Fertility Clinic Bows To Pressure, Nixes Eye- and Hair-Color Screening 847
destinyland writes "A fertility service in L.A. and New York screens embryos for breast cancer, cystic fibrosis, and 70 other diseases — and lets couples pick the sex of their babies. But when their pre-implantation diagnostic services began including the baby's eye and hair color, even the Pope objected — and the Great Designer Baby Controversy began. '[W]e cannot escape the fact that science is moving forward,' the fertility service explained — before capitulating to pressure to eliminate the eye and hair color screenings."
It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
It's when fertility clinics start to offer to change the hair or eye color (or other traits) of a baby to be.
I guess I'm just old fashioned.
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
Because that wouldn't be propagating ones own genes.
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean the same genes that are making it really hard for you to have children?
Let's think about this for a moment....
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:4, Funny)
No, people have cared about getting laid since the beginning of time. Survival of our genes is just a side effect.
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:5, Informative)
Steven Hawkings probably would have been screened out of existence
Actually Stephen Hawking suffers from adult-onset ALS [wikipedia.org], so he likely would not have been screened out of existence even if the technology existed ... especially since no definitive cause [wikipedia.org] for ALS has been established, though DNA defects have not been ruled out.
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:4, Informative)
Nor would Hellen Keller who was blinded and deafened by (probably) Scarlet Fever in early childhood (around 18 months old). No one is certain what the disease was, but it certainly afflicted her well after birth.
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:4, Funny)
Nor would Hellen Keller who was blinded and deafened by (probably) Scarlet Fever
I was blinded and deafened by Disco Fever. Never look directly into the glittery ball, they told me. But did I listen? No. I was already deaf. The Bee Gees took care of that.
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"The clinic is right, it's only a matter of time until we accept this, and we'll just have to wait and see what happens."
Seriously, is it 1930 again?
Eugenics being seriously debated.
Worldwide depression.
Fascism becoming a mainstream political ideal.
A country in a far away land beating the drums of war with it's huge army that can "blitz" it's neighbour in a day.
An Asian empire rising and on a collision course with the States.
I think I want the '90s back thanks. Post-haste.
Random vs Heuristic (Score:5, Interesting)
CORRECTAMUNDO!!!
Evolution is defined as natural selection of random mutations. It's surprising just how many geeks, who should be very familiar with what "random" means, will still advocate the idea of genetic selection and manipulation of offspring. I personally think it's from reading too many sci-fi novels in which "genetic manipulation" results in supermen or the like.
Once our society begins selecting and/or rejecting offspring based on their genes, or we begin manipulating our genetic codes, evolution stops. We won't have moved into another kind of evolution. We won't be make our evolution more efficient. We'll have stopped evolving altogether, at least in the only way we understand the evolution of organism.
In technical terms, we will have moved humanity from a local random search to a heuristics based local search. The difference cannot be emphasized enough. Here we have a local random search for better organisms that has delivered incredible(literally to some) results over millions of years. Yet people are proposing replacing that system with heuristics that have no other qualification other than certain people think they will lead to improvement. Genetic manipulation advocates fail Optimisation 101.
Some will argue that parents have the right to procreate in any way they choose. But as I've advocated before, rights do not scale up. Just because it seems right that one person should be able to do something, you cannot just inductively apply that logic to the entire population. And when you grant a right, that's exactly who you grant it to. Everybody.
I'd liken genetic manipulation to interbreeding. Some people think it should be moral to marry your cousin or even sibling. They can even make a good case for why they should be entitled to do so. But if you scaled that right up to the entire populations, we'd all end up inbred, sickly and probably mentally retarded within a hundred or so years. Genetic selection promises much the same outcome, except genetic homogeneity will occur on a population wide scale.
Inductively scaling procreation rights up can easily lead us to a tall, trim, blue eyed, blond haired, heap of flu-ridden corpses. The very fact that this clinic offered such frivolities as eye and hair colour screening shows that this is exactly what will happen if we replace proven randomness with such vapid heuristics.
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Yes, it won't be 'evolution' any more. Instead, it will be guided progression. There are risks, of course, but there are also many benefits. To ask humans not to meddle is to ask them to stop being human.
