herds
3. therefore, trends in whimsical thinking would result in sex choices trending in less boys or less girls in a given time period, skewing sex ratios. they wouldn't cancel out, they would result in waves of more boys or more girls in a given time period. for example: name choices for babies. this absolutely subject to faddishness and herd behavior and popularity. if people were allowed to choose sexes for faddish reasons, the same sort of popularity contest of shallow pointless ideas would result in more boys or more girls in any given time period
do you see any flaw in my reasoning in 1, 2 or 3?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The worst problem with controlling the genetics of _any_ population is that there's always going to be some trait which we don't fully comprehend the importance of. Obvious examples: - Sickle cell anemia: considered a health problem to someone living in an American city, but elsewhere can provide life-saving resistance to malaria - slow metabolism: while this makes you more likely to become fat/obese in a food-rich country spending your time indoors, you wouldn't want to be skinny if you had to hunt for every meal, and lived in the Canadian arctic (even with a Gortex coat you'd be at a disadvantage - low IQ : there are plenty of jobs out there that normal/below average people are comfortable with, but the very intelligent would find unbearable. And then, there's skin pigmentation: too little and you burn in the sun and need to wear sunscreen/stay inside, and too much and you produce less vitamin D and need to adjust your diet/stay outside.
I do not believe in intefering with the mystical process whereby life comes forth, and I have no wish to play God.
My wife and I have been blessed with our child and we love him to death. Yes, I was a little surprised that he is black (we're both pasty white Caucasians), but we love him and accept him fully as ours.
And he's so cute and well adjusted, although he's only a few years young, it makes this young dad's heart burst at the seams with pride!! And other people love him to death too! For example, you should see my wife's tennis instructor (who is black) play with him! They even look alike! It's so cute.
idiots in pointy hats count for nothing. the guy (the office) stopped being relevant around the turn of the 20th century.
I wonder if it's related that that is just about the same time that that evil organization finally officially banned torture and murder as the appropriate (just, moral, ethical etc.) punishment for heresy?
When everyone can choose then the uncommon will be the unique and desired. If everyone decides to have blond haired blue eyed kids then if you do not have it then you really stand out from the crowd and stand a better chance of being noticed and succeeding.
We have embryos screened for a short list of things that would normally result in the child not living to adult hood (typically a very poor quality life that is very short). Maybe we did screen out the one that would cure cancer by the age of 12 but I will hedge my bets otherwise. In my thinking all the embryos are a product of me and they are just testing the results of the DNA mix. Nothing is changed, added or removed; only DNA profile is generated and analyzed.
In order for evolution to work to our benefit, there has to be "Natural Selection". We've created environments in which there is virtually no barrier to reproduction. Glasses, for instance, make it possible for individuals with crappy eyesight to live their lives and pass down their genes.
Without stressors to trim the bad mutations and promote the good ones, what use is evolution to us?
But.. but... I want a kid designed by HR Giger or Brian Froud.
"Once our society begins selecting and/or rejecting offspring based on their genes [...] evolution stops."
You mean, for example, by establishing normative values of beauty so that people are more likely to want to have children with people who fit a particular morphology as a result of their genes, right?
Or is it only laboratory selection that has you up in arms, because of the destruction of the non-selected blastocysts?
Or is it that the selection is most likely to happen in affluent first-world countries, where there's enough disposable income to make the procedure routinely affordable there, but not elsewhere, potentially giving those countries significant genetic advantages over everyone else?
PS: I hate to break it to you, but we've already shot evolution in the foot by keeping people with congenital issues alive past the point in time where they are able to breed. Explicit selection is a matter of amount, not of kind. For every person with kids who wouldn't have them without shooting up humalin to replace their inability to produce insulin, or for every near-sighted person with kids because they didn't walk in front of that bus due to RK (or, more prosaically, corrective lenses), we've already interfered with the natural selective pressures (against) those people procreating.
-- Terry
auto-erotica?
or another way of 'burning rubber'
Who cares about these things? Who is to say that one trait is better than another? Maybe if you were making people for a specific purpose, but then you moved from the realm of bizarre and silly to the realm of creepy and evil.
This is the problem I have with in-vitro fertilization in general. If you can't reproduce naturally, it is more healthy psychologically to accept it and look into other alternatives (like adoption, or helping your friends and siblings raise their children). Going to extreme lengths to have children means that you are obsessed with it. Parents who are obsessed with their children are bad parents.
If you are planning to have children, and planning what your children will be like, and planning to send them to the best college so they can be a doctor and make you proud, all you plans are really about you and your child's role as an extension of yourself. You can say that you are doing it for their good, buy you have no way to know them or what they will want so any decision you make is really a projection of your own feelings. This is generally what passes for parenting in our society, so I can't really fault someone who does this anymore than someone who tells their children they are worthless unless they go to college.
Still, it's all screwed up.
I know all too many couples who have left off breeding until the female is in her 40s and therefore less likely to bring a sprog to term, in the interests of financial or lifestyle security, and who suddenly become devastated when their first attempts fail to bear fruit.
