14 ms·

Notably, this prevents transmission of a disease that is "fatal to any baby conceived", which makes this as uncontroversial a case of a "designer baby" as I can

Notably, this prevents transmission of a disease that is "fatal to any baby conceived", which makes this as uncontroversial a case of a "designer baby" as I can imagine. After this, the ethics get much more complicated.

afarrell 10y ago
It occurs to me: What are the ethical problems with designer babies?
- return0 10y ago
  It occurs to me there aren't any; it's just a postmodern habit to treat every new technological possibility as an ethical problem first.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Right, no quandary at all created by the possibility that mistakes and misunderstandings might lead to children with severe medical problems. Short, miserable lifetimes of suffering are a high cost for "improving the species", and they are a real possibility if the approach taken is to just try things that seem worth trying.
    - rando444 10y ago
      Similar risks are taken when two native people from different parts of the world have a baby together.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        That's not true. Most genetic disorders are caused by receiving one or more defective copies of a gene. In the case of a single defective gene causing the disorder, it doesn't make a difference what gene the other parent has. In the case where multiple defective copies cause the disorder, the further apart two lineages are, the less likely it becomes that they will each have defective copies of the same gene. There's probably a higher chance of blood type incompatibilities, but that isn't a lifetime genetic disorder for the child, it just needs to be accounted for during the pregnancy.
        rando444 10y ago
        My comment was more along the lines of the differences in things like gut microbiomes.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - dsr_ 10y ago
        That's pretty much the best case scenario for having a kid, actually. Hybrid vigor works in humans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
    - sp332 10y ago
      But in this case, that was already the alternative. The parents had four miscarriages and two children die as infants. They probably weren't going to be worse off if the procedure failed.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      Let me give one particularly chilling example. Suppose that it is possible to make genetic alterations that cause 1) rapid aging, and 2) unavoidable self-induced death at some specific age well before the organism becomes old. Now you can make clones of yourself, add these alterations, and harvest them for organs when they die. Since they die naturally by themselves, no murder is committed.
      - johncolanduoni 10y ago
        I'm curious if this would be ruled as murder in any jurisdictions. Reading the U.S. federal definition[1], I don't see any reason why it wouldn't apply as long as intent could be proved, but IANAL. [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111
      - DanBC 10y ago
        Why would I want to transplant rapidly ageing already old organs into me?
        maxerickson 10y ago
        I think the idea is rapid maturing (so you can harvest adult organs) and then a variety of specific failures (so you can harvest any type of organ). I also think it isn't a very likely scenario, engineered organs would probably be enabled by the level of knowledge required to accelerate maturation and death and have the advantage of being faster and cheaper. Doctor's have already figured out how to make simple organs like bladders (that group is close to testing engineered livers in animals http://www.wakehealth.edu/Research/WFIRM/Projects/Human-Liver.htm http://www.wakehealth.edu/Research/WFIRM/Projects/Human-Live... ).
  - ghostly_s 10y ago
    Guess you're not a big sci-fi reader, huh. The ethical ramifications of designer babies is deeply-mined territory.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      Heck, Sci-Fi in general. Star Trek being the most well know. The Honor Harrington books probably have the page count won in book form with the main baddy being designer babies for conquest and profit. Cauldron of Ghosts has the longest section with the explanation of the Final War.
- malnourish 10y ago
  Those with resources are able to have healthy (perhaps, better) children and those without take their chances?
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    To some extent, that already happens. My wife and I had children in our late 30s and so got extra screening and ultrasounds to screen for possible devastating birth defects. Fortunately, both kids are healthy, but had they not been, we'd have been pretty far from "taking our chances". In our case, the resources were a good health care package from my work, but it's not very far from there to designer-by-selection. I'm perfectly comfortable with our path, even though we didn't have to take any action, but would have been equally comfortable (though disappointed) had we had to intervene.
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      This happens in some countries even if you don't have flash insurance. Obstetric care like the above is on the state here in New Zealand. Not that complex parenting situations like 3x biological parents occur here.
- gremlinsinc 10y ago
  Babies that can run, jump, faster and higher, and live longer, and are generally smarter and just more advanced evolved.. It's like some breeds of dogs/monkeys are smarter than others. So will the 'smart' ones think they are better than all the rest of us.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    I have a silly question - if, as observation allows, some existing people are objectively better than others at things we can measure reliably, what is the ethical problem?
    - jlebrech 10y ago
      there's probably a social justice reason it's a "bad" thing,
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - iLoch 10y ago
    They will be. :) Nothing wrong with that, it's just evolution.