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Your comparison to cousin marriage is inaccurate. First cousin marriages have been common in most societies until the last couple centuries (and still very common for more than half of the world's population). They have only a marginally higher rate of birth defects.
Sibling marriages OTOH....
Re:Random vs Heuristic (Score:4, Insightful)
You couldn't be more wrong or short sighted.
"Once our society begins selecting and/or rejecting offspring based on their genes, or we begin manipulating our genetic codes, evolution stops."
No it doesn't, go back and study it again.
"We won't have moved into another kind of evolution. "
That shows a serious lack of understanding of evolution.
It is not a ladder, or a tree or a chain, it's more of a bush.
Your whole premise is flawed becasue you do not understand what you are talking about and are applying cross field analogy.
Epic. Fail.
Re:Random vs Heuristic (Score:5, Insightful)
Your rant really makes no sense at all.
You see evolution is actually defined as "the change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next". The methods of change include random mutation, and natural selection but are not limited to it by any means. Because you are not using the proper definition of evolution, once we as (supposedly) intelligent beings begin modifying our own genetic code, evolution does not, in fact, stop. Rather human evolution changes from a random process to a directed process.
It is true that we could stop evolution, if we chose to do so. However, your assumption that the inevitable result is an end to change in the human genome suffers from some very large flaws. People actually have differing preferences, I'm sure there are many, many people who do not desire their children to be blue-eyed and blond Germans. If you were correct, we could reasonably expect every child to be called "Hans" or "Gretta" and frankly, even massively popular names never reach a level of ubiquity where everyone has the same name.
Furthermore, anyone with even the remotest trace of training in search algorithms can tell you that randomly selecting your results is a terrible search algorithm. It's slow, it's inefficient, and it's unbounded. Sure, eventually the correct result should be returned, but the heat death of the universe might occur first. That might be why it took about 3.7 billion years to produce us and we might represent a "lucky" search.
As far as rights go, it is an interesting question. However, you shouldn't confuse genetic tailoring with genetic cloning. At the current level parents are only able to choose between a selection of viable embryos. They are able to choose from a variety of outcomes they could have naturally produced. Even if we could rewrite the genetic code of an embryo it seems unlikely that we would change everything to the degree where we'd produce the human monoculture you dread so much.
Frankly, giving the current prevalence of capitalism, it seems unlikely that most people would be able to afford the wholesale genetic rewriting of their children for the sake of vanity. So given that our unequal distribution of wealth is a problem unlikely to disappear at any point in the foreseeable future and that companies will almost certainly charge for the service of changing your offspring's DNA, you will, most likely, find that distribution of wealth enough to create a heterogeneous genetic population before we consider religious differences, cultural differences, personal preferences, aesthetics, trends, and fashion. And let's not forget that are significant populations who would likely choose not to engage in genetic engineering.
The fact that the clinic in question offered such frivolities as eye and hair colour screening shows people are interested in how their children will look. It has nothing to do with any of your other points, at least not without some type of information on what the parents who were allowed to screen their embryos chose. If you have some evidence to show that they all chose Nordic features, please do provide it.
In closing, you keep using that word "heuristics", I do not think it means what you think it means. A "vapid heuristic" would, in all honestly, best describe random mutation, not human genetic engineering.
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Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, not everyone wants children, including myself.
Most yes, but I know several people that have no desire for children what-so-ever.
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Me too. Having grown up in the shadow of the Cold War, on a planet where humans breed like flies on a dungheap, where any meanness or nastiness is regarded as OK if it enables you to pull the guy above you off the ladder and stomp on the hands of the next guy down, I have never felt that this is a world I would want to be responsible for bringing a child into.
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:5, Funny)
To be fair, not everyone wants children, including myself.
Actually about half the worlds population would rather not have children, and the other half are women.
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Ever consider those who are not able to produce because of some "after-market" problem? Not all fertility problems are a result of genetic deficiencies. Sometimes the occur as part of the environment.
I know the above seems harsh, but it is a risk that I have been watching with some consternation since the first "test-tube" baby was born in the 1970s. Since then there seems to be an explosion of people, who otherwise could not conceive, pushing out quadruplets, quintuplets, and more, all the while depleting the gene-pool.
