Designer Babies, Yea or Nay?

[jimmy olsen]

There are two futures ahead of us, one where we transform ourselves into genetically engineered superhumans and one where mankind is ruled by vast and Godlike machine intelligences...if they don't get rid of us entirely. I vastly prefer the former.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/designerdebate/

Designer Babies: A Right to Choose?

    By Brandon Keim Email Author
    March 9, 2009  |
    3:08 pm  |
    Categories: Biotech

When a Los Angeles fertility clinic offered last month to let parents choose their kids' hair and eye color, public outrage followed. On March 2, the clinic shut the program down — and that, says transhumanist author James Hughes, is a shame.

According to Hughes, using reproductive technologies — in this case, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), in which doctors screen embryos before implanting them — for cosmetic purposes is just an old-fashioned parental impulse, translated into 21st century technology.

If nobody gets hurt and everybody has access, says Hughes, then genetic modification is perfectly fine, and restricting it is an assault on reproductive freedom. "It's in the same category as abortion. If you think women have the right to control their own bodies, then they should be able to make this choice," he said. "There should be no law restricting the kind of kids people have, unless there's gross evidence that they're going to harm that kid, or harm society."

Hughes' views are hardly universal. "I'm totally against this," said William Kearns, the medical geneticist who developed the techniques used by the Fertility Institutes for cosmetic purposes, in a newspaper interview. In the same article, Mark Hughes, one of the inventors of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, called its non-therapeutic use "ridiculous and irresponsible."

Wired.com talked to James Hughes and to Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, about genetic selection.

Wired.com: What do you think about using reproductive technologies to pick cosmetic traits?

James Hughes: It's inevitable, in the broad context of freedom and choice. And the term "designer babies" is an insult to parents, because it basically says parents don't have their kids' best interests at heart.

The only people who are consistent about this are the Catholics.
They say that you have to accept whatever pops out of your procreative unions. But if you think that people have a right to choose how many children they have, or the partners they have them with — "I love you, but you're just too short, or too ugly" — that's a procreative choice.

If I've got a dozen embryos I could implant, and the ones I want to implant are the green-eyed ones, or the blond-haired ones, that's an extension of choices we think are perfectly acceptable — and restricting them a violation of our procreative autonomy.

I want to see a society in which parents can say, I want my kids to have the best possible options in life. That might include getting rid of obesity genes. Every child should be a loved child, but there is no virtue in accident.

Wired.com: But one could argue that obesity is a health problem, not a cosmetic issue.

Hughes: So parents are only allowed to have preferences about health conditions? What if we discovered that eating fish oil while pregnant increases intelligence, which it does? We're not going to say that you can't make certain dietary choices. In fact, we encourage them.

And would we say it was morally inappropriate for parents to stand on their head during copulation, if it made their children blond? I doubt it. The only reason this is different is because it involves embryo selection.

Wired.com: But isn't this going to produce a super-race of children born to people wealthy enough to afford artificial reproduction?

Hughes: Insofar as the choices are eye color and hair color, that's not going to exacerbate inequalities in society. It's a minor way in which greater wealth allows more reproductive choice, but it shouldn't be a reason to override reproductive freedom.

If PGD had the ability to double the IQs of children — which it doesn't
— then that would be the sort of inequality that warranted a social policy against it. I'm worried about that situation, not hair and eye color.

Gross exacerbation of social inequality is a grave social harm. That's why we need universal health care, and universal access to any technology which provides profound enablement.

Wired.com: It's hard to imagine these ever being universally available.

Hughes: Medicaid has considered the provision of fertility services.
Some say fertility isn't a health issue — but I think that's B.S. Having a saline breast implant put in after a mastectomy isn't a health issue, but we pay for it, because it improves quality of life.

Wired.com: Some ethicists say that non-therapeutic reproductive technologies shouldn't be used until the industry is better-regulated.

Hughes: Fertility clinics and reproductive medicine need a complete revamping of their regulatory structures. Many of the procedures are not being monitored for safety and efficacy. But those are the only two grounds on which to base a legitimate societal regulation.

Wired.com: Where do you draw the line? What if I want disabled children?

Hughes: We've been debating that for five or six years, ever since a deaf lesbian couple in Chicago wanted to use PGD to choose among the embryos they'd fertilized for one that inherited a form of deafness.
They said that deafness is a perfectly benign condition, and that living in the hearing world is like living in the white world as a black person.