  - throwwit 10y ago
    The running example reminds me of https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2013/aug/30/dean-karnazes-man-run-forever https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/20...
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    >and just more advanced evolved // Except not evolved at all, just genetically engineered by humans. Unless evolved now means semi-intelligently designed by someone with half the necessary information?
    - delecti 10y ago
      Natural Selection is normally the only means by which evolution occurs, but evolution itself is merely "descent with modification", which this would qualify as. We're really just jump-starting the mutation process, and once that part is done, whether those designer babies go on to have children of their own will come down to natural selection. [1] http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_02 http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_0...
- geofft 10y ago
  It is pretty close to eugenics, whose ethical problems are I think well-acknowledged now. (And it's worth noting that these ethical problems were not acknowledged in the US in the early 20th century, and a very large number of reasonable people were excited about eugenics.)
  - int_19h 10y ago
    Eugenics is different in that it was an attempt to make these decisions in a centralized fashion, and imposed at the entire population. Basically, "we know better" with respect to reproductive freedom. In that sense, laws regulating how parents may or may not change the genome of their kids are closer to the concept of eugenics than laissez-faire. Note, I'm not saying that laissez-faire here is the right approach, necessarily. Some amount of regulation is necessary, at least, to prevent parents from knowingly imposing debilitating choices on their children. Which, again, is very reminiscent of eugenics, actually, except that they got carried away with what exactly was supposed to be undesirable, and eventually made it into all-encompassing social engineering approach.
    - geofft 10y ago
      Once the option for designer babies exists, wouldn't the invisible hand of the market start trying to impose this in a centralized fashion? Medical insurance (legitimately, IMO) tries to encourage you towards preventive care over reactive care. Once this technology is freely available, wouldn't insurance companies be more inclined to pay to make your baby a designer baby instead of paying for certain types of pediatric care that designer babies don't need?
      - int_19h 10y ago
        It might be. Although if it targets genuine medical conditions, which I'd imagine what they would actually care about in terms of insurance payouts, I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing. Either way, this is yet another reason as to why healthcare should be publicly funded (or at least have a public insurance option)...
- dethstar 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca Sometimes here in HN you will hear about how things like name,age, etc are bias for who gets hired, and people being rejected based on those things. So just add "method of conception" to that.
  - lqdc13 10y ago
    I was very much annoyed by the movie when I saw it. Primarily because the "genetically inferior" person somehow had more motivation and drive than the genetically engineered ones. So perhaps they were not so much genetically superior? Maybe motivation can be passed through DNA? In reality, what I think might happen is some people would choose the genes they want, but others won't. At the end, people will mix, so the whole population will benefit.
    - dethstar 10y ago
      >Primarily because the "genetically inferior" person somehow had more motivation and drive than the genetically engineered ones. But this has nothing to do with the moral issue. Maybe it was the fact that "in-valids" had to struggle and deal with discrimination which caused the character to give his most, given that he knew where he standed while the 'valids' are in a place of comfort.
      - Jtsummers 10y ago
        In many ways reflecting the notion of privilege. The "valids" gained much of their quality of life benefits due to the nature of their conception rather than the nature of their person. Similarly, the "in-valids" were denied those things for the same reason. It wasn't meritocratic except within its two communities, and the one (in-valids) were denied access to the upper levels as a matter of policy.
    - nkrisc 10y ago
      That's kind of the point of the movie, that his "genetic inferiority" was as much a cultural construct as anything real.
- EliRivers 10y ago
  (Some) people will design the new human for the benefit of themselves (i.e. the designer) rather than the benefit of the new human. A few ideas that come to mind are having children with ridiculously amped loyalty, so I can condition them during their early years and then put them to work making money and simply use them as my retirement fund. I could also ensure they're suitable organ donors, and make use of their organs as my own fail. As with every ethical question, that's only a problem if you think new humans shouldn't be explicitly created for the benefit of the creators.
  - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    There's already a demographic that'd do that sort of thing - see reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists for horrifying examples. Your concern is dead on, and we'd need some serious progress on youth rights for me to be more comfortable with unrestricted designer babies.
    - derefr 10y ago
      Interestingly, I think the current systems in most of the developed would would already handle this somewhat adequately, insofar as "designer babies" would probably not be treated as genetic children of their "gene base" parents (i.e. something they have an intrinsic right to take home from the hospital), but probably rather would be considered "genetic orphans" (like babies dropped off at a hospital with no known parents) who are then adopted by the "gene base" parents. As such, just like any other adopted children, the parents would have to go through harsh screenings to determine eligibility, and then after "adoption" would be heavily monitored by governmental child social-welfare departments (e.g. Child Protective Services in the US.)