Those multi-births only occur because many fertilized embryos are placed in the host as a precaution against those that do not survive the process. I am sure as the technology progresses the need for multiple IVFs will decrease, abating your concerns purely upon technological reasons. That aside, considerin
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I argue with my wife about this all the time. She thinks I'm some kind if eugenics moster. I argue otherwise. I am not trying to shape humanity. I am trying to prevent shaping.
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Oh, and the white ones fetch a higher price on the black market.
Does that mean that the black ones fetch a higher price on the white market?
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is so hypocritical that it's absurd. Parents foist themselves and their children on the world and then try to persuade us that being a parent equates one to being a saint and that there is nothing more altruistic than xeroxing yourself a few times.
Yet they can't be bothered to do the right thing and, if they absolutely must have a diaper to change or a college tuition to pay, do it for some poor parentless soul out there that truly needs it *now*.
The hypocrisy of such people is simply astounding.
Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is so hypocritical that it's absurd. Parents foist themselves and their children on the world and then try to persuade us that being a parent equates one to being a saint and that there is nothing more altruistic than xeroxing yourself a few times.
The ready answer to this line of reasoning is of course: Aren't you glad your parents didn't think the way you do?
That chestnut aside, it's now considered hypocritical to want to fulfill one of the most fundamental biological imperatives on earth? That's a scary thought. What other fundamentally human drives would you like to see renounced in order to make the world a better place?
I'm not sure anyone here (other than you, in your haste to set up a straw man) is claiming that parents, by virtue of being parents, are candidates for sainthood. The mere fact that so many kids are abandoned, as you alluded to, seems to indicate that's not necessarily the case. A lot of people who elect to have children do work hard to raise them well, though, and I tend to think on balance that's a good thing for everyone.
I'm also not sure there's anything inherently more virtuous about caring for someone else's child than for your own, as you seem to suggest.
You must be using some definition of the word "hypocritical" that I'm not familiar with.
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Re:It's not the eye color screening that bugs me (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what bugs you? Because that's what they are doing... except much less efficiently. The clinic will create, say, a dozen embryos, and then test each of them -- the ones with the undesirable traits are then offed, and the good ones implanted. Sure, it reeks of eugenics more than a little bit.
But I think it's a little odd that you don't mind the eugenics, but you do mind the efficient process to make the eugenics work.
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That's such a delta thing to do. Sheesh.
Re:Why the Pope? (Score:5, Insightful)
"even the Pope objected"
Is it surprising that the Pope objected? He's very conservative, and doesn't even approve of contraception for people with HIV. Does he approve of IV fertilisation at all? If god wants you to have a disabled kid...
The Pope has referred to IVF as an "abomination", so no, he does not approve of IVF at all, designer eyes or no.
Someday I'll tell my daughter that she owes her existence, in part, to the fact that we aren't Catholic.
I don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, if you can get just the kid you want...why not? What are the objections? Hell, when they can start letting you pick if you kid is going to be smart and/or athletic...are they gonna can that choice too?
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with trying to get the eye color or hair color you want? What is the difference with that and picking the sex?
I'm not sure I get it either. As a subsequent poster points out, it's screening, not "designing". Couples are choosing among existing embryos.
Screening has been going on for millions of years. Humans have always been able to choose their mates based on visible criteria like hair color, eye color, athletic ability, etc. Why is screening acceptable for invisible traits (like propensity for cancer and other genetic predispositions), but not for visible traits?
I am just waiting for (Score:5, Interesting)
skin color and such to come down the pike.
Of course, if they could prove that sexual preference is genetic I believe we will see some real outrage with "We can guarantee your baby will NOT be gay"
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Problem with saying sexual preference is genetic is then I can say being stupid is genetic, and therefor it's not my fault I can't test well, it's just my genetic code. Please send me a government check paid by the people who with genetic code to be smart. I can't help myself.
While we are not all the same, we all have a choice, and our society seems eager to shirk that consequences of that responsibility while retaining the benefits.
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Really?
