House Committee Votes To Continue Research Ban On Genetically Modified Babies (npr.org) 89
A congressional committee voted this week to continue a federal ban on creating genetically modified babies in the United States. From a report: The House Appropriations Committee voted to retain the ban after the prohibition had been lifted last month by a subcommittee. The vote was part of debate over routine funding legislation for the Food and Drug Administration. "This is a prohibition that is accepted by nearly every nation in the world due to the unknown risks," said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., during a hearing where the ban was restored. "The risks of harm are real."
The ban prohibits the FDA from considering any proposals to study whether genetically modified embryos could be used to try to establish pregnancies. Some scientists oppose the ban because it bars them from conducting the studies necessary to determine whether it might one day be safe and effective to create genetically modified babies. The goal would be to prevent devastating genetic diseases. During the hearing, several Democratic committee members said they were reluctantly agreeing to reinstate the ban but hoped the issue would be reconsidered at some point.
The ban prohibits the FDA from considering any proposals to study whether genetically modified embryos could be used to try to establish pregnancies. Some scientists oppose the ban because it bars them from conducting the studies necessary to determine whether it might one day be safe and effective to create genetically modified babies. The goal would be to prevent devastating genetic diseases. During the hearing, several Democratic committee members said they were reluctantly agreeing to reinstate the ban but hoped the issue would be reconsidered at some point.
That's OK (Score:3, Insightful)
China will pick up the balls we drop, as usual.
Re: (Score:2)
China will pick up the balls we drop, as usual.
China or someone else. Doesn't really matter who.
The more important point is that, in a hundred years or so, when there are cures for heart disease, diabetes, Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, Huntingdon's disease, ALS, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, etc., and other countries' economies are gaining all the economic benefits of licensing those innovative cures to the United States, the grandchildren of all the people who supported this ban will ask what happened to our great nation — where we
Oxymoron (Score:2, Insightful)
It might not be safe, so you cannot try to determine if it is safe or not.
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Thing that gets me about this. Odds are pretty solid that everyone who voted for continuing the ban has no problems with abortions. So they think that before birth, it's not a human being, but if it's genetically modified, before birth, it IS a human being, and so deserving of special protections....
Consistency might seem to suggest that it's just between the pregnant woman and the doctor, and not anyone in Congress business....
Re:Oxymoron (Score:5, Informative)
So they think that before birth, it's not a human being, but if it's genetically modified, before birth, it IS a human being,
There's the danger in pretending to speak for someone whose argument you don't understand.
It is much more likely that the ban is supported even by people who ok abortion not because of the human or not status of the fetus, but because of the results of genetic engineering humans to begin with. So, in small words, not because the fetus is a human, but because it will become one. Or, abortion deals with what isn't going to be, genetic engineering of babies deals with what pops out and will be.
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a fetus is not human. Therefore any genetic engineering of a fetus is not unethical.
I'm sorry I used words you didn't understand. Genetic engineering of babies has nothing to do with what they are when they are just fetuses. It has everything to do with what they are after that.
Any medical procedure of any kind on a fetus is not unethical.
And that is the argument of a sociopath. Thanks for identifying yourself.
Just for grins, suppose there was a doctor who would cut the legs off of fetuses. These fetuses then were born without legs. According to you, any medical procedure on a fetus is not unethical. And yet, we have a doctor helping produce legles
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I was using your words
You most certainly were not, and I challenge you to provide any quote where I said anything even remotely close to that.
This is what I get for replying to a sociopathic troll.
Re:Oxymoron (Score:5, Insightful)
The better pro-choice argument isn't whether the fetus is human or not human. A fetus is a growth stage of a human, so arguments that fetuses aren't people is disingenuous at best.
The bottom line is that abortion is killing a human.
But this is where the interesting pro-choice argument is, because society as a whole allows for killing humans in specific circumstances. We let citizens kill other citizens in self defense. We let the cops kill a lot of humans for much flimsier reasons (and we debate how flimsy the reasons should be, not that it's without controversy). We let the military kill nearly anyone if it serves a military mission, up to and including non-combat civilians.
We don't like to talk about it, but we also let the health care system kill people. Treatments sick people can't pay for. Doctors who privately counsel end of life treatments. Most in-patient or sedation surgery involves some risk of death, especially major surgeries.
So you tell me abortion is killing humans? I say so what.
Why is the economic viability of the child's family, the mother's health and welfare, the desire/ability of parents to raise a child or any other personal issue of the mother or father not a special justification for killing a human?
There is no scientific answer to that question, so put away all you anti-abortion science on fetus viability. It doesn't *matter*. What we're debating is what circumstances we decide it's OK to kill a fetal human. We've already decided killing people *sometimes* is OK, so "never" isn't a particularly compelling argument.
The half-dozen of you who are hard-core buddhists or something who reject 100% of all killing for any reason are excused. The rest of you, especially pro-cop, pro-military right wing types can shut up about being "pro-life". You're not, you're totally in favor of killing humans, your opposition to abortion is just an arbitrary moral choice, and more than likely a false one driven by religious motivation or some kind weird gender hang-up.
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Hundreds of thousands if not millions of European and Japanese non-combat civilians died at the hands of the allied militaries during WW II; none of their deaths had anything to do with their choices, and yet almost nobody would argue that we shouldn't have invaded Normandy, bombed Japan, and so on.
It was never about killing "human" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
What rights are those? If I'm a landlord, I can evict someone in the middle of winter, even if they have no other shelter available. If I'm an employer, I can fire someone, even if they need the money to pay for food. If I'm a healthcare provider, I can neglect to provide long-term treatment for an individual, even if that long-term treatment is lifesaving, as long as I'm doing it because that individual can't
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A fetus is a growth stage of a human, so arguments that fetuses aren't people is disingenuous at best.
