On the Ethics of Trait Selection in Human Offspring

[Rebellion]

You people make me chuckle.
Here's my opinion.
Throw in your quarter and leave it up to Fate.
Hell, we might die tomorrow.
Might as well screw around sometime, eh?
By the way, Fate sucks balls.
Just so you know.
Irony's not much better.
So there's not much use in such embyos, because you know something's gonna screw up. Side effects, people?

And on the whole improving humanity thing, I have one word for you:
Genocide.
Think 'bout it.

[Visla Eraclaire]

And on the whole improving humanity thing, I have one word for you:
Genocide.

Wow, you took a slippery slope argument, which by the way is a bad thing already, and removed the slope entirely leaving just a precipice.

Well done, this is mangled logic on a truly epic scale.

Opinions on ethical issues are also not generally best expressed in free verse. There are so many things in there to criticize, but I have to get off to work so I'm just going to pick a few more.

Leave it up to fate and do nothing? You almost certainly don't believe that in other aspects of utilizing technology. What makes this different? Because the choice is made early? Because it's new? There were many in the past (and some frighteningly in the present) who don't believe in medicine, or certain areas of medical treatment, because they'd prefer to leave it up to fate (or God, or what or who ever). If you're part of that group, then your opinion is consistent. Considering you are 1) Using a computer and 2) Not dead, I suspect that you are not.

"Might as well screw around sometime" doesn't seem consistent with the remainder of the argument, if you can call it that. If we might as well screw around, why not do this? The devil may care nature of this statement doesn't jive with a reverence for fate.

Finally, the idea that something is bound to fail seems a very bad reason not to try, especially when the idea that it is bound to fail is based on nothing but naked pessimism. I have no idea of the rates of error, but unless they're extremely bad (which I doubt modern medicine and science would accept), the practice as a whole is likely an efficient one. Not to mention, any "errors" could probably be detected and aborted. Obviously some people are going to have a problem with that, but I don't care and this topic doesn't care.

[Taskmienster]

You are living the unexamined life, and that's a damned shame. People shouldn't believe things that they can't explain.

Oh my, breakin' out the Socrates. Philosophical PWN.

And I agree, living a life where your belief's are flippant only leaves holes in arguments you can't really defend or define.

ANYWAY:

And on the whole improving humanity thing, I have one word for you:
Genocide.
Think 'bout it.

Your disregard of the actual basis for the argument of 'improving humanity' is... sad. To say the least.

Genocide does not improve humanity, in fact it takes away from the genetic differences that are necessary in order to side-step the issue of inbreeding. If genocide was for the betterment of human kind, and we went ahead and did what was 'good', we would create a gentic bottleneck and be fucked. Cheetah's are currently in a bottleneck because their populations are so low, and the birthrate is horrendous among the race, much less their flourishing population is broken and they could become extinct anytime due to the bottleneck.

How, in any form or fashion, was any of the conversation currently being discussed along the lines of 'genocide is good'?

I believe that the parents who tell the doctors "Don't give us the gay kid." when choosing embryos should be kicked in the teeth. If you can't conceive normally or you're so loaded that you can afford to be choosy about which embryo gets implanted, wouldn't you want the healthiest?

Then again, if you are have such a self-interest in the sexuality of the child being born, then you are undoubtedly thinkin' of yourself and the future of your 'line' or 'lineage' if you will. Obviously a homosexual child is not going to marry and have children, whereas a heterosexual child is likely to have children, pass on the name and background, as well as have someone to pass the 'family fortune' onto after they pass away.

Of course that's a form of utilitarian way of thinking, but still can be somewhat of a justification. I do not think I can condone the action either way, but that's a reason why someone would do it... I suppose.

[Serilliant]

Finally, the idea that something is bound to fail seems a very bad reason not to try, especially when the idea that it is bound to fail is based on nothing but naked pessimism. I have no idea of the rates of error, but unless they're extremely bad (which I doubt modern medicine and science would accept), the practice as a whole is likely an efficient one.

The error rate for sex is about 5% (and this is mostly cases when the 23rd chromosome pair is ambiguous (e.g. XXY)). For other types of genetic screening I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure they are lower than 5%.

Let me reframe part of the question and see if it changes anyone's moral position:

Remember that the Deaf couple in the example is not 'creating' a deaf child, but rather opting to carry one. A deaf embryo would, under other circumstances, be discarded. Rather than opting to discard the deaf embryo, the couple is giving it life. Thus, the deaf embryo has two paths: be born deaf, or not be born at all. I emphasize that the couple is not deafening a hearing child.

I also want to add (from the real story) the couple's justification for their actions. They said that they knew hearing couples going through IVF would discard deaf embryos, and so they wanted to balance things out by intentionally selecting one. They wanted to combat the notion that deaf embryos are somehow "lesser" than hearing embryos and give one the chance to live.