I doubt seriously that you'd see any 'outrage' expressed at all. At least, not in the US. Being gay isn't exactly that popular, and still carries a pretty heavy stigma in society. Attitudes have come a long way, sure, but, it isn't accepted by the general public...especially not in private conversations amongst straight people. They may state one thing to be PC in public, but what they say out of the spotligh
Re:I don't get it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Most likely, it reminds people of at least one country where the government wanted a specific type of person.* That, and if someone didn't like the eye/hair color, they would destroy the blob of cells which some people consider to be a person. And we all know the Pope's stand on this subject.
As far as picking the sex, there are numerous countries where a male child is wanted and if it's a girl, it is killed or sold. This of course has a distinct downside. See this story [cbsnews.com] for tidbits of the situation.
*Funny how those who suffered the most are now demanding their own country be person specific with no "mixed blood".
Re:I don't get it... (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. In fact, nurture seems to have more to do with IQ than nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Project [wikipedia.org]
Understand, this is a change of 2 standard deviations in IQ.
Also,
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2006/07/intelligence-nature-and-nurture.html [blogspot.com]
Quote:
Contrary to what you might expect, for those children, the I.Q.â(TM)s of identical twins vary just as much as the I.Q.â(TM)s of fraternal twins. The impact of growing up impoverished overwhelms these childrenâ(TM)s genetic capacities. In other words, home life is the critical factor for youngsters at the bottom of the economic barrel.
There's a recent article on newer studies, but I can't seem to locate it.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not sure if this is just silly or borderline nazi, but I don't like it.
I made my children the usual way, by fucking and waiting. And they look like me. And I like them the way they are. Sure, they have their quirks, but who doesn't?
If you can't breed children, adopt some. There's no lack of children in the planet.
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The downside (Score:3, Interesting)
What's wrong with trying to get the eye color or hair color you want?
There is a big downside: loss of genetic diversity. Having as wide a gene pool as possible is a very good idea if you want a species to survive the next serious pandemic. Limiting diversity for sensible reasons (like no genetic diseases) is fine because there is a clear, obvious benefit. Limiting diversity because you want your baby to have blue eyes and blonde hair is not because there is no real benefit. Choosing a baby's gender is even worse since it can lead to sever social problems if one sex is prefe
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The only problem Gattaca brings up is that it's a bad idea to discriminate based on rule of law and the attitude towards those naturally born.
Genetic selection doesn't automatically mean people will form said attitude, or enact legislation against those "naturally" born or not.
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But the screening is taking place with the idea that the screened children will be superior. "We want to give your child the best possible start" is a direct quote from early on in the movie that would make it hard for a parent to not screen their kid genetically, but by the end of the movie, is it still true that the screened for children are superior?
Basically, who are we to decide what is best? Examine nearly ever example of where humans have introduced something into an environment or changed something
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Maybe in China, but not in Scandinavia, my point was actually that in different places different genders are preferred since it is commonly known that in certain countries male children are preferred, I felt it would make sense to point out that in other places it is very likely that female children would be preferred.
/Mikael
lawsuit (Score:5, Funny)
Would you have been able to sue them if your baby had blond hair when you wanted a brunette?
"No honey, of course mommy and daddy love you just the way you are... never mind the settlement we got because your hair color is wrong. It paid for all this dye!"
An Ethical Quandry without an easy answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, if you choose to make the second argument, then one would also be playing god when embryos are screened for diseases, and thus should be disallowed as well.
Re:An Ethical Quandry without an easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I don't want some religion to tell me what medical procedures I can/cannot have because they think their holy book would approve/disapprove.
Does it matters who book it is? (Score:4, Interesting)
What if its a government book that states you cannot have procedure X because you don't requirements Y, or Z? Or, you can have it, but not until political grouping A and B have sufficient opportunities first?
Religion or bureaucracy, does it really matter if the end result is the same?
The difference between religious and government rules is that the later is enforced at the point of a gun
Re:An Ethical Quandry without an easy answer (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd go even further and say any medical procedure, drug, etc. could be considered playing god. Sorry Timmy you got TB and are going to die, yes we could give you some pills to save you but that is playing god.
Personally I don't want some religion to tell me what medical procedures I can/cannot have because they think their holy book would approve/disapprove.
