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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'.
If someone could make a baby that wouldn't cry and would sleep all night, then I'll buy one.
My wife worked for a pediatrician in a well to do area a couple of years ago and if it looked like their kid was going to be under 6 foot, they would ask for a referral to an endocrinologist for hormones to get the kid to grow a bit more. The pediatrician didn't think it was necessary in most cases, but they are his patients so he complied. The parents wanted the best for their kids and wanted to insure that they could get any advantage that they could possibly get for them.
James Watson, co-discover of DNA, was on the National Press Club a few years ago, and this question was asked (can't find the archive right now - heard on NPR). Anyway to paraphrase,
90% of CEOs are over 6 foot. A 5 foot 2 inch tall man and a five foot tall woman may want to better the opportunities for their child.
Of course, what he meant was that up to a point, height matters in all sorts of endeavors and not only sports: politics, finding a mate, work, etc ... There is a strong correlation between height and success. Yes, I know - queue up all the exceptions but keep in mind, many of those were extraordinary people; such as Einstein - 5' 5".
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.
He's STILL talking eugenics.
Even taking out the racial connotations and stating you're looking at it from a more "humane" angle is STILL going to raise hackles.
Also, genetics has been getting studied for under a century. While YES, we know a LOT about the human genome, there's still a lot we don't know. Such as WHY some of these diseases and behaviors are in our genetic code in the first place. Yet people want to start selecting away from it, or better still, excising it from our genetic code?
They're essentially playing with fire, and the nearest bucket of water is someplace in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
This sounds like an incredibly great idea, that I'm sure will have no down sides.
I mean, if we weed out violence, that can only be a good thing. Nice docile people who won't put up any kind of fight. What could go wrong with that?
Also, aren't mental illness and creativity linked?
https://www.google.com/search?q=creativity+mental+illness
So if you weed out schizophrenia, for example, to create a superior being.. you could simply be creating non-creative people, who will never invent anything new.
Honestly, we don't understand the human mind and how it works... how can we choose what human attributes are safe to discard?
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.
Can we stop pretending that "a guy said something" is news? Who cares if some shmuck has an opinion? It might as well be me saying the same thing, or the opposite, for all it matters.
Screening out harmful genes is not genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is splicing, or mutating genes. What he is talking about is just a selection process.
Does anyone really think it's a bad idea to screen out the gene for Huntingtons? There's absolutely no reason any child today has to be born with Huntingtons, an incredibly miserable way to die as a chile. I'd say that screening for Huntingtons is such a serious moral obligation, that failing to do so should be criminal.
If that's OK, it's just a discussion of how much selection we should be doing, not whether we do it. Actual genetic engineering is a whole different story.
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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.
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Every topic about any subject with potential for abuse is about the rich (though not solely so, of course.) The rich are the people in power. Those with power decide how any technology will be used. Everything is a double-edged sword, and the question "How will those who hold the largest double-edged swords use them?" is always entirely valid. Indeed, it must be asked.
I hope this helps you understand why "we turn any slashdot topic into an anti-rich diatribe", which is - of course - a complete mischaracterization of the nature of the discussion.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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!
So the summary mentions cystic fibrosis. This is a perfect example. If you get 2 copies of the gene, you get a terrible condition and would (without modern treatment) probably die in you 20's. However, a single copy of the gene offers advantages over not having it at all.
The problem is that humans actually have very little understanding of how the body works and should not meddle in genetics on a large scale. Even in a case where we know a specific condition (2 copies of the CFTR gene) is bad, we should not try to eliminate that gene from the gene pool. I would agree that not producing babies with 2 copies is *probably* a good thing, but people have a tendency to generalize and go too far. Evolution - if left to function - would probably find a way to convey the benefits of this gene without the downside eventually.
There have also been recent drug trials where the substance in question had the opposite effect from what was intended. The immediate effect was correct, but the expected response in the body was wrong. We have a long way to go both scientifically and socially before such things may be considered a good idea.
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.
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.
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"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.
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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.
You're talking about something different from the OP.
I would first find fault with the designation of "designer" humans. Are in vitro fertilized embryos "designer"? After all, these are people which shouldn't exist, their parents are empirically incapable of conceiving children, an intervention has occurred (which kills several fertilized embryos in the process) in order to conceive a child, because of the parents' belief that they are incomplete without children -- it is their wish, their sensibility, their purchase, and not their right or their nature. The child is a plan, a consumer product, alas, only available to the relatively wealthy.
Further, places much less well off than rich US medical clinics already offer "designer" humans, in China and India it's common for mothers to simply cull their female zygotes, they abort them. This is plainly an evil thing, it's bad practically and bad morally. But, how do you prevent it? What steps are you willing to go to to prevent the abortion of "undesirable" zygotes? You can ban abortion, but that only bans it for people that can't buy a plane ticket or have access to "discrete" services, and a lot of people believe they have a right to have abortions. The government could examine all expectant mothers and license abortions, forbidding ones that meet their politically-correct standard of "by design." Of course, that designation is up for debate, and something like malaria susceptibility might or might not be defect dependent on local conditions, the "luck" of such a trait given their parents genotype.
And then, we're not just talking about giving people glowing ears or racing stripes, we're also talking about making sure they'll never contract HIV, or the plague, or congenital blindness. What do you tell someone who's born with an abnormality? "Sorry, but our advanced moral consciousness demands that you be born blind, because it would be a violation of human dignity for you not to be"? Why are genotypic changes such a big deal, but phenotypic modifications, like vaccines, not a "violation of human dignity"? Is it a violation of human dignity that I'm immune to measles, because I grew up rich and white in the western world, while a billion Africans are not?
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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.