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Is Genetically Engineering Your Children Ethical?
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I hear this talk about choosing a spouse because of their traits: I dont think most people consciously choose a spouse (or enter any relationship with the opposite sex) because they think their kids would be nice.
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could parents engineer their kids to have either huge knockers or a huge wang. talk about kids owing you something later on in life. :-D
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I hear this talk about choosing a spouse because of their traits: I dont think most people consciously choose a spouse (or enter any relationship with the opposite sex) because they think their kids would be nice.
I argue that the ONLY reason you chose your mate is because on some level you realize their traits when added to yours would produce viable progeny.
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Nah… I had NO intention of having children (and still have none).
I chose my spouse based on CURVES :-D
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The problem with engineering your spouse is that you have to adjust all the cells of an adult body vs adjust the cells of a single celled human being. There’s kind of a huge difference in the work load, you know?
I’m still hoping someone can come up with a valid reason that fixing birth defects and inherited diseases is unethical and failing that, that choosing which parent’s genes will be the eyes, which the hair, what gender the child is, etc is unethical.
It would be convenient to have something other then an antiquated notion of divine command theory to justify a stance that genetic engineering is unethical. :)
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@Cmdr:
I’m still hoping someone can come up with a valid reason that fixing birth defects and inherited diseases is unethical and failing that, that choosing which parent’s genes will be the eyes, which the hair, what gender the child is, etc is unethical.
if blue eyes were such a good trait then there would be more blue eyed than brown people. its called natural selection. the good traits come out and the bad traits don’t get passed on. artificial selection will lead to the wrecking of our species. artificial selection makes people more prone to pandemic type stuff because everyone has similar genes. if your genes were so superior you would not need to hand select them and they would be just passed on. also any slight difference in people will be looked down upon at it will be like that movie Gatica.everyone would be the same and there would be no more revolutions or progress because someone decided to think different than everyone else.
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Thats not natural selection its the difference between Ants and Elephants. One is much more populated because it can live a life of low expectations, low goals, working with its hands and easily happy. The Latter is complex, thinking, dynamic, passionate in a life of promise. Its time on earth is not regulated to populating, but thriving.
Its the dynamic of the worker ants and the Elephants where the ants breed and do nothing else but feed, The Elephant thinks and have a full life accomplishing more and taking more from life. The ants do anything ,anywhere, with without trepidation or reason. They are savages by nature.
You want to be an Ant or an Elephant?
And who is it to say one is greater because they breed better? -
Actually, only Queen ants breed…
The rest of them exist for her protection.
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… if blue eyes were such a good trait then there would be more blue eyed than brown people. its called natural selection. …
I guess the human race in modern societys has already left the path of natural selection. Because the highly developed medicine sector allows for all kinds of severe genetic traits in one beeing and it will probably still be able to reproduce itself.
IMO there would have to be a huge amount of pressure from the outside (something like a big epidemic) to start this process again.
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I’m not saying that blue eyes are superior to brown eyes. What I’m saying is that parents who have traits for BOTH blue eyes and brown eyes, between them, should be allowed to choose which they want their children to have. I see no harm in this whatsoever. It’s not like I’m talking about having a bank of government approved genes for all children and you must select from that pool.
I’m just arguing that it is perfectly ethical for parents to chose from their own genes which their children will have and to have medical science correct any mutations or birth defects or genetic diseases passed along from parent to child. What harm is there in correcting asthma or ADHD or anemia or AIDS before the child is born? Deviated septum, no digits on your toes, etc also correctable.
Wouldn’t it provide more happiness to the parents and to the child to have a child without genetic defects, mental or physical disorders then to have a deaf child who was born without legs and with AIDS?
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when is it okay to intervene in another’s life? If it meant that I would rather have 11 toes than to being genetically altered. I think only life threating diseases should be corrected. and maybe blindness and severe handicaps. but alot of famous people were genetically defeated like einstein and lincon. imagined if they were messed with and made “normal”. what is normal anyway? its really just an arbitrary standard set by society.
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If you offspring is gonna come out as a monster or Richard Simmons, then its probably a good idea to abort it before it grows. That would not be Euthanasia. But to tell a doctor "i want only a boy with blue eyes and good hair or what not then thats the road to disaster. That ugly Albert Einstein will never be born again.
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That’s assuming you genetically modify his brain… I thought we were talking about merely modifying “external” body parts…
GG
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I am strictly limiting this to chosing genes available from BOTH parents. Thus, two Africans cannot have a blond haired, blue eyed boy. However they can chose gender. Also I’ll include repair of genetic diseases and mutations and birth defects. I don’t think there is a person alive that would stipulate that a boy be born with down syndrome if we could alter one gene and restore him so he, and his parents, will not have to deal with the problem.
That means if you want a child with blue eyes, you’d have to find a mate who had blue eyes and then the doctor could select that gene from your genetic material.
Thus, there is no playing god and creating the super race. You cannot engineer the child to have 20% more strength or be able to use more of his or her brain simulatansouly to make a super brain, etc.
If you have it in your eggs or your sperm, and you two are the parents, those are the genes you may select from.
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@Cmdr:
I am strictly limiting this to chosing genes available from BOTH parents. Thus, two Africans cannot have a blond haired, blue eyed boy.
Not necessarily true. They could both be carrying recessive genes and thus be able to have an Aryan child…
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Yes, but how much of the African population do you think are carrying those genes? Thus, the odds are so ridiculously low, we can exclude it from the discussion.
Suffice it to say, the engineered children could not have any physical attributes that they would have not have had a chance to acquire by chance.
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I am simply pointing out the POTENTIAL.
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@Cmdr:
Yes, but how much of the African population do you think are carrying those genes? Thus, the odds are so ridiculously low, we can exclude it from the discussion.
actually my eye trait is Bb. (mom had blue eyes and dad is black) so i don’t think its that ridiculously low unless your talking about real africans who can’t afford enough food to not starve let alone paying for genetic reengineering. there is also a .4% that a couple with a blue eyed great-grandparent each and the rest being black could have a blue eyed child without knowing. so its not impossible and genetically .4 is not that small. but what gives you the right to intervene in another’s lilfe to make them look how you want.
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your talking about limmited abilitys to modify, but yet we know from history that when you give some, then more is taken and expected. if you compermise and allow miner alterations then with in a few years more will be allowed and then by the end of around 20 years we will be allowed to make any alterations that science will allow.
all that aside, you run the risk of diversity being striped from sociaty atleast as we know it and people will find new traits to discriminate or find “wrong”. -
Slippery slope arguments are inherently flawed. We’ll keep this within the frame of the discussion as presented.
If money was no object, and everyone had the SAME access to the technology and equal medical providers, etc, etc.
Would it be unethical to choose what attributes your child had from the gene pool of his or her father and mother (and no one elses), repair any genetic mutations, cure any genetic diseases and repair any birth defects?
Or, another way to think of it is:
Is it more ethical to allow nature to produce children with brain damage, who are born addicted to drugs and/or are born with serious physical handicaps just so that you can say that medical science had nothing to do with it? Or is it more ethical to allow medical science to fix these problems at a very early stage, but allow them to also give the child his Mother’s eyes and his father’s chin?
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