Yawn, bringing up medical procedures and drugs is a straw man here. The issue the crazy religious folk have with this is one of life. When you administer the TB drug, you are not stopping life. When you fail to implant a fertilized egg, that is a life that was created that will never become a human being.
It's a slippery slope. If it's ok to determine whether the life lives or dies when it doesn't have a brain, then maybe it's ok to determine whether it lives or dies when it has a brain but isn't on the same level of consciousness as us (partial birth abortion, AKA murdering the baby before it's halfway out of the mother in the birthing process [-1 flamebait/troll/overrated for saying that right there!]), and so then maybe it's ok to determine whether a life lives or it dies if the majority say its future is not worth keeping it alive (forced euthanasia); and finally then it's ok for me to determine whether something lives or it dies simply because that is how I prefer it and after all I know what is better for it.
If you don't value life from the start, then you cannot somehow place more value on that life as it matures without being either inconsistent, or elitist, or both. The societal implications of not valuing the full life are drastic, and it is for our own conscience's good (and the future of our world) if we choose to value life through and through.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are certainly foreseeable scientific / medical implications. Selective fertilization of this nature can potentially have long term (as in long term) negative consequences for the viability of the species as a whole.
If designerism gets to a certain level, it's possible to completely breed out characteristics seen as unappealing but which may have real long term species survivability characteristics associated with it.
As a simple analogy, consider that rats on an island were able to reject fertilized e
Re:An Ethical Quandry without an easy answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Except there is no god, so you can't play him. Once more, religion gets in the way of science.
Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
Re:An Ethical Quandry without an easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)
This really doesn't seem to be about religion to me.
I have 2 children. I love them dearly, and would never change anything about them. Part of the thrill of parenting, is the gamble about what kind of child you will end up with. To be able to choose the traits of your children, seems to make it all a bit superficial to me. Why not just grow them in a test tube?
Hell, why not just make baby farms as described in the Matrix? If we're going to take the gamble out of genetics, whats left for us?
As far as "Playing god" or whatever name you want to give it, "God" in this instance does not neccesarily refer to any given diety, but simply refers to the unknown force that normally determines the traits of your child.
I believe that there are forces in this world that we do not understand, that we should not understand, and that we should not meddle with because we don't understand them. Whether the decry came from the pope himself, or some guy living on the streets in new york, the message is still the same. By letting people choose their babies traits, we are taking away something that is profound.
When my first child was born, the first thing the nurse said to me was "Her eyes are brown... that never happens". I would not trade that moment for anything in the world.
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Part of the thrill of parenting, is the gamble about what kind of child you will end up with. To be able to choose the traits of your children, seems to make it all a bit superficial to me.
Hmm... I wonder if you would be as thrilled when the child pops out with Downs or some other genetic disease.
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"Part of the thrill of parenting, is the gamble about what kind of child you will end up with. To be able to choose the traits of your children, seems to make it all a bit superficial to me. Why not just grow them in a test tube?"
So, I would be wrong to choose to be superficial? Is growing babies in test tubes or on farms an inherrantly bad thing? For one, it would probably increase the rate of child survival and decrease the pain and serious health risk of giving birth.
"I believe that there are forces in
Re:An Ethical Quandry without an easy answer (Score:4, Interesting)
Except there is no god, so you can't play him.
Nonsense. By acting as a god, you play god, even if you don't think any gods exist. You can play Satan too if you wished to. Or Sauron for that matter. The absence of a real god just means there's nobody to strike you down in the afterlife for your hubris.
There is still a valuable ethical lesson to take away from the concept. Even atheist scientists can recognize this. The point is, we are not omniscient, and messing with things we don't fully understand can have disastrous consequences. The humility "don't play god" suggests you should have should also inspire caution and careful consideration of what you are doing, and this is a good thing.
Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
Is religion blocking science all around the world, or is the minor but present advances made by other countries while the U.S. turned away from science in the last decade supposed to be so impressive that it is clear religion is leading us back to the dark ages?
Re:An Ethical Quandry without an easy answer (Score:5, Funny)
'By acting as a god, you play god, even if you don't think any gods exist. You can play Satan too if you wished to. Or Sauron for that matter.'
At least you can always tell when the parents have played Sauron ('The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing' - this is never a good look, and little Pharazon will be mercilessly bullied at school). Don't even ask about the hair colour...
