Designer Baby Given Go-ahead 65
An anonymous reader writes "A couple in the Australian city of Melbourne has been given the legal go ahead to breed a genetically modified 'designer' baby to cure their terminally ill child."
"I am, therefore I am." -- Akira
Yeah, I got yer genetic screening right here... (Score:2, Insightful)
This one is a no-brainer (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole slippery slope argument about "Designer Babies" is completely bunk because sliding "down" that slope would be nothing but benefit to mankind. The world would, unquestionably, be a better place if genetically-based diseases were eradicated and people had more of a genetic predisposition to be healthy, fit, and intelligent. So what if the benefit only applies to those who can afford it; the same can be said of ALL expensive medical treatments, and yet we don't see anyone advocating banning chemotherapy for that reason.
One of the other arguments against so-called "Designer Babies" is that genetic screening will, in many cases, be applied very narrowly (for example, to enhance physical attractiveness) neglecting more important things and actually making the person-to-be less healthy overall. So, hypothetically, the technology could be misused in harmful ways. Big deal. Antibiotics have been and are still being misused resulting in the creation of dangerous antibiotic-resistant diseases that are taking a great toll in some areas, such as Russia's problem with MDR Tuberculosis. Nevertheless, that has never been a good reason to ban antibiotics altogether, and this situation is hardly any different. The industry could be regulated to avoid abuses and malpractice, the same way other medical procedures and prescription drugs are handled today. The difference between this and other medical resources that are legal but regulated is grossly insufficient to warrant the double standard of banning genetic screening/improvement altogether.
The third objection to so-called "Designer Babies" is an (IMO irrational) fear, spawned from science fiction, of creating a "super race" of genetically engineered humans, raising the standards for everyone and harming those whose parents couldn't afford the genetic improvement technology. Let me ask you, how is that sort of economic divide any different from the current situation? Rich people can afford to send their students to better schools, and provide them with a more advantageous upbringing in general. This results in a situation where the children of middle class and rich parents have more of a chance to succeed than the children of poor parents, regardless of their innate potential. Does this mean that all private/rich-public schools should be disbanded, and everyone should be condemned to a crappy education and a disadvantaged upbringing? Heck no. That would certainly satisfy the resentment of the poor, without really helping them, but it would harm everyone else. That is analogous to the issue at hand: Banning genetic screening/improvement would simply hold back part of society from improving themselves, without providing and concrete benefit except satisfying paranoia and class envy. Such a ban would do nothing to serve the common good.
To quote James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA's structure, "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."
Re:Won't SONEONE Please Think of the Children (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If only... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:super (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think amneocentesis is creepy? Or does it depend on the reason?
People test babies in the womb, and make a choice to end the pregnancy if the baby has severe problems. This may seem creepy to some, but it is accepted medical practice.
People also use the testing to determine the sex of the baby, and make a choice to end the pregnancy. This is often much more objectionable to more people than the first scenario.
We have already had people create children to be organ donors for other children. There were ethical concerns about that as well, but it was determined to be acceptable.
As time goes by, we accept what becomes commonplace. There have been cultures where inter-racial marriage was against the law, on grounds not unsimilar to your feeling "creepy" about testing IVF results before implantation.
IVF itself caused quite a stir. Some wondered whether the first "test-tube" baby would be psychologically damaged by the publicity or the knowledge. On the other hand, this is one kid who can be certain there was no accident.
Consider this: IVF itself usually generates several candidates for implantation, and often not all of them are used. The unused candidates are discarded. But they contain the same cells that the umbilicus carries, and have the same ability to save the first child. Why are the ethicists insisting that a child be carried to term? If two out of three candidates are never implanted in a womb, why implant any? Or is it that once the couple has gone to all of the expense of IVF to save the first child, they might as well implant the candidate, and get the second child they wanted anyway, with a guarantee that it does not suffer from the same problem as the first one? Perhaps it is just two birds with one stone.