I'd rather people wait until they are financially capable of caring for children before having them. If more people had done that maybe we wouldn't have the bad economy we find ourselves in now.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
During their lives those ovum are bombarded by radiation and just plain get old.
Those ovum can also be harvested and stored.
Boys are different. We just make what we need, over and over and over and over.
Yes, males do reproduce sperm throughout their lives., but like female eggs those sperm suffers from damages in old age. "More DNA Damage to Older Men's Sperm". There are more articles like that, sperms damage "old age" health OR medicine.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
We are designing our babies when we choose (often poorly) who we want to reproduce with. It's the same way we've been doing "genetic engineering" for centuries with species of plants and animals. All the different food you eat wouldn't exist without man interfering and selectively breeding crops and livestock for desirable traits like larger body mass an higher resistance to frost. New techniques just make the process faster and easier with a higher success rate but when we apply these same technologies to H. sapiens people freak out.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Is there any work ongoing to determine if the human race may be splitting into divergent species?
We're in the opposite circumstances. Speciation, which is what it is when one species splits into 2 or more, usually requires isolation. There are very few isolated pockets of humans, most anyone can be half way around the world within a day, week at most. A person of one race can mate with members of many other races., which while I like that, can lead to loss of culture and knowledge.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But if you require artificial assistance to procreate, chances are your descendants will as well. Why would you want to propagate those genes?
Wait until you want children but have your nuts shot off.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You would lose all of our geniuses in favor of the next Prom Queen. You would lose even the nerds.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
First, it was blue eyes. But I didn't care, since I could afford blue eyes for my son, and it wasn't that important, anyway. Then, it was higher people. But I didn't care, since I was tall and my daughter would probably be tall, too. Then, it was higher IQ. At that time, it was too late and expensive for my niece. He would belong to the "untouchable" caste and his offspring too... (note: I believe this future is unavoidable)
Please google and research "peak oil" a bit. You will discover this crisis is a lot worse than they have told you
It's already a moot point in humans. The environmental pressures which tend to favor many genetic advances do not exist, or rather most environmental pressures for non-optimal genetics have been removed. There are effectively no predators and we offer support (shelter, food) to those who cannot gainfully procure them due to natural inability.
You could say that there is social evolution and certain traits allow us to excel, however those traits are not necessarily useful (tall, comely) when it comes to the health and longevity of the human. In fact, those in higher social circles - often due to luck (including career choice), family, or work ethic (we'll hold that argument) - have far better healthcare than the masses and can buy their way out of a lot of problems (such as infertility).
No, for most of the first world, natural selection is no longer in effect is it was envisioned prior to the 20th century.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
... over this issue. We're not talking about selectively breeding every baby on earth. Even if every fertility clinic on the planet began offering this service, and every one of their clients took them up on it, you'd have, what, several hundred babies a year born this way? They'd be swamped by the enormous number born the old fashioned way. While I do think there are ethical issues to be considered before we go blindly making a bunch of designer babies, worrying about the end of evolution on a species-wide basis is a little over the top.
... on Slashdot in, well, hours.
No, in fact, that is a cell. A single fertilized ovum is no more a human being than any of the cells in my body - after, we can clone now, meaning that any cell is a potential human being, right? So when I cut my finger and a drop of blood falls on the floor, should I be calling the coroner?
Look, I tend to agree that "nurture" is more important... but the final paragraph of the Wikipedia article indicates that 1) the research was not peer reviewed or published anywhere, 2) the researchers were fired by their institution for some ethical lapse, and 3) some of their peers doubt the study was even DONE. This doesn't exactly bolster your argument. Better citations, please.
Even if all the fertility clinics in the world produced nothing but blonde haired, blue eyed children, the impact on our genetic diversity would be... approximately zero. There are way, way, more kids being born the old fashioned way, and the randomness of these combinations is going to swamp the uniformity of the others.
I've got news for you. There are plenty of crazy religious folk who do reject life-saving drugs, even for their kids. Just a few weeks ago, some crazy religious woman from Minnesota essentially kidnapped her own child in the face of a court order to treat him for some form of lymphoma. She preferred prayer and herbs. Ultimately, she was not able to continue to stay on the run and turned herself and the child into authorities. Doctors estimated that he had probably a 90% chance of survival (for some standard period of time), but only on the order of 15% on the mother's preferred regimen.
Also, -1; Slippery Slope Argument. It's ridiculous to say that allowing abortions for literally brainless fetuses is morally the same as murdering fully competent adults, or that the first inevitably leads to the second. I'm not sure who thinks this is "insightful".
We can clone mammals. By your logic, every scrap of tissue that ever gets separated from my body should be treated with the respect due a human being, because each cell has every potential that I had as an ovum. That point of view is, quite frankly, nutty.
Embryos != humans.
True at the moment. However if it becomes socially acceptable, and cheaper, for people to do this then more people are likely to - especially if you can filter for things like intelligence. If you could keep the fraction low then I'd agree with you but once someone is allowed to do it the risk is that the demand will increase.