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At least you can always tell when the parents have played Sauron ('The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing' - this is never a good look, and little Pharazon will be mercilessly bullied at school).
I wouldn't worry about that. Personally I was able to avoid a lot of bullying by seeming just crazy enough that I might snap. Give me eyes with pupils that open on a pit to nothing, and I co
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'But on the other hand, some women like the dark and dangerous type.'
I guess the popularity of the whole 'Twilight' might work in your favour. On the other hand, any budding Dark Lord would probably have to work on his dating skills ('Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark then any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor' - not exactly dinner and a movie, is it?).
Re:An Ethical Quandry without an easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Once more, religion gets in the way of science. Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
Historically speaking, the Church (Galileo notwithstanding!) and Islam during the medieval period played a very large part in encouraging the development of science, medicine, and the arts. It varied by time period and region, but the link can't be denied.
Second, one thing that confuses me about these sorts of statements is this - presumably, you think religion is just some nonsense that stupid people latch on to. But even if you get rid of religion, people are still going to be stupid. What makes you think that these stupid people won't find something else to latch on to that has the same sort of negative effects as religion? In fact, getting rid of religion might leave a vacuum that could be filled by something worse...
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"Historically speaking, the Church (Galileo notwithstanding!) and Islam during the medieval period played a very large part in encouraging the development of science, medicine, and the arts."
The problem with this statement is that it makes it seem as though the point of religion was the development of science, medicine, and the arts. It wasn't. That development was a by-product of education which at that time was centered in religion merely because religion was the most organized social institution. I think
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Bullshit. Just a few centuries ago, if you were unlucky enough to have some harmless but badly perceived condition, such as being gay, left handed, female, some sort of mental proble
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Claiming that there simply is no god, is just as a religious statement as saying there is one. You're believing in something with no proof (the non-existence of god).
You know, I consider myself an agnostic rather than an atheist. But it doesn't take a fundamental change of your statement to make it seem rather silly:
Claiming that there simply are no leprechauns, is just as superstitious a statement as saying there are. You're believing in something with no proof (the non-existence of leprechauns).
Would you also hold this statement to be true?
Problem solved (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Problem solved (Score:5, Insightful)
And the anti-social pasty white nerd gene too please.
Sorry CmdrTaco, half your audience will no longer exist in 20 years.
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"Designing" is not the same as "screening" (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't think "designer" in this context is supposed to imply how you get the custom-made baby; I don't think it's that technical. I think it's more intended in a fashion sense, like "designer jeans". The implication is that it is something well-off families will do in order to get the "right" kind of baby, rather than grabbing something off the rack at the thrift store and settling for what you get.
Whether you modify the genes of a single embryo to get red hair and blue eyes, or select from thousands of
picking the sex is more evil (Score:3, Informative)
and is unfortunately still prevalent in india, china, and korea, and immigrant communities from india, china, and korea
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/nyregion/15babies.html [nytimes.com]
they should outlaw sex selection. an absolutely disgusting practice
Re:picking the sex is more evil (Score:5, Interesting)
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it IS a big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
you even said why it is a big deal yourself in the last sentence
why do a bunch of innocent men deserve a sad lonely miserable existence without a wife, simply for the sake of a barbaric and pointless belief?
you DO solve it by outlawing it (Score:3)
take footbinding
when footbinding was first outlawed, it still went on. it only gradually faded away
of course just outlawing something doesn't make it automatically disappear. it takes time
and some things that are outlawed, simply out of moral zealotry, never go away. like prohibition and alcohol. if you outlawed abortion for example, abortion would still go on. why? because there is a need, and there will always be a need, by women and girls who get pregnant and don't want the child, to try to get rid of th
Heavy Metal Baby (Score:4, Funny)
The Line Goes here (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I've always wondered where the line would be drawn, and it's apparently at eye and hair color. To sum up, designing a baby to be resistant to over 70 diseases is cool - and designing a baby to be a particular sex is also cool. But choosing hair color or eye color, that goes to far.
If someone didn't draw the line for me, I'd never know where it goes. I've never been good at placing arbitrary restrictions on things I don't understand, so thank God for the Pope.