      - whafro 10y ago
        Maybe, but that seems to assume effectively no genetic material from the parents. What if the design starts with the parents' DNA, but makes one change to prevent a disease? Seems like that parent wouldn't be adopting a genetic orphan, and would have the right to take the newborn home. What about two changes? 50? It's one of those "where do we draw the line?" issues.
- himlion 10y ago
  See the movie gattaca for a decent exploration of this theme.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dflock 10y ago
  In a world with "designer babies", the rich don't just get richer, they get smarter, stronger, more attractive and start to live longer. The poor can't afford this, so fall further and further behind, perhaps eventually humanity splits into subspecies. This is very well trod ground. See The time machine by H G Wells with the Morlocs and Eloi, A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley with the Alphas and Betas, etc, etc...
  - vasco 10y ago
    Or you use state sponsored designs and everyone has access to it.
    - scarmig 10y ago
      Just like state sponsored designs have guaranteed access to health care and education.
      - notgood 10y ago
        They have in some country, if it doesn't in yours I don't think you can blame the technology involved. There was a time in which only rich people had toilets and in-house showers, now many extremely poor people have access to those; the same thing will happen with "design babies", there will be a time where only rich people can do it, but as time goes it will become a commodity and making sure you are as healthy as possible even before born will be a human rights issue.
      - YorickPeterse 10y ago
        They have in many modern first-world countries.
  - runeks 10y ago
    So the more powerful a technology is in changing our capabilities as human beings, the more unethical it inherently is, because poor people will have less access to it (assuming it costs money)? I'm not arguing on the validity of this world view, but it does seems very negative to me, since it can be applied to any powerful technology (that isn't free of charge). I mean, computers and internet access also costs money, so does this mean that the introduction of these technologies presents an ethical problem, because the poorer part of the population may not be able to afford it, thus increasing inequality?
- andruby 10y ago
  You should see the movie "Gattaca". Great movie that explores this question. http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
  - sp332 10y ago
    What does this have to do with the case in the article?
    - delecti 10y ago
      Nothing, but it does have something to do with the comment to which it was in reply, which is really the more relevant issue.
- JauntTrooper 10y ago
  What if you mess up? It's new technology. There are bound to be mistakes. There is so much we don't know about how genes work. Those mistakes will affect a human being's life permanently.
  - joesb 10y ago
    Did science and medicine get to this state without any mistake?
  - drakonandor 10y ago
    What? If the baby was made naturally by these parents, it would literally be dead within the first few years of it's life. It's not hard to improve the situation from that.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Stop and think about it. It opens a Pandora's box of potential eugenic horrors. For one, you'll have more male babies, as that's a cultural advantage in many cases. There are people who abort for sec selection. You open to door to the types of "breeding" experiments that slaveholders have historically engaged in. You create the foundation for a situation similar to what Asimov depicted in his Robot series. You create a situation where genetic discrimination becomes a thing with broad economic and social impact.
  - roywiggins 10y ago
    Racists could try and build in genetic triggers to cause any "mixed race" grandchildren to die in the womb. This is impossible to do in general but someone might try. Imagine someone engineering "Aryan" children whose children must be blond and blue-eyed and will self-abort if not. If this happens, you'd imagine a cottage industry of gene-drive-removers... and then genetic DRM mechanisms in turn. Not a good time for anyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive
- defen 10y ago
  Here is a thoughtful essay that deals with some of the potential issues: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/05/eugenics-ready/ https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/05/eugenics-ready/ He makes a distinction between "negative" eugenics (removing genetic disorders & decreasing mutational load) and "positive" eugenics (selecting for intelligence, appearance, personality, and other desired traits), and considers what will happen if either of those is adopted by either a minority or a majority of the populace. At a high level, the biggest concern is if you have a minority of the population practicing positive eugenics, because it leads to a runaway "rich get richer" situation. If you think income inequality is bad now - it will only get worse.
- analog31 10y ago
  In my view the ethical problem is the process of finding out if "designer babies" can be made without condemning a certain number of them to extreme suffering. In essence, the term "designer" is somewhat of a misnomer, unless we can precisely predict what we're going to get. And it's true that normal reproduction is also unpredictable, but at least we have a general sense of what can happen, and how often.
