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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.
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.
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
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?
Also Gattaca: society could expect a certain baseline of traits for what is "human". So people who don't meet that could be considered disabled, or worse.
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!
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?
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 what you meant is that it works against the process of natural selection. Any selective process, including this type of artificial selection, furthers evolution, but in this case "fit to survive" means "able to pass the screening process." The example you chose, while still a very real concern, less to do with evolution than with genetic diversity, which, as you imply, is very important to the survival of the species should our environment change violently
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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.
A particularly good film on the subject (which raises some interesting things to think about) is GATTACA. For those of you who haven't seen it, I would highly recommend it. (Kudos to OP for mentioning, too.)
The biggest issue I have with genetic modification is trying to change it without first fully comprehending it. As is oft-said by my research supervisor- "it's like trying to find out how a car works by using a sledgehammer to hit parts of the engine". If we don't understand more of it, then there's a fair chunk of damage that could result from unforeseen complications.
Then again, should something go wrong, we can feign ignorance and ask for a bailout!
Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
You misunderstand 'evolution' - it's not a process of engineering the optimal lifeform. It's a random chance thing, where you bung a load of mutations in a pot, and see which ones die. ... can you ever see humans being so conformist as to have identical children with a low biodiversity such that they're susceptible to something like that?
Engineering out or in particular traits are all well and good, but
Not that I particularly care - as far as I'm concerned for the vast majority of humanity breeding is a privilege, not a right.
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?
But I believe that the time-tested natural selection is more reliable when it comes to the survival of our species.
It's random... and you conveintly forget babies that die almost immediately because of some genetic flaw or those born with MS, Downs, etc. Natural selection isn't chosing anything.. it's random, and unlike humans, doesn't care if the result will work or not.
Are there any records of (other) animals in nature, namely mothers, culling off her weaker children? Here are three examples.
Askmen Top 10 Bad Animal Kingdom Mothers
Lioness:
Any cubs of less than 2 years old are killed by the male to stop any future rivals challenging him for the pride, and also to encourage the lionesses to go into heat, allowing him to begin his own dynasty. The lionesses allow this to happen -- a cruel edge to their mothering nature.
Black Bears:
Black bears like to have litters of two or three cubs, as it takes a similar amount of effort to raise one cub as it does three. Because of this, it has been documented that if a black bear gives birth to just one cub, she will sometimes simply abandon it and will hope for a larger litter the following year. Unlike many animals that may abandon young which are sick or weak, the bear will abandon the youngster simply for being on its own.
African Black Eagle:
The African Black Eagle usually lays two eggs, although one is generally no more than an insurance policy. The idea of an insurance policy is quite common in the animal kingdom, but it is the manner in which the unwanted young is disposed of which is particularly shocking. The mother will feed only one chick, and as it grows stronger it will peck its weaker sibling to death. What is especially gruesome about this is that the mother will look on impassively as her youngster is dispatched.
In hindsight, aborting a potential human in the womb seems a lot less brutal.
You are right, and I am glad that you will volunteer to be the person who has to die to prove whether or not a certain trait is hazardous to your health!
Me on the other hand, I will accept that I am warping the evolutionary chain in the hopes that I will be able to continue living...
The reality is that we have always been selecting and thus influencing evolution. For example why do you think women like older men? Survival of the fittest. In the old days you would have been lucky to make it to 40. If you got beyond that you were desirable since somehow your genes got you to the point where you were.
Or how about in cave times. Only those strongest and cruelest would survive since those would be the ones who would be spreading their genes with the most people.
Since I would most likely have died by the hand of somebody else (probably most of us on Slashdot would fit in that category) I for one approve of "meddling" with the "random" mutations.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
through out history there are groups of people just like that. Nazi's,(insert race) supremeists, etc that try or desire to limit humans to one hair, skin, eye color combos which they view as superior. This is well documented. We need our diversity. It is a major part of us. With out it we are far weaker.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
can you ever see humans being so conformist as to have identical children with a low biodiversity such that they're susceptible to something like that?
Yes, at least for significantly large populations of humans.
Little Boxes
1. Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
2. And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
3. And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.
4. And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This is a stupid argument. Every time I choose to blast a load on my girlfriend's belly instead of inside her vagina, I'm choosing which ones will have a chance and which won't.