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From TFA:
The backlash was widespread. Quoted in the New York Daily News on February 23, the Pope himself condemned the âoeobsessive search for the perfect child.â The pontiff complained, âoeA new mentality is creeping in that tends to justify a different consideration of life and personal dignity.â The roman Catholic Church objects to all applications of PGD because they invariably involve the destruction of blastocysts.
He objects to the disease resistance and sex choosing too, so mentioning him in the summary makes no sense IMO. I don't think Popes are usually known for their liberal viewpoints. An equally as pointless but slightly more sensible line would have been "The Pope objects, as usual".
Now we'll have a genetic class-based society... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind this procedure will only available to those who can afford it.
Want to grow up to become an athlete? Sorry, your parents couldn't afford to select genes that predispose you to becoming tall / strong / better cardiovascular function.
Want to grow up to become a model? Sorry, your parents couldn't afford to give you a slender physique, blond, and blue eyes.
Want health insurance? Sure, but it's going to be more expensive because your parents couldn't afford to eliminate your risk of ALS.
The challenging part is that yeah, if I have the choice to prevent my future kids from developing life-shortening diseases, I've got to do it.
Tough ethical choices ahead of us, imho.
Re:Now we'll have a genetic class-based society... (Score:4, Insightful)
So that's the problem, then, isn't it: what counts as life-shortening diseases?
There's a correlation between being left-handed and dying of accidents. So you'd want to select for a right-handed kid.
There's a correlation between height and income: tall people make more. There's a correlation between income and average lifespan. So you'd want to have a tall right-handed kid.
You can see where this is going: if you want to, you can justify almost any selection criterion as being life-extending, or at least life-enhancing.
There's no good line to draw.
Your assumption rests on gross stereotype (Score:3, Insightful)
Want to grow up to become an athlete? Sorry, your parents couldn't afford to select genes that predispose you to becoming tall / strong / better cardiovascular function.
Want to grow up to become a model? Sorry, your parents couldn't afford to give you a slender physique, blond, and blue eyes.
Those are a really poor examples. Even if you give a child those attributes they may not have the dexterity or will to really perform in sports. By the time you kid grows up blond/blue eyed models may be as common a
I predict! (Score:3, Interesting)
This and its more controlled forms would last for two or three generations tops. Eventually people will get pissed off enough to realize that its idiotic to let someones parents choose their child's looks based on what the popular culture of their parents finds beautiful and attractive, with no regard for the fact that none of the kids will be able to meet the criteria of beauty in their own popular culture. It will be like the quest for super thinness and super buffness times ten. Several generations with no selfesteem.
Someone is gonna go, "guys, seriously this isn't working, and we are all ugly too boot."
The POPE ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand the Pope's objection. The body is nothing more than a meat machine that holds the soul. If we have the technology to improve the machine that houses the soul, what is the problem? Jesus Christ. The disciples fixed the broken machine all the time in the new testament, back then it was called a miracle. Now we have the technology to improve the lives of all future children it would be a crime not to remove genetic diseases. Why does the church insist on allowing unnecessary suffering just so that they can provide comfort to the person who is suffering? Wouldn't it be better to eradicate the suffering in the first place?
Even the Pope objected? (Score:3, Interesting)
But when their pre-implantation diagnostic services began including the baby's eye and hair color, even the Pope objected
I'm pretty sure the Pope was objecting the entire time. Last year, they even made it official company policy [vatican.va] that IVF=abortion.
Re:what is the big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Kind of off-topic: but I think we're going down a slippery slope when we start screening DNA. It works against the process of evolution. What if there's a new fatal disease that only people with the breast cancer trait are equipped to fight?
Also Gattaca: society could expect a certain baseline of traits for what is "human". So people who don't meet that could be considered disabled, or worse.
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Engineering out or in particular traits are all well and good, but
Not that I particularly care - as far as I'm concerned for the vast majority of humanity breeding is a
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through out history there are groups of people just like that. Nazi's,(insert race) supremeists, etc that try or desire to limit humans to one hair, skin, eye color combos which they view as superior. This is well documented. We need our diversity. It is a major part of us. With out it we are far weaker.
