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Genetically Engineering Babies a Moral Obligation, Says Ethicist
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that Oxford Professor Julian Savulescu, an expert in practical ethics, says that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a 'moral obligation' as it makes them grow up into 'ethically better children' and that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence as it means they will then be less likely to harm themselves and others. 'Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?' writes Savulescu, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics. 'So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice. To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality.' Savulescu says that we already routinely screen embryos and fetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down's syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes. 'Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance.'"
without alcohol's input?
But where do diseases end, where does aesthetics start? Who enforces that line for the rich? Clearly this guy hasn't seen enough dystopian movies about two-class societies emerging from genetics.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
All those things we perceive as flaws today may be the "mutation" that allows the human race to survive after something cataclysmic happens. Seems kind of selfish to pick and choose.
So in the future I should have super docile, conformist babies that fit the cookie cutter notion of how a baby should look? No thanks, I'll just stick with chance.
I'm not even going to bother with the obligatory "what could possibly go wrong", because this is so bat-shit crazy and irresponsible. We simply do not understand how personalities work and how traits interact - to even suggest that we start removing traits before we understand how whole works is just as stupid as suggesting we amputate everyone's left hand to make sure everyone is right handed and not 'sinister'.
We have five different genetic conditions in our family, some are considered diseases, others are considered disabilities. I am quite sure under these new "ethics", myself and my whole family would be on the top of the list for instant abortion. Yet despite all medical conditions, many of my family have lived very long and productive lives. In same cases, I consider my relatives and ancestors choice and will to fight and overcome the odds stacked against them something to inspire me to never feel sorry for myself. Would we ever see such a thing in a future where all babies were born "perfect"? I think the sense of entitlement we see in our society is already overwhelming as it is, and i find it's people who overcome their disabilites that throw cold water, figuratively speaking, in the fact of self indulgence and entitlement. Would we see that this 'ethical" future?
My other point, this whole issue reminds of of that famous line from near the end of the movie "The Third Man", where the character Harry Lime says:
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
In a world full of "perfect babies", well, just saying.
I'll get one *only* when a fully open source one is available, which wasn't produced under unfair labor conditions.
Think about it: If you genetically engineer a baby, you've inserted non-natural genes, that is, inventions you can patent. So after the babies grow up, those people cannot have children without paying you for licensing (at the time the general public notices it, many years later, it's already too late). Maybe they'll even insert terminator genes, so that you cannot any more have offspring the normal way, unless you buy a (very expensive) special "medicine" which re-activates the genes needed for production (but only as long as you take it).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
O brave new world
that has such people in't.
And they might not. They may just be flaws.
Sometimes something that appears bad is bad.
I'm more concerned that the individuals who will be able to afford this genetic engineering will be the last people we want to become supermen. I don't have that much faith in our economic elite.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd go one step further. Let's identify and hunt down people like Julian Savulescu, and imprison them now. They're the defective ones. Sterilize them before they have the chance to reproduce.
And, for God's sake, never let them attain any leadership roles. Never vote for anyone who spouts such vile things. Don't let them teach. Run them out of your neighborhoods. Julian Savulescu should lose his job and be hounded out of the country. We don't want or need evil people like him.
Yeah, we can turn the question around: If someone has a baby without genetically engineering it, have they actually committed some sort of evil crime? Enough to, presumably I guess, arrest them and put them in jail? That's what the guy is arguing.
"I wish that all of mankind would give up it's warlike ways and the Earth would become a society of pacifists. That way, I could take it over with a butter knife."
-Dogbert.
-Styopa
This proposal has horrible intrinsic moral problems. And think about the societal consequences.
Parents with a good moral sense would not engineer their babies.
However, selfish and immoral parents would do it. Thus they could create a strong, intelligent, long-lived baby, who they would raise in an environment of selfishness and immorality.
Rinse and repeat. After a few generations, you have divided society in two classes: one upper, dominating class consisting of strong, intelligent, but selfish and immoral beings (who would no longer be even _humans_), and one lower class consisting of naturals.
This is a freaking dystopia.
The scary part is that this gentleman is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics! I fear for the future.
Tell that to the banana, or household dog.
It is even worse that that. We would be selecting for selfishness. See
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3056849&cid=41035551
This would be an unprecedented dystopia.
You mean the Cavendish banana, that repeatedly comes under fungal and viral attack, that it can't defend itself from due to its lack of genetic diversity? Or the relentlessly inbred pedigree breeds that have defects in their breathing, walking or vision? Genetic engineering is and will be capable of wonders, but we shouldn't blind ourselves to the dangers.
Rgasuya aata! : I have been coding Perl and cannot tell where my fingers are now!
What makes anyone think we can actually identify all the interrelated effects of any gene - especially ones that affect the brain?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Me. Human rights (including the right to life) are unalienable.
Moral relativism is absurd. If all morality is relative, then moral relativism is itself relative and therefore non-binding.
Also, moral relativists are huge hypocrites. They claim moral relativism when we are discussing something that they like (such as prostitution), but when we discuss something they do not like (such as deforestation, or nuclear energy), then they are all for absolute morality.
a complete mischaracterization of the nature of the discussion
Other than the part where he's exactly right. This is a prevalent, recurring theme throughout many /. threads, and the tone of such posts is almost always irrational, whiney, or worse. The GP is very observant. Not that you'd have to be to spot that trend.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Human dignity is more important than money.