- orblivion 10y ago
  How about a more general philosophical problem. It calls into question what is really a human. Supposing you say don't care about this concept. Then I would ask of you why you care to continue the human lineage at all. Why not just end all the lines now?

afarrell 10y ago

It occurs to me: What are the ethical problems with designer babies?

return0 10y ago
It occurs to me there aren't any; it's just a postmodern habit to treat every new technological possibility as an ethical problem first.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Right, no quandary at all created by the possibility that mistakes and misunderstandings might lead to children with severe medical problems. Short, miserable lifetimes of suffering are a high cost for "improving the species", and they are a real possibility if the approach taken is to just try things that seem worth trying.
  - rando444 10y ago
    Similar risks are taken when two native people from different parts of the world have a baby together.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      That's not true. Most genetic disorders are caused by receiving one or more defective copies of a gene. In the case of a single defective gene causing the disorder, it doesn't make a difference what gene the other parent has. In the case where multiple defective copies cause the disorder, the further apart two lineages are, the less likely it becomes that they will each have defective copies of the same gene. There's probably a higher chance of blood type incompatibilities, but that isn't a lifetime genetic disorder for the child, it just needs to be accounted for during the pregnancy.
      - rando444 10y ago
        My comment was more along the lines of the differences in things like gut microbiomes.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - dsr_ 10y ago
      That's pretty much the best case scenario for having a kid, actually. Hybrid vigor works in humans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis
  - sp332 10y ago
    But in this case, that was already the alternative. The parents had four miscarriages and two children die as infants. They probably weren't going to be worse off if the procedure failed.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    Let me give one particularly chilling example. Suppose that it is possible to make genetic alterations that cause 1) rapid aging, and 2) unavoidable self-induced death at some specific age well before the organism becomes old. Now you can make clones of yourself, add these alterations, and harvest them for organs when they die. Since they die naturally by themselves, no murder is committed.
    - johncolanduoni 10y ago
      I'm curious if this would be ruled as murder in any jurisdictions. Reading the U.S. federal definition[1], I don't see any reason why it wouldn't apply as long as intent could be proved, but IANAL. [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111
    - DanBC 10y ago
      Why would I want to transplant rapidly ageing already old organs into me?
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        I think the idea is rapid maturing (so you can harvest adult organs) and then a variety of specific failures (so you can harvest any type of organ). I also think it isn't a very likely scenario, engineered organs would probably be enabled by the level of knowledge required to accelerate maturation and death and have the advantage of being faster and cheaper. Doctor's have already figured out how to make simple organs like bladders (that group is close to testing engineered livers in animals http://www.wakehealth.edu/Research/WFIRM/Projects/Human-Liver.htm http://www.wakehealth.edu/Research/WFIRM/Projects/Human-Live... ).
- ghostly_s 10y ago
  Guess you're not a big sci-fi reader, huh. The ethical ramifications of designer babies is deeply-mined territory.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Heck, Sci-Fi in general. Star Trek being the most well know. The Honor Harrington books probably have the page count won in book form with the main baddy being designer babies for conquest and profit. Cauldron of Ghosts has the longest section with the explanation of the Final War.
malnourish 10y ago
Those with resources are able to have healthy (perhaps, better) children and those without take their chances?
- sokoloff 10y ago
  To some extent, that already happens. My wife and I had children in our late 30s and so got extra screening and ultrasounds to screen for possible devastating birth defects. Fortunately, both kids are healthy, but had they not been, we'd have been pretty far from "taking our chances". In our case, the resources were a good health care package from my work, but it's not very far from there to designer-by-selection. I'm perfectly comfortable with our path, even though we didn't have to take any action, but would have been equally comfortable (though disappointed) had we had to intervene.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    This happens in some countries even if you don't have flash insurance. Obstetric care like the above is on the state here in New Zealand. Not that complex parenting situations like 3x biological parents occur here.
gremlinsinc 10y ago
Babies that can run, jump, faster and higher, and live longer, and are generally smarter and just more advanced evolved.. It's like some breeds of dogs/monkeys are smarter than others. So will the 'smart' ones think they are better than all the rest of us.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  I have a silly question - if, as observation allows, some existing people are objectively better than others at things we can measure reliably, what is the ethical problem?
  - jlebrech 10y ago
    there's probably a social justice reason it's a "bad" thing,
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- iLoch 10y ago
  They will be. :) Nothing wrong with that, it's just evolution.
