RSS 2.0 FeedShould Parents Have The Right To Design Their Children ?
by Doug MataconisThat question is being raised by reports of the world’s first so-called “Embryo Bank”, which offers infertile couples the ability to pick embryos based on physical and other characteristics:
A Texas company has started producing batches of ready-made embryos that single women and infertile couples can order after reviewing detailed information about the race, education, appearance, personality and other characteristics of the egg and sperm donors.
The Abraham Center of Life LLC of San Antonio, the first commercial dealer making embryos in advance for unspecified recipients, was created to help make it easier and more affordable for clients to have babies that match their preferences, according to its founder.
“We’re just trying to help people have babies,” said Jennalee Ryan, who arranged for an egg donor to start medical treatments to produce a second batch of embryos this week. “For me, that’s what this is all about: helping make babies.”
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Prospective parents have long been able to select egg or sperm donors based on ethnicity, education and other traits. Couples can also “adopt” embryos left over at fertility clinics, or have embryos created for them if they need both eggs and sperm. But the new service marks the first time anyone has started turning out embryos as off-the-shelf products.Before contracting for the embryos, clients can evaluate the egg and sperm donors, and can even see pictures of them as babies, children and sometimes adults. A fertility specialist will then transfer the embryos into a client’s womb or into a surrogate, which Ryan can also arrange.
The opponents arguments are, as you might expect, predictable:
“We’re increasingly treating children like commodities,” said Mark A. Rothstein, a bioethicist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. “It’s like you’re ordering a computer from Dell: You give them the specs, and they put it in the mail. I don’t think we should consider mail-order computers and other products the same way we consider children.”
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“People have long warned we were moving toward a ‘Brave New World,’ ” said Robert P. George of Princeton University, who serves on the President’s Council on Bioethics. “This is just more evidence that we haven’t been able to restrain this move towards treating human life like a commodity. This buying and selling of eggs and sperm and now embryos based on IQ points and PhDs and other traits really moves us in the direction of eugenics.”
The President of the bank dismisses those complaints:
“People can say, ‘Oh, this is the new Hitler.’ That’s not the case,” she said. “I don’t take orders. I say ‘This is what I have’ and send them the background. If they don’t think it’s right for them, they don’t have to take them.”
I have no doubt that, as technology like this, that makes it possible to choose specific traits at the embryonic stage and even eliminate or alter them, becomes more prevalent, we will be faced with these kinds of debates and with cries from opponents that the technology represents Nazi-like eugenics. But i really don’t see what the big deal is.
Ann Althouse says this, which I think hits the nail on the head:
When you choose a husband or wife, you’re picking the person you want to live with, not just the genetic material. If you’ve married, how much did you think about the quality of the genetic material you could procure for your offspring? But then, what genetic qualities would you select for your children that you wouldn’t care about having in your adult companion? And are there some things you want in your spouse that you’d reject if you knew it was in that embryo you’re about to have implanted?
I suppose the fact that I wrote those questions first reveals that I’m not especially concerned about this new step in reproductive technology. The cry of “eugenics” always goes up, but what are the people who raise it really worrying about? Not the return of the Nazis. It’s all-too-convenient the way the Nazis pop up to assist in making the argument you already wanted to make. The real objection is to reproductive choice. Once you have disaggregated reproduction from the full human relationship between the parents, what makes you want to draw the line here? Perhaps your objection is nothing more than resentment that only rich people get to fulfill this preference. If so, who are you to intrude on their private life?
Personally, I am all in favor of this technology. Potentially, it means we may yet see the day when children will no longer be born with diseases or disabilities that shorten their life. If that also means that some parents will also pre-select their children so they all have blond hair and blue eyes, it’s a small price to pay.
The price to pay may not be in your child’s generation, but could be in some future generation. What would happen if most of the world was blond, blue eyed and fair skin, if ultraviolet radiation increased? Some genes in lesser forms, actually protect us. A variant of the gene for cystic fibrosis, keeps us from drowning in our own mucus. I think we need to use our efforts with genetics to cure disease rather than screwing around with our genetic variation and evolution.
Comment by VRB — January 7, 2007 @ 7:11 amI think humans will do what they do and trying to prevent people from doing things never works out well.
Comment by Adam Selene — January 7, 2007 @ 10:32 amVRB,
That argument has been used for centuries to step in the way of technological change. People are often fearful of new technology. As a similar example, look at how people scared of nanotechnology worry about the “grey goo” issue.
Frankly, if there’s a demand for genetic selection, people are going to investigate it and people are going to choose to use it. And if it becomes a problem, like you suggest, all the communists in the world will become very happy, since us evil rich capitalists (who can afford to pay for genetic selection, while the poor do it the ol’ fashioned way) will die off in a hurry, and they can have their commie utopia.