How does globalization work against evolution? If anything it brings radically diverse genes closer, more variations, fitter offspring.
God, I hate that euphemism. Slippery slope. Get real people. Everyone already screens for DNA traits. Usually, though, people use secondary evidential characteristics rather than actual scientific DNA traits. I choose the DNA traits for my child. I choose someone who only had blond and red alleles for hair color and blue and green alleles for eye color. I chose the shape of the nose, the skeletal build, intelligence, etc. Ok so not all of my criteria were based on definable genes, but some were. I wound up with a blue-eyed, strawberry blonde, average height, above average intellect child. It's stupid to get upset over choosing eye and hair color.
All this means is that the new questionnaires will include questions like what color is your hair and that of your parents and siblings. Ditto on eye color.
Duh.
The people who want to choose eye color will still be able to, only not quite as foolproof, and the clinics get the DNAnazis off their back.
I totally get wanting to choose an eye and hair color that matches at least one of the parents.
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.
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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
Is "natural selection" even happening anymore in humans? When we were living in caves, and a baby was born with a major physical or mental defect, that baby was not able, or even permitted, to survive. Now, due to our increased technology and compassion, we can and will keep almost any baby alive by almost any means. Not that that is a bad thing, but i am stressing that there is no real natural selection happening in humans anymore.
We're selecting for a stronger motherhood instinct. Those that don't have it take birth control, and their lines go extinct. We're also selecting against logic and attention span. Those that have it choose education over family, and their lines go extinct. Any human characteristic that leads a person in this society to participate in "planned parenthood" is being winnowed out of our gene pool. We're selecting in favour of passionate people who have a lack of self control and rebel against the system.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Your post reminds me of a discussion in my genetics class. We were discussing deer populations and the class had all assumed that only the biggest and strongest would pass on their genes. We were then told to not discount the sneaky little bastard who knocked up one of the does while the two big guys were fighting. :)
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
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!
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
Could you tell me which gene is the logic gene and explain the causative relationship between it and choosing education over family? What you posted sounded rather elitist/snobbish and lacking in evidence.
The post above yours is 100% correct. Once a human sperm penetrates a human ova and they combine DNA they become a gamete. That is a human being.
Some may argue that it is not human because it does not look human. I argue appearance is no indicator. Look at photos of yourself as a baby, at three years old, eight years old, twenty years old, fifty years old, eighty years old, and so on. Appearance changes throughout your life cycle and cannot be used to define humanity.
I'm not so sure about DNA either. After all, if I use DNA as a measure of humanity I must question if someone with trisomy 21 is human. After all, such a person does not have 26 pairs of chromosomes, and by such a definition would not be human. There are also super-males and super-females to take into consideration. If we use chromosomal count as the indicator of humanity, would it be OK to kill someone who does not have the proper chromosomal count?
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
He may not have flushed the point out all the way, but the fact of it is that educated people have smaller families generally than non-educated people. Look at the average family size in the ghetto, sub 20k a year earned income versus in a nice area, like Manhattan with 100k+ a year earned income.
AnimePapers.org: Anime Wallpapers Handled With Care
You must have missed that part of the film, such screenings were illegal but were done anyway, probably like a lot of our anti-discrimination laws.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
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
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.
"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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
He may not have flushed the point out all the way, but the fact of it is that educated people have smaller families generally than non-educated people.
Look at the average family size in the ghetto, sub 20k a year earned income versus in a nice area, like Manhattan with 100k+ a year earned income.
Um, $100k in Manhattan IS the ghetto!
Keep in mind that on occasion, those in the "ghetto" have smart kids. Many people have kids that are smarter than themselves. Was the intelligence of Einstein, Hawking, or Hubble the average of their parent's? Of course not.
Education is not an indicator of intelligence. My degree showed that I had enough money to pay for classes (thanks US Army), had enough free time to study and do the work, and was capable of memorizing what the teacher told us to memorize. Rarely, did I actually have to think. I saw many people that could barely figure out what to do when the stop light changes do better than I did because they had more time, money or the ability to memorize data long enough to pass the test.
There are many brilliant, immigrant cab drivers all over the country who moved their families here so that their kids could have a better opportunity than what they could have had in their native country.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.