- throwwit 10y ago
  The running example reminds me of https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/2013/aug/30/dean-karnazes-man-run-forever https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/20...
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  >and just more advanced evolved // Except not evolved at all, just genetically engineered by humans. Unless evolved now means semi-intelligently designed by someone with half the necessary information?
  - delecti 10y ago
    Natural Selection is normally the only means by which evolution occurs, but evolution itself is merely "descent with modification", which this would qualify as. We're really just jump-starting the mutation process, and once that part is done, whether those designer babies go on to have children of their own will come down to natural selection. [1] http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_02 http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_0...
geofft 10y ago
It is pretty close to eugenics, whose ethical problems are I think well-acknowledged now. (And it's worth noting that these ethical problems were not acknowledged in the US in the early 20th century, and a very large number of reasonable people were excited about eugenics.)
- int_19h 10y ago
  Eugenics is different in that it was an attempt to make these decisions in a centralized fashion, and imposed at the entire population. Basically, "we know better" with respect to reproductive freedom. In that sense, laws regulating how parents may or may not change the genome of their kids are closer to the concept of eugenics than laissez-faire. Note, I'm not saying that laissez-faire here is the right approach, necessarily. Some amount of regulation is necessary, at least, to prevent parents from knowingly imposing debilitating choices on their children. Which, again, is very reminiscent of eugenics, actually, except that they got carried away with what exactly was supposed to be undesirable, and eventually made it into all-encompassing social engineering approach.
  - geofft 10y ago
    Once the option for designer babies exists, wouldn't the invisible hand of the market start trying to impose this in a centralized fashion? Medical insurance (legitimately, IMO) tries to encourage you towards preventive care over reactive care. Once this technology is freely available, wouldn't insurance companies be more inclined to pay to make your baby a designer baby instead of paying for certain types of pediatric care that designer babies don't need?
    - int_19h 10y ago
      It might be. Although if it targets genuine medical conditions, which I'd imagine what they would actually care about in terms of insurance payouts, I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing. Either way, this is yet another reason as to why healthcare should be publicly funded (or at least have a public insurance option)...
dethstar 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca Sometimes here in HN you will hear about how things like name,age, etc are bias for who gets hired, and people being rejected based on those things. So just add "method of conception" to that.
- lqdc13 10y ago
  I was very much annoyed by the movie when I saw it. Primarily because the "genetically inferior" person somehow had more motivation and drive than the genetically engineered ones. So perhaps they were not so much genetically superior? Maybe motivation can be passed through DNA? In reality, what I think might happen is some people would choose the genes they want, but others won't. At the end, people will mix, so the whole population will benefit.
  - dethstar 10y ago
    >Primarily because the "genetically inferior" person somehow had more motivation and drive than the genetically engineered ones. But this has nothing to do with the moral issue. Maybe it was the fact that "in-valids" had to struggle and deal with discrimination which caused the character to give his most, given that he knew where he standed while the 'valids' are in a place of comfort.
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      In many ways reflecting the notion of privilege. The "valids" gained much of their quality of life benefits due to the nature of their conception rather than the nature of their person. Similarly, the "in-valids" were denied those things for the same reason. It wasn't meritocratic except within its two communities, and the one (in-valids) were denied access to the upper levels as a matter of policy.
  - nkrisc 10y ago
    That's kind of the point of the movie, that his "genetic inferiority" was as much a cultural construct as anything real.
EliRivers 10y ago
(Some) people will design the new human for the benefit of themselves (i.e. the designer) rather than the benefit of the new human. A few ideas that come to mind are having children with ridiculously amped loyalty, so I can condition them during their early years and then put them to work making money and simply use them as my retirement fund. I could also ensure they're suitable organ donors, and make use of their organs as my own fail. As with every ethical question, that's only a problem if you think new humans shouldn't be explicitly created for the benefit of the creators.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  There's already a demographic that'd do that sort of thing - see reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists for horrifying examples. Your concern is dead on, and we'd need some serious progress on youth rights for me to be more comfortable with unrestricted designer babies.
  - derefr 10y ago
    Interestingly, I think the current systems in most of the developed would would already handle this somewhat adequately, insofar as "designer babies" would probably not be treated as genetic children of their "gene base" parents (i.e. something they have an intrinsic right to take home from the hospital), but probably rather would be considered "genetic orphans" (like babies dropped off at a hospital with no known parents) who are then adopted by the "gene base" parents. As such, just like any other adopted children, the parents would have to go through harsh screenings to determine eligibility, and then after "adoption" would be heavily monitored by governmental child social-welfare departments (e.g. Child Protective Services in the US.)