Comment by Brad Warbiany — January 7, 2007 @ 4:43 pmBrad,
Comment by VRB — January 7, 2007 @ 6:27 pmThis is not argument about technology progressing. I am not a Luddite and this has nothing to do with communism or any kind of political philosophy. It is a fact we can’t predict the consequences. It doesn’t have any effect on us, whether humans die off in the next millennium or the next billion years. I don’t believe that genetics and evolution work the same way as nano technology. We create a world that changes faster than we evolve already and there may come a time the changes are faster than our technology can adapt. The only thing that may save us is our genetic pool, the thing that makes us human. I did not advocate any law to stop this (I want my cloned kidney), but I do think it is unethical to start screwing around with something we can control the outcome. Perhaps sometime in the future we would know enough, but we don’t now. I think we can see some of what happens in breeding animals, and trying to keep certain characteristics over generations. Quite often you wind up with an animal that has a lot of health problems or many not being viable embryos. I probably have not convinced you, but I think you should do more investigation into the science. Why is it that everything I say somehow relates to communism or socialism? It is because I don’t agree? So I’m the opposite of classical liberal, libertarianism and whatever the rest of you call yourselves.
VRB,
If genetic selection results in a world in which children no longer suffer from Muscular Dystrophy, Cystic Fybrosis, blindness, deafness, cleft pallates, and a whole host of other diseases, how can it possibly be a bad idea ?
Comment by Doug Mataconis — January 7, 2007 @ 7:53 pmVRB,
I should have been more clear, but my communism comments weren’t directed at you. That was just an attempt at humor (i.e. all the commies laughing about us rich capitalists dying off until they realized they will starve without us).
You’re right that we don’t really know all that much, and that there are a lot of risks in going down this road. But if we, as humans, always waited until we truly understood everything before trying to screw around with it, we’d still be trying to figure out the wheel.
Comment by Brad Warbiany — January 7, 2007 @ 8:22 pmDoug,
I think VRB’s point is, for example, let’s say we modify the gene for Cystic Fibrosis, completely eliminating CF worldwide. Then, all of a sudden, a horrible new disease springs up that a little-understood part of the CF gene protects us against, and humanity all dies. Part of humanity’s resilience is based upon having a widely-varied gene pool, because changing diseases may affect people with one gene combination but not others.
I don’t think it’s a big enough worry to slow us down, but that’s just my opinion.
Comment by Brad Warbiany — January 7, 2007 @ 8:25 pmBrad,
I see the point you’re making, but isn’t that more of a scientific point than a political one ?
Several months ago, I was watching a documentary about the beginnings of the in vitro fertilization process and there were people (none of them scientists or geneticists) who raised many nightmare scenarios about so-called “test-tube” babies, all of which proved to be untrue.
I agree that we need to be cautious about this, but, quite honestly the benefits are so extraordinary that shutting down this line of research seems to me to be completely inhuman.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — January 7, 2007 @ 8:34 pmThe truth is that genetic medicine is going to result in people already alive today living well into their hundreds and children yet to be born living even longer than that. With a physical quality of life undreamt of for most 70 years old today.
Comment by Adam Selene — January 7, 2007 @ 8:37 pmDoug,
I was responding to VRB, who was making a point that I thought was a scientific, not an ethical point, in the first comment to this post.
I agree with you (and Adam) that the upside is so positive that I think we need to be moving forward. My wife laughs at me when I tell her I expect to live to at least 140 (I haven’t told her that I wouldn’t be surprised if technology moves quickly enough that we can get beyond that). I’d like to make that claim true.
Comment by Brad Warbiany — January 7, 2007 @ 8:44 pmBrad,
I figured you were just restate what VRB was talking about…..
And, heck, I plan to live to 180 so I think you’re understating the potential of the technology we are about to see erupt. ;)
Comment by Doug Mataconis — January 7, 2007 @ 9:44 pmGenetic selection and genetic medicine are two different things. To cure disease is different that eliminating the genes altogether. I don’t think any of you will benefit from any genetic modification or treatment. The gene responsible for my disease has been know for over 20 years and nothing’s happened.
Comment by VRB — January 8, 2007 @ 11:41 amI expect that, based on the current progress, genetic medicine, stem cell research, genetic modification, etc, people currently alive will see a tremendous change in life expectancy, assuming they can live another decade, two at the most. Before I forget, nanotech will also play a huge role in this. I would not e surprised if I, a 40 something, live another 100 years. my children will probabky live over 200 years, and my grandchildren may be, to all intents and purposes, immortal.
Comment by Adam Selene — January 8, 2007 @ 6:56 pmThe question becomes, would you want to live another hundred years. Gravity and entropy are a given.
Comment by VRB — January 9, 2007 @ 5:21 amVRB,
Gravity will be lower in space, which is where I’d like to be in 100 years. If we (as a species) haven’t escaped this rock within 100 years, I’m not sure I’d still want to be living on it, though.
Comment by Brad Warbiany — January 9, 2007 @ 5:36 am80 year olds today live, by and large, a more fulfilling life than 40 year olds did for the vast majority of history. There’s little reason to think that won’t continue to be the case. We haven’t reached the limit, or anywhere near it, of what science and medicine can do to extend and enrich human life.
Comment by Adam Selene — January 9, 2007 @ 4:08 pm[...] Adam Selene: 80 year olds today live, by and large, a more fulfilling life than 40 year olds did for the vast… [...]
Pingback by The Liberty Papers»Blog Archive » Further Thoughts On So-Called “Designer Children” — January 9, 2007 @ 8:27 pmtotaly agree!
Comment by liberty-youth — January 16, 2007 @ 9:28 am