Does this new information change your answers at all? If so, what's the difference between their thoughts and another couple who wants a deaf kid "because it'd be cool!"? How can we legislate IVF to allow reasonable requests and disregard unreasonable requests? Or, more importantly, how (and who) determines which requests are "reasonable"?

[Alabane]

It still wouldn't be okay to carry the deaf embryo because being deaf is a disability. You don't balance things out by saying the more people there are with advantages in the world the more there should be that are disadvantaged.

This new information does not change my answers. The difference between the couple you mentioned and the other couple that thinks "it'd be cool" is that the first couple are doing it from for a less stupid reason. I am not sure how we would legislate what is reasonable vs unreasonable other than obvious harm vs no-harm choices.

[Saxon]

I agree with Alabane. There really is no reason for either of those couples to have a deaf child if they can opt to have it aborted and try again. It's just cruel and unusual.

As for legislation, I don't think that this sort of thing should be regulated on the grounds of restriction or banned, but I do think some things need to change in order to work with the technology legislatively. First, there needs to be some sort rights established for fetuses or 'potentially people'. I brought this entire discussion up with a friend, and he mentioned the idea of fetus rights and his explanation was that even human corpses have rights despite not being living beings. So why shouldn't human fetuses have rights? I think it would definitely clear up this whole 'morality' and gray area thing when dealing with this stuff whether it concerns genetic engineering or abortion.

As for this technology, like I said before it shouldn't be banned or restricted. But for the studies on superficial enhancements and allowing parents to pick aesthetic choices shouldn't be given any help. No government grants, no government funding, and no government benefits for the research. It isn't worth pouring money into and although it is the parent's right to choose how to raise their children and they are solely responsible most of the time for sculpting them mentally and socially, there is no reason to put government spending in the mix.

So really, if anybody truly wants their kid to be blonde or deaf or a carbon copy of themselves they can start a company and they can pour money into the research to try and make that happen with their own time and their own money.

Also, another thing to consider about wiping out genetic diseases that I hadn't realized before is the potential backlash. Now, I'm not an expert when it comes to how diseases come into being, but there is the potential risk that if we don't understand what we're fully doing we could wind up clearing the field for even more deadly, virulent genetic diseases. Then again, what is science and medicine without that degree of risk, eh?

[Taskmienster]

As for legislation, I don't think that this sort of thing should be regulated on the grounds of restriction or banned, but I do think some things need to change in order to work with the technology legislatively. First, there needs to be some sort rights established for fetuses or 'potentially people'. I brought this entire discussion up with a friend, and he mentioned the idea of fetus rights and his explanation was that even human corpses have rights despite not being living beings. So why shouldn't human fetuses have rights? I think it would definitely clear up this whole 'morality' and gray area thing when dealing with this stuff whether it concerns genetic engineering or abortion.

As for this technology, like I said before it shouldn't be banned or restricted. But for the studies on superficial enhancements and allowing parents to pick aesthetic choices shouldn't be given any help. No government grants, no government funding, and no government benefits for the research. It isn't worth pouring money into and although it is the parent's right to choose how to raise their children and they are solely responsible most of the time for sculpting them mentally and socially, there is no reason to put government spending in the mix.

So really, if anybody truly wants their kid to be blonde or deaf or a carbon copy of themselves they can start a company and they can pour money into the research to try and make that happen with their own time and their own money.

Also, another thing to consider about wiping out genetic diseases that I hadn't realized before is the potential backlash. Now, I'm not an expert when it comes to how diseases come into being, but there is the potential risk that if we don't understand what we're fully doing we could wind up clearing the field for even more deadly, virulent genetic diseases. Then again, what is science and medicine without that degree of risk, eh?

The question of the ethical rights of a fetus aren't currently under discussion though, if I understand what the conversation is about... It's about the embryo before it is even developed, meaning that you would need to through even more legislation in order to make laws that are dealing with something even before conception... Personally I would not like to see the country bring down laws against the potential parents for what they are thinking. Seems to contradict the notion that everyone can at the very least think without the government being involved. I suppose that would be a violation of personal rights, since it would be legislation against the two adults thoughts, and not against any living thing's 'rights to life'.

And genetic diseases wouldn't be affected the same way as virus' like the flu or what not would... From what I would assume the ability to recognize and eliminate chromosomal diseases before they bud and come to fruition would in no way create a way for a new 'virus'. The issue regarding the destruction of viruses and diseases is that viruses mutate according to the medical technology used against them.

When a person is already living and developing, or in most cases base the stage of puberty, a virus can exist in them. Using medicine to remove the virus would, over time, create a virus that is resistant to current medicines making it (theoretically) worse than before. However, this is not a procedure using medicine to eliminate disease, but a selection of the chromosomal tenancies that will better the fetus and therefore create a future human without any issues.