    - whafro 10y ago
      Maybe, but that seems to assume effectively no genetic material from the parents. What if the design starts with the parents' DNA, but makes one change to prevent a disease? Seems like that parent wouldn't be adopting a genetic orphan, and would have the right to take the newborn home. What about two changes? 50? It's one of those "where do we draw the line?" issues.
himlion 10y ago
See the movie gattaca for a decent exploration of this theme.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dflock 10y ago
In a world with "designer babies", the rich don't just get richer, they get smarter, stronger, more attractive and start to live longer. The poor can't afford this, so fall further and further behind, perhaps eventually humanity splits into subspecies. This is very well trod ground. See The time machine by H G Wells with the Morlocs and Eloi, A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley with the Alphas and Betas, etc, etc...
- vasco 10y ago
  Or you use state sponsored designs and everyone has access to it.
  - scarmig 10y ago
    Just like state sponsored designs have guaranteed access to health care and education.
    - notgood 10y ago
      They have in some country, if it doesn't in yours I don't think you can blame the technology involved. There was a time in which only rich people had toilets and in-house showers, now many extremely poor people have access to those; the same thing will happen with "design babies", there will be a time where only rich people can do it, but as time goes it will become a commodity and making sure you are as healthy as possible even before born will be a human rights issue.
    - YorickPeterse 10y ago
      They have in many modern first-world countries.
- runeks 10y ago
  So the more powerful a technology is in changing our capabilities as human beings, the more unethical it inherently is, because poor people will have less access to it (assuming it costs money)? I'm not arguing on the validity of this world view, but it does seems very negative to me, since it can be applied to any powerful technology (that isn't free of charge). I mean, computers and internet access also costs money, so does this mean that the introduction of these technologies presents an ethical problem, because the poorer part of the population may not be able to afford it, thus increasing inequality?
andruby 10y ago
You should see the movie "Gattaca". Great movie that explores this question. http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
- sp332 10y ago
  What does this have to do with the case in the article?
  - delecti 10y ago
    Nothing, but it does have something to do with the comment to which it was in reply, which is really the more relevant issue.
JauntTrooper 10y ago
What if you mess up? It's new technology. There are bound to be mistakes. There is so much we don't know about how genes work. Those mistakes will affect a human being's life permanently.
- joesb 10y ago
  Did science and medicine get to this state without any mistake?
- drakonandor 10y ago
  What? If the baby was made naturally by these parents, it would literally be dead within the first few years of it's life. It's not hard to improve the situation from that.
Spooky23 10y ago
Stop and think about it. It opens a Pandora's box of potential eugenic horrors. For one, you'll have more male babies, as that's a cultural advantage in many cases. There are people who abort for sec selection. You open to door to the types of "breeding" experiments that slaveholders have historically engaged in. You create the foundation for a situation similar to what Asimov depicted in his Robot series. You create a situation where genetic discrimination becomes a thing with broad economic and social impact.
- roywiggins 10y ago
  Racists could try and build in genetic triggers to cause any "mixed race" grandchildren to die in the womb. This is impossible to do in general but someone might try. Imagine someone engineering "Aryan" children whose children must be blond and blue-eyed and will self-abort if not. If this happens, you'd imagine a cottage industry of gene-drive-removers... and then genetic DRM mechanisms in turn. Not a good time for anyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive
defen 10y ago
Here is a thoughtful essay that deals with some of the potential issues: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/05/eugenics-ready/ https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2015/05/eugenics-ready/ He makes a distinction between "negative" eugenics (removing genetic disorders & decreasing mutational load) and "positive" eugenics (selecting for intelligence, appearance, personality, and other desired traits), and considers what will happen if either of those is adopted by either a minority or a majority of the populace. At a high level, the biggest concern is if you have a minority of the population practicing positive eugenics, because it leads to a runaway "rich get richer" situation. If you think income inequality is bad now - it will only get worse.
analog31 10y ago
In my view the ethical problem is the process of finding out if "designer babies" can be made without condemning a certain number of them to extreme suffering. In essence, the term "designer" is somewhat of a misnomer, unless we can precisely predict what we're going to get. And it's true that normal reproduction is also unpredictable, but at least we have a general sense of what can happen, and how often.
orblivion 10y ago
How about a more general philosophical problem. It calls into question what is really a human. Supposing you say don't care about this concept. Then I would ask of you why you care to continue the human lineage at all. Why not just end all the lines now?