I completely agree, we don't yet have nearly the understanding to start meddling with our genome on a large scale. Not that that will stop us.
The problem with evolution though is that by virtually eliminating death by other than "old age" we've largely eliminated one of the driving forces behind evolution - survival of the fittest. The driving force now is simply who makes the most babies (i.e. the fittest in the new reality). So basically if we want to select for anything other than "breeders" we're going to have to do it ourselves, either by genetic engineering or reproductive control regulations. So three bad choices to wind our way between...
Even if evolution was still working it is unlikely to magically find a "solution" to trade-offs, at least not on any timescale were we'd care. Take sickle-cell anemia as a recessive disease with clear benefits - if you only have one copy of the gene you're immune to malaria, a major advantage in tropical locales without access to modern medicine. If the gene is prevalent enough in the population then *eventually*, maybe, another random mutation will occur that counteracts the anemia problem - but it will probably incur a cost of it's own. If the cost/benefit ratio plays out well then it will disperse through the population as well, if not...
Basically "magic bullet" solutions will pretty much require intelligent intervention, and we'll probably eventually be able to start meddling on that level. In the meantime, our meddling is unlikely to be much worse than nature's "let's fuck with stuff and see what works". Except for the interaction with social inequities of course.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You don't seem to understand the term "anti-rich". You are confusing it with "anti-abuse-of-power". Nobody is faulting anyone for being rich. They are faulting the powerful for abusing their power.
So observant that he cannot distinguish between "anti-wealth" and "anti-abuse-of-power" ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The rich are the people in power.
Really? Is Jim Carrey "in power"? Is Stephen King "in power"? Is Michael Jordan "in power"? Is Mariah Carey 'in power"? Is Justin Bieber "in power"? These are really the people that scare you?
Those are the 1%ers, most of which aren't much of a problem. The 0.1%ers are much more troublesome. There you will find the megabank and megacorp CxOs that are mucking up everything for everyone else.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Evolution doesn't function that way. It doesn't eventually make a gene work, it is just the selection of those who can either survive the longest or breed the fastest.
As a person with some nasty genetic disorders, I've been holding off having kids. If I could go to a specialist with a hypothetical wife and get some kids without said nasty genetic disorders I would do so immediately.
Evolution - if left to function - would probably find a way to convey the benefits of this gene without the downside eventually.
Evolution has already found the solution: Let those with only one mutated allel of CFTR enjoy the advantages, and if those with two mutated copies develop cystic fibrosis, so what? The mutated version has already benefitted enough others, so it's not a big deal for the species.
The problem with "lets have Evolution do the work" is that Evolution is not ethical, and Evolution doesn't care for the individual, when it benefits the whole species. We humans care for individuals, mainly if we ourself are the said individual, to a lesser grade if it is a close relative.
And that's my gripe with the concept of ethical gene mutation.
It will make us either uniform: It's risky to be an outsider in the society, and most parents don't want their children to become outsiders. So they will basicly choose the gene makeup à la mode, whatever is in vogue when they get pregnant. You will be able to determine the age of anybody just by looking at their genetic code, because most people will closely match the type that was preferred during the times of their embryonic phase, the same way you can determine the construction time of a car by looking at the typical design and technical features.
Or it will split the species Homo sapiens sapiens into subspecies as envisioned by Aldous Huxley. The parents (with more or less obvious pressure by the society as a whole) will choose the genetic makeup of their children depending on their planned future place in life. We get a genetic elite, modified to be fit for the ruling class, we get several ranks of drone classes, fit for their jobs, but without any chance or ability to become someone else.
In both cases, we will rob future individuals of their right to be individuals. They will be streamlined and optimized for what the parents (with helpful input of the society) considers best, and differently than us, who had the chance to get out of the predetermined life concepts our parents envisioned for us, will be less and less able to become actually individuums.
No, the problem is that moral busybodies or other authorities start dictating what character traits must to be culled "for the children" or "for society", such as the short list Professor Savulescu outlined. After all, it's a moral obligation.
But even if every tyrant's wet dream was somehow averted, let's do a thought experiment: suppose this hypothethical technology had been available at your parents time. Consequently, every character trait you have that your parents disagree with is eliminated, and every character trait you lack that they wish you had gets added. Are you comfortable with this thought? And if you are, feel free to extrapolate this further back in time, right through capitalists and communists and anarchists and monarchists and atheists and fundamentalist right back to the first living creature in your line; along the way you're bound to find someone you disagree with. Should that person be allowed to decide the content of your character?
You'd think an "expert in practical ethics" would think of the obvious practical consequences of his ethical recommendations, but I guess his flawed character can't resist the temptation of playing god.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"We always know best, and what is for the best."
"Our intellect is capable of producing a better world on its own, if given sufficient technology."
"It is immoral not to condition our babies to accept whole-hardheartedly, their statistically inevitable circumstance in life."
Thank Ford, Huxley's vision of a moral paradise is nigh.
Mod Parent UP!
...and it always starts with the best of intentions...
This isn't genetics; it's EUGENICS.
Mark my words: If followed, this will have extremely negative, and unforseen, impacts. Such as "Ok, you've gotten rid of schizoid and autistic tendencies; but now the mean IQ is 60, and no one is left that knows how to modify the software in the automatic, and now government-mandated fetus-selector."
So, programmable evolution and quickly become programmable devolution.