I am not forcing my ethics on this couple or any other. Whether I would have made their choice or not is unimportant. But I am glad that I do not have that choice to make. Many of us would bend our ethics to save our only child.
How many of you would donate some umbilical blood to save a sibling, assuming your parents had the foresight to preserve it? Many would donate a kidney, or a lung. It seems unlikely that this child will regret the decision later in life. He was conceived on purpose. Great effort was made to ensure that he did not have genetic problems. The blastocyst that he came from could have been used as it was, instead of being implanted to create him. I don't think this kid will suffer emotional upheaval when he is told about his special circumstances. Is his case any more disturbing than being told you were adopted? Many people get over that.
If this is "playing god", then so is most of medicine. Perhaps playing god is a noble ambition, a better role model than playing first person shooter.
Re:Won't SONEONE Please Think of the Children (Score:5, Insightful)
1. How do you know that the sole purpose of having this kid was to save their other kid? I think that's a bit of a stretch to make this so cut and dry. Even if it is, does it really matter? You seem to assume that the sole purpose of having the kid automatically translates into the value of the kid after its born. Is your value tied to your parents intent in having you? What about all the children that are conceived from "accidents"?
2. I'm not really sure what you're trying to argue here. The technique they're using wouldn't cause any health problems, it only prevents them.
3. I don't really understand this argument either. You seem to be stringing us along for a bit toward your goal suggesting that these people would just have an abortion after they harvested the fetal blood. This couple isn't going to have an abortion, so your "what if" scenario doesn't apply.
4. huh? While this is maybe an interesting legal question, I don't see how it applies to the ethics of this situation.
5. Making a reference to "scary book about genetics gone mad books" is a scare tactic, not an actual argument. No one is creating genetically enhanced super-men here, and no one is creating three different classes of people.
6. We've been playing god by saving peoples lives who shouldn't due to evolution ever since we figured out how to bandage a wound. Are you suggesting we not treat anyone so that the people with the "wrong" genes will die? To use your argument, that sounds pretty close to the theme of Gattaca or Brave New World to me.
7. Maybe this is an alternate treatment, I really don't know. Even if it is, the existance of an alternate treatment isn't an argument that what they're doing is wrong.
8. What does it teach him? Maybe that his parents will do anything to save him? That his parents value life? Sorry, the answers to this question seem pretty open ended to me. It all depends on what his parents teach him, which is really no different than anyone else.
Re:Won't SONEONE Please Think of the Children (Score:5, Insightful)
And if the application of this desire results in a naturally "less fit" genotype, then so be it. A life (I'm talking about the parents' lives here, not the child's) either has no purpose at all, or one of its own choosing. If people choose (by default) the same purpose as mother nature (to mindlessly optimize the fitness function), that would be a pretty disappointing waste of brains, IMHO.
Ah, but regarding the child's purpose... What will this kid think when he learns of his "purpose?" Well, as soon as he's old enough to think, then he'll already have new purpose all on his own. His parents' original motives become irrelevant. I just hope he knows this.
By that reasoning, is there ever any justification for choosing to conceive a child? Would not any concious decision to create life, be a form of objectifying that life?I think treating people like cattle is horrible too, but I have no problems with abortion or genetic hacking. I reconcile this by using a perhaps (?) nonconventional definition for "people." Having human DNA isn't enough to quality (nor is it even a strict requirement, though I've never met a person who didn't have it). What matters, what gives (or doesn't give) a being the value I assign to a person, isn't what kind of meat they're made out of. What matters is how they act. Goo inside a test tube, even if it is a potential person, ain't one yet.
Re:Genetic screening ... not modification (Score:4, Insightful)
Although the theory is there, I'm not sure if anyone has successfully 'fixed' bad genes in an embryo.
Re:Won't SONEONE Please Think of the Children (Score:5, Insightful)
2. This is wildly unrealistic- that the parents would possess alleles for two different genetic ailments that can only be cured by sibling cord blood is extremely improbable. Yet, if it were to occur, and embryos could then be selected that possessed neither ailment (if any existed), and the funds for another round of IVF were available, then I see no reason to deny them the chance. If the couple is really that desperate, and you deny them IVF, it's likely that they might attempt to conceive a child "the old-fashioned way," taking the risk it would bear one or both disorders.
