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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.
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.
I'd go even further and say any medical procedure, drug, etc. could be considered playing god. Sorry Timmy you got TB and are going to die, yes we could give you some pills to save you but that is playing god.
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.
Except there is no god, so you can't play him. Once more, religion gets in the way of science.
Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
What's wrong with trying to get the eye color or hair color you want? What is the difference with that and picking the sex?
I'm not sure I get it either. As a subsequent poster points out, it's screening, not "designing". Couples are choosing among existing embryos.
Screening has been going on for millions of years. Humans have always been able to choose their mates based on visible criteria like hair color, eye color, athletic ability, etc. Why is screening acceptable for invisible traits (like propensity for cancer and other genetic predispositions), but not for visible traits?
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...
This really doesn't seem to be about religion to me.
I have 2 children. I love them dearly, and would never change anything about them. Part of the thrill of parenting, is the gamble about what kind of child you will end up with. To be able to choose the traits of your children, seems to make it all a bit superficial to me. Why not just grow them in a test tube?
Hell, why not just make baby farms as described in the Matrix? If we're going to take the gamble out of genetics, whats left for us?
As far as "Playing god" or whatever name you want to give it, "God" in this instance does not neccesarily refer to any given diety, but simply refers to the unknown force that normally determines the traits of your child.
I believe that there are forces in this world that we do not understand, that we should not understand, and that we should not meddle with because we don't understand them. Whether the decry came from the pope himself, or some guy living on the streets in new york, the message is still the same. By letting people choose their babies traits, we are taking away something that is profound.
When my first child was born, the first thing the nurse said to me was "Her eyes are brown... that never happens". I would not trade that moment for anything in the world.
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
Once more, religion gets in the way of science. Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
Historically speaking, the Church (Galileo notwithstanding!) and Islam during the medieval period played a very large part in encouraging the development of science, medicine, and the arts. It varied by time period and region, but the link can't be denied.
Second, one thing that confuses me about these sorts of statements is this - presumably, you think religion is just some nonsense that stupid people latch on to. But even if you get rid of religion, people are still going to be stupid. What makes you think that these stupid people won't find something else to latch on to that has the same sort of negative effects as religion? In fact, getting rid of religion might leave a vacuum that could be filled by something worse...
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
From what I understand, the principal objection of many people who are opposed to this sort of selection is that otherwise viable fertilized embryos, which do not meet the selection criteria, are discarded during the process. So, depending upon how one answers the "when does life begin?" question and the views one takes on the related issue of Abortion this sort of selection and discarding is either a choice like many others that parents make or murder; take your pick.
And the anti-social pasty white nerd gene too please.
Sorry CmdrTaco, half your audience will no longer exist in 20 years.
"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...
The Pope has referred to IVF as an "abomination", so no, he does not approve of IVF at all, designer eyes or no.
Someday I'll tell my daughter that she owes her existence, in part, to the fact that we aren't Catholic.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Your rant really makes no sense at all.
You see evolution is actually defined as "the change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next". The methods of change include random mutation, and natural selection but are not limited to it by any means. Because you are not using the proper definition of evolution, once we as (supposedly) intelligent beings begin modifying our own genetic code, evolution does not, in fact, stop. Rather human evolution changes from a random process to a directed process.
It is true that we could stop evolution, if we chose to do so. However, your assumption that the inevitable result is an end to change in the human genome suffers from some very large flaws. People actually have differing preferences, I'm sure there are many, many people who do not desire their children to be blue-eyed and blond Germans. If you were correct, we could reasonably expect every child to be called "Hans" or "Gretta" and frankly, even massively popular names never reach a level of ubiquity where everyone has the same name.
Furthermore, anyone with even the remotest trace of training in search algorithms can tell you that randomly selecting your results is a terrible search algorithm. It's slow, it's inefficient, and it's unbounded. Sure, eventually the correct result should be returned, but the heat death of the universe might occur first. That might be why it took about 3.7 billion years to produce us and we might represent a "lucky" search.
As far as rights go, it is an interesting question. However, you shouldn't confuse genetic tailoring with genetic cloning. At the current level parents are only able to choose between a selection of viable embryos. They are able to choose from a variety of outcomes they could have naturally produced. Even if we could rewrite the genetic code of an embryo it seems unlikely that we would change everything to the degree where we'd produce the human monoculture you dread so much.
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.
The fact that the clinic in question offered such frivolities as eye and hair colour screening shows people are interested in how their children will look. It has nothing to do with any of your other points, at least not without some type of information on what the parents who were allowed to screen their embryos chose. If you have some evidence to show that they all chose Nordic features, please do provide it.
In closing, you keep using that word "heuristics", I do not think it means what you think it means. A "vapid heuristic" would, in all honestly, best describe random mutation, not human genetic engineering.
Fanatically anti-fanatical