I argue in Citizen Cyborg that I wouldn't want to see a law saying you can't do this, but I'd want to see strong moral sanctions.

The reproductive autonomy of parents should be protected at a high level — and that even includes decisions that impose a degree of harm on children.

Wired.com: But what if I wanted to have a child who was deformed?

Hughes: I think a principle developed by Peter Singer is useful: If you think parents should be punished for taking that ability away from a child who's already born, that's probably harm.

[DGuller]

I think the problem with designers babies is the same problem as with designer crops.  Sure, in the short term, you can get huge gains in whatever it is that you're measuring.  In the long term, though, homogeneity of the stock can lead to total extinction, in case some new dangers crop up.

[Razgovory]

I don't think I would buy any clothing designed by a baby.

[jimmy olsen]

I think the problem with designers babies is the same problem as with designer crops.  Sure, in the short term, you can get huge gains in whatever it is that you're measuring.  In the long term, though, homogeneity of the stock can lead to total extinction, in case some new dangers crop up.

Surely it would be possible, over the long term (decades) to engineer a superior, flexible and adaptable immune system.

[Martinus]

I think the problem with designers babies is the same problem as with designer crops.  Sure, in the short term, you can get huge gains in whatever it is that you're measuring.  In the long term, though, homogeneity of the stock can lead to total extinction, in case some new dangers crop up.

Another problem are the social and political implications of effectively engineering a "master race", since the designer babies will likely be available only to the rich. The foundation of our system is based (at least in theory) on a socially mobile meritocracy. It will be over if the rich will simply be vastly superior to the poor in personal capabilities' terms.

[Sheilbh]

No.  Children belong to themselves not their parents.

[Martinus]

No.  Children belong to themselves not their parents.

I agree but then we don't really act like they do, do we?

[The Brain]

Seems reasonable to me to regulate it so that parents can't pick retarded stuff that really harms the child. Other than that I'm fine with it.

[Martinus]

Seems reasonable to me to regulate it so that parents can't pick retarded stuff that really harms the child. Other than that I'm fine with it.

What "harms the child" is debatable. And I am not just talking about sci-fi/classic moral dilemmas shit. Some genes may increase a child's chance to be a genius but expose it to a great risk of certain diseases for example.

[Sheilbh]

I agree but then we don't really act like they do, do we?

Of course not.  But this is more fundamental than any other example I can think of. 

[The Brain]

Seems reasonable to me to regulate it so that parents can't pick retarded stuff that really harms the child. Other than that I'm fine with it.

What "harms the child" is debatable. And I am not just talking about sci-fi/classic moral dilemmas shit. Some genes may increase a child's chance to be a genius but expose it to a great risk of certain diseases for example.

Luckily grey areas exist in all activities and are not a major problem.

[Eddie Teach]

There are two futures ahead of us, one where we transform ourselves into genetically engineered superhumans and one where mankind is ruled by vast and Godlike machine intelligences...if they don't get rid of us entirely. I vastly prefer the former.

Genetically engineered superhumans could design even better machines. This changes nothing.

[Ideologue]

If nobody gets hurt and everybody has access, says Hughes, then genetic modification is perfectly fine, and restricting it is an assault on reproductive freedom. "It's in the same category as abortion. If you think women have the right to control their own bodies, then they should be able to make this choice," he said. "There should be no law restricting the kind of kids people have, unless there's gross evidence that they're going to harm that kid, or harm society."

Whoa.  No, it isn't.  At present, a woman has a magic veto over whether a child exists.  This is the best we can do, even though it's damned unfair.  Permitting the mother to design a child at odds with the wishes of her partner just because she's carrying it is kind of overboard.

If PGD had the ability to double the IQs of children — which it doesn't
— then that would be the sort of inequality that warranted a social policy against it. I'm worried about that situation, not hair and eye color.

Yeah.  I'm way more concerned about really smart people existing than I am genetic engineering technology to be used to eliminate undesirable colors.  What an asshole.

If we're concerned about inequality, focus on outcomes, not opportunities, dummy.

I argue in Citizen Cyborg that I wouldn't want to see a law saying you can't do this, but I'd want to see strong moral sanctions.

Sure.  Moral finger-wagging always works.  Asshole!

[garbon]

No.  Children belong to themselves not their parents.

If they don't get created, they belong to no one.

[Admiral Yi]

If we're concerned about inequality, focus on outcomes, not opportunities, dummy.

wut?