Without the use of medicine to remove the virus or disease there is no risk (as far as I can imagine) that they would be able to evolve and adapt... meaning the elimination would be final. No worry about something worse taking its place.

[Visla Eraclaire]

It still wouldn't be okay to carry the deaf embryo because being deaf is a disability.

I think being raised not to value saving, education, and pro-social values is a much more devastating disability than deafness, and parents are allowed to saddle their children with those problems, among others. Just compare all these choices you hear about to flagrant bad parenting, and see which you think is worse. Then realize our society regularly tolerates extremely awful parents so long as they aren't legally neglectful.

Frankly, as I said before, the deafness one is the close call, because you are disadvantaging your child somewhat versus the rest of the world. At the same time, I can fully understand why deaf parents would want a deaf child that they could share a similar life-experience with, and thus because I don't think the disadvantage to the child is bad enough, choice wins out. If you were born deaf, you'd never really know what you were missing and you could be properly educated from day one by two people who understand your situation precisely.

Honestly, it might be more harmful to a hearing child to have deaf parents than for deaf parents to intentionally have a deaf child.

EDIT: I'm glad my summation survives via quote. Though it probably gets more attention seperated with an insulting title.

[Elrundir]

Also, another thing to consider about wiping out genetic diseases that I hadn't realized before is the potential backlash. Now, I'm not an expert when it comes to how diseases come into being, but there is the potential risk that if we don't understand what we're fully doing we could wind up clearing the field for even more deadly, virulent genetic diseases. Then again, what is science and medicine without that degree of risk, eh?

Well, genetic diseases don't work that way. You can't really "clear the field" for them the same way I suppose you could for a conventional virus or bacterium. They result from a certain defect in the human chromosome layout; for example, having an extra chromosome in one of your 23 pairs, as happens with Down Syndrome and chromosome 21. Some people are more susceptible to them, because of their ancestors, but this procedure would basically allow the parents to select against any embryos that screen positive for them. It is theoretically possible that unknown disorders may be discovered this way (abnormal numbers/structures/mutations that we don't realize will cause diseases), but the likelihood of that depends on just how focused the PGD procedure is. If it eventually reaches the point where it can even detect potentially-problematic deletions/inversions/duplications and other mutations as well as just seeing that chromosome 21 has three copies instead of two, then I think there would actually be a very low risk indeed.

[Saxon]

The question of the ethical rights of a fetus aren't currently under discussion though, if I understand what the conversation is about... It's about the embryo before it is even developed. . .

Then change my wording. Instead of 'fetus' rights, have rights established for a human embryo from conception to birth. It's still 'potentially people' no matter what stage you're at and before we get into a pro-life versus pro-choice discussion, I'd like to point out that even though giving them rights would probably affect someone's choice to abort or engineer their child to some degree, it allows legislators, researchers, and those that practice this stuff to have some common ground to work off of instead of just pointing to various case decisions like Rowe v. Wade and other cases involving embryotic/fetus crises and hoping it'll be enough to fend off the opposition when it really counts.

Personally I would not like to see the country bring down laws against the potential parents for what they are thinking. Seems to contradict the notion that everyone can at the very least think without the government being involved. I suppose that would be a violation of personal rights, since it would be legislation against the two adults thoughts, and not against any living thing's 'rights to life'.

I think you're mistaking what I'm suggesting here. Don't get me wrong, this is an issue about control, but it lands more on the side of the fence of giving humans that haven't even been birthed yet rights than telling parents that they can't do this, this, and this. I mean, we could get into a whole philosophical debate on whether or not people who aren't even people yet should have rights but then that has been discussed over and over and over again for generations. Rights were established for slaves at a time when a lot of people considered slaves to be nothing more than legal property. Rights were also established for human remains to ensure they get the respect they deserve and to show what counts as illicit activity like grave robbing and what is considered fair under the eyes of society like a family claiming the remains of a relative to bury themselves. Human and civil rights have always been an issue, the only thing that has changed are the 'it' in question and the time period in which the legal discussion is in. Stating that granting rights and establishing these laws is just another way for the government to find a way to control how we think is genuine paranoia and not a persausive counter-argument. The government isn't out to get you.

. . .meaning that you would need to go through even more legislation in order to make laws that are dealing with something even before conception. . .

The present legal system, as I understand it, states that up until this stage of human development you are not human. Despite the legality, a human embryo is still human from conception til' birth genetically and not offering them rights in order to give those of us who are already functional more freedom to do as we please with them is ludicrous. As parents we may control how our child develops, but sometimes there may be need for a third party to step in in order to play devil's advocate, and inevitably it will probably end up being the government whether you like it or not. Laws always need to be updated and changed with the times in order to grapple with the new issues that face us every day, and with technology like trait selection and genetic engineering being developed it begins to beg the question of what is okay to do to a human being before birth and what isn't both ethically and morally.