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can you ever see humans being so conformist as to have identical children with a low biodiversity such that they're susceptible to something like that?
Yes, at least for significantly large populations of humans.
Little Boxes [youtube.com]
1. Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
2. And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they'
Re:what is the big deal? (Score:4, Insightful)
All this means is that the new questionnaires will include questions like what color is your hair and that of your parents and siblings. Ditto on eye color.
Duh.
The people who want to choose eye color will still be able to, only not quite as foolproof, and the clinics get the DNAnazis off their back.
I totally get wanting to choose an eye and hair color that matches at least one of the parents.
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The biggest issue I have with genetic modification is trying to change it without first fully comprehending it. As is oft-said by my research supervisor- "it's like trying to find out how a car works by using a sledgehammer to hit parts of the engine". If we don't understand more of it, then there's a
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You must have missed that part of the film, such screenings were illegal but were done anyway, probably like a lot of our anti-discrimination laws.
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You are right, and I am glad that you will volunteer to be the person who has to die to prove whether or not a certain trait is hazardous to your health!
Me on the other hand, I will accept that I am warping the evolutionary chain in the hopes that I will be able to continue living...
The reality is that we have always been selecting and thus influencing evolution. For example why do you think women like older men? Survival of the fittest. In the old days you would have been lucky to make it to 40. If you got
Re:what is the big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:what is the big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
We're selecting for a stronger motherhood instinct. Those that don't have it take birth control, and their lines go extinct. We're also selecting against logic and attention span. Those that have it choose education over family, and their lines go extinct. Any human characteristic that leads a person in this society to participate in "planned parenthood" is being winnowed out of our gene pool. We're selecting in favour of passionate people who have a lack of self control and rebel against the system.
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Could you tell me which gene is the logic gene and explain the causative relationship between it and choosing education over family? What you posted sounded rather elitist/snobbish and lacking in evidence.
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He may not have flushed the point out all the way, but the fact of it is that educated people have smaller families generally than non-educated people.
Look at the average family size in the ghetto, sub 20k a year earned income versus in a nice area, like Manhattan with 100k+ a year earned income.
Um, $100k in Manhattan IS the ghetto!
Keep in mind that on occasion, those in the "ghetto" have smart kids. Many people have kids that are smarter than themselves. Was the intelligence of Einstein, Hawking, or Hubble the average of their parent's? Of course not.
Education is not an indicator of intelligence. My degree showed that I had enough money to pay for classes (thanks US Army), had enough free time to study and do the work, and was capable of memorizing what the teacher told us to memorize. Rarely
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Re:what is the big deal? (Score:5, Informative)
Are there any records of (other) animals in nature, namely mothers, culling off her weaker children? Here are three examples.
Askmen Top 10 Bad Animal Kingdom Mothers [askmen.com]
Lioness:
Any cubs of less than 2 years old are killed by the male to stop any future rivals challenging him for the pride, and also to encourage the lionesses to go into heat, allowing him to begin his own dynasty. The lionesses allow this to happen -- a cruel edge to their mothering nature.
Black Bears:
Black bears like to have litters of two or three cubs, as it takes a similar amount of effort to raise one cub as it does three. Because of this, it has been documented that if a black bear gives birth to just one cub, she will sometimes simply abandon it and will hope for a larger litter the following year. Unlike many animals that may abandon young which are sick or weak, the bear will abandon the youngster simply for being on its own.
African Black Eagle:
The African Black Eagle usually lays two eggs, although one is generally no more than an insurance policy. The idea of an insurance policy is quite common in the animal kingdom, but it is the manner in which the unwanted young is disposed of which is particularly shocking. The mother will feed only one chick, and as it grows stronger it will peck its weaker sibling to death. What is especially gruesome about this is that the mother will look on impassively as her youngster is dispatched.
In hindsight, aborting a potential human in the womb seems a lot less brutal.
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The post above yours is 100% correct. Once a human sperm penetrates a human ova and they combine DNA they become a gamete. That is a human being.
Some may argue that it is not human because it does not look human. I argue appearance is no indicator. Look at photos of yourself as a baby, at three years old, eight years old, twenty years old, fifty years old, eighty years old, and so on. Appearance changes throughout