I think you misunderstand the argument. Of course a foetus is human, but so is an embryo in a petri dish, a hair follicle, or even a sperm, and your approach just leads to the "every sperm is sacred" parody. But is it "a human"? That's an arbitrary choice. Life has no beginning, only an end.
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When do you become human eventually just winds up hinging on the viability question, which medical science keeps pushing to a younger and and younger age.
Many people with serious long term injuries who depend on medical science for their continued existence could conceivably be judged by the same calculus. In this case, where life ends become as ambiguous as when it begins.
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A fetus is a growth stage of a human
So is the egg that gets discarded every month. This is an example of why biological arguments always fail, for both sides. The biology doesn't fit into our ideas about morality, and there isn't a clear definitive point at which it is biologically a person.
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The whole point is there is no "scientific" answer to the morality of abortion, and unless opponents are 100% opposed to any killings of humans, they can't use "pro-life" as a rationale either.
We already have a panoply of moral justifications for killing, it seems entirely likely to me that many present reasons for having an abortion are also capable of a moral justification. Regardless, there's no scientific guide to these answers.
Re: Oxymoron (Score:1)
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No, you're just not paying attention.
Stop listening to right wing nutjobs when they purport to tell you what other people think. They're lying.
If you want to know what people think about abortion, you have to listen to those people. Other people who are anti-abortion are not a useful source of information about what people who support it think.
Once you get past that, you can perhaps comprehend that this has nothing to do with that shit. People who are pro-choice are not libertarians who are against all regu
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In neolithic times, if I didn't like you, I could bash your thick... skull in with a rock or a stick.
Well, you could try. You could still try.
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Stop listening to left wing nutjobs when they purport to tell you what other people think. They're lying.
FTFY.
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I'm a right winger, that's all I can think of to tell you.
You forgot to include relevant ideas with your comment, dumb ass.
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You have messed up ethics dude.
Traditions doesn't make something right if it is wrong.
The reason abortion isn't murder is because the fetus isn't a person.
Being human only means that you are of a certain species but there is nothing particularly valuable with that.
What matters is if you are a person or not.
For example a braindead human is no longer a person and because of that it is acceptable to harvest the organs despite it being both human and alive.
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And you have messed up thinking, and presume that knowledge of facts is an endorsement of ethics.
And you don't comprehend that means you aren't even communicating, you're just grunting like a cave man.
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You're missing the point: those modified babies grow up to become modified adults. This is a ban on genetically modified adults. Given the unknown risks, this is certainly muddy waters, ethically. We know so little about the harm that might be done, or the good that might be done, or the likelyhood of the one vs the other.
Given the unknowns, this is clearly a case of subjecting another person to danger without their prior consent.
Re:Oxymoron (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing the point: those modified babies grow up to become modified adults. This is a ban on genetically modified adults. Given the unknown risks, this is certainly muddy waters, ethically. We know so little about the harm that might be done, or the good that might be done, or the likelyhood of the one vs the other.
In fact, they very rarely want to do anything when you're healthy in general when in fact we're all slowly dying. Here in Norway 99% live to be 30, 95% to be 57 and 80% to be 73. Half the population dies between ages 75 and 90. Now there's quality of life as well but we're clearly getting very close to the limit of what we can do with reactive medicine. If we want people to regularly live to be 100+ we need to do better than diet and exercise and start figuring out medical treatments to slow or reverse aging so that healthy 20yo turn into the healthy 80yo but actually something better. We're going to have to gamble a bit with our natural lifespan to make that happen, but right now it's not even experimental. We don't know how to fix what's not broken.
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The abortion debate was never about whether the fetus is a human being, it's about the convenience of not having a baby when you "accidentally got pregnant". That's why it's spoken of as a woman's right to choose rather than the fetus' right to live. So If you're pro-choice, the fetus is definitely not a human being, if you're pro-life it absolutely is. FWIW, I am totally ok with people getting abortions.
In this case, prohibiting genetic modification of a human embryo makes total sense until science figu
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Nobody in their right mind believes a fetus is not a human being. The issue is whether or not protecting that unborn human is important enough to violate the rights of the person carrying it (the right to bodily autonomy, the right to have your records secure against unreasonable search and seizure to prove you had an abortion, etc.).
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It's not about a woman's right to bodily autonomy. It's really about the convenience of being able to stop a pregnancy you didn't want so we create this idea that the fetus is sort of a human being but not enough to warrant protection like the rest of us. I guess it depends on where you draw the line.
Ze jooz (Score:1)
dammit (Score:1)
I wanted to mix the genes of natalie Portman and a bowl of grits
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How many genders are there?
Can you please be **specific** and give a *precise* number?
Thank you?
The complex mathematics needed to solve the problem are explored in depth in this insightful analysis. [youtu.be] It's more than you probably realize, but the math is solid.
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Mmmmmm! Free range babies.
This ban is probably for the best (Score:1)
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In an ideal world, we'd have scientifically literate individuals on this committee.
Perhaps we could engineer such a race of scientifically literate individuals.
Sounds good. (Score:2)
Work the bugs out in animals first. Then start the fun.
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When we talk about 'science denial' the only science one may not deny is climatology. It's okay to deny most of the others depending on your political preferences, but the one science that every morally correct person, left or today's right, has to deny is genetics. There is no such science. It doesn't exist.
Only 1 thing needs be said..... (Score:3)
Khhhhaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!!!!!!
Khhhhaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!!!!!!
(would not let me put it in all caps because it was like yelling....that is SUPPOSED to be yelled!!!)
EOM.
Genetically modified babies are a tech deadend (Score:2)