3. Looking at it in pragmatic (and harsh)terms first of all, why would you abort a fetus that cost so much money to conceive? Really, if you wanted to do this, you would not implant the embryo at all- you would simply convert it into a line of stem cells.
4. Huh? First off, the second kid does not even need to be alive to save its sibling's life- you said so yourself in #3. Second, how is the first kid "already dead?" If that were the case, everyone dying of a terminal illness would be legally dead.
5. Look, these parents aren't creating the ubermensch, or an Alpha. To call this a "designer baby" is inaccurate- this child would not be genetically modified in any way- all of its genes will come from its parents, who received them from their parents. A chance exists that the parents could "naturally" produce a child without this genetic defect- but not a very good one. Chance favors the prepared mind, and also the parents who were able to select an embryo with IVF.
6. Why must we kowtow to evolution? Rejecting the idea that producing children that will slowly and agonizingly die from an inherited disease is heaven working in mysterious ways and replacing it with the idea that we must let natural selection discard harmful alleles from the gene pool is merely replacing one tyranny with another. Fsck, at least God has a grand plan, or so I'm told. The examples you give of diseases that tie into our species' supposed genetic fitness decline are rather interesting- I'd say increases in the first four are much more the result of lifestyle choices than genetics (well, not if you mean Type I diabetes, I suppose) As far as asthma, I'd say that has to do more with pollution than genes. Allergies are rather interesting though- I'd suspect that in addition to environmental factors (including the pollution again), at least a small portion of that might be due to the spreading and interbreeding of long isolated groups of humans- thus spreading around genes for hypersensitivities. Anyway, the couple with a child with sickle-cell anemia raises an interesting point- this is the textbook case of a genetic disease that evolution built. Sickle-cell anemia has been known for thousands of years, and until recent advances (such as this cord blood therapy, for instance) was generally lethal at a relatively young age. However, it's stayed around mostly because it is a recessive disorder, and more importantly, the heterozygote (one copy of the normal "wild type" dominant gene and one defective sickle-cell recessive copy) has a resistance to infection by malaria. If this child survives, and then lives to procreate, it is likely that this heterozygote advantage will be conferred on them- that doesn't sound like enfeebling the human race to me.
7. Making this one shorter, I'm sure that's already been tried- many hospitals have set up cord blood donation programs- but a blood relation- particularly a sibling- stands an excellent chance of being a precise match.
8. Now, suppose this child were old enough to understand the present situation- what do you think the child would want? If the parents are willing to do all of this to save their child's life, it would seem that they hold that child to be rather precious. You can be cynical and claim that if the older child dies, he is merely being "replaced," but then the same is true for every other couple who wishes to conceive again after the death of a child. Surely they aren't being selfish?
Inaccurate sensationalist media (Score:1, Insightful)
from the organlegging dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A couple in the Australian city of Melbourne has been given the legal go ahead to breed a genetically modified
Most of the above language has one target: evoking an emotional response in the reader that was apparently felt by the poster/submitter. Even worse, the above characterization is highly inaccurate with regard to the actual article.
For shame.
Re:Uhm, no (Score:2, Insightful)
Some common combinations of genes might give a high chance of some mental disease. But also a high chance of artistic talent. Would it be worth losing those artists to save some people from mental disease?
The answer to that depends on lots of factors. (Will there probably be an easy treatment for the disease when the child is grown? How high chance for artistic talent or mental disease? How valuable are those artists to society? Etc, etc.)
Genes and inheritance is a very complex subject -- and then environmental influences complicates it much more...
You probably should think twice when taking decisions in this area -- but I am of the opinion that control of our genes is necessary and will be a very good thing for humanity (given democracy and some regulatory sanity-checks on modifications).
Disclaimer: IANAG (I am not a geneticist.)