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Why should we allow self appointed "biomedical ethicists" to dictate what interventions we can use? If someone says they should have the right to refuse a inte

Why should we allow self appointed "biomedical ethicists" to dictate what interventions we can use? If someone says they should have the right to refuse a intervention, even if those "ethicists" otherwise approve of it, those ethicists give a smug nod of approval. But if someone says they should have the right to use an intervention that those self appointed "ethicists" don't approve of, they will stamp their feet like toddlers and use every force of the state available to try and stop you. If we allow parents to destroy embryos, why is it so controversial to allow them to modify them?

Analemma_ 4y ago
I dislike biomedical ethicists as much as most people here, but the anger here seems way out of proportion to their actual influence. They don't "dictate" anything; for the most part they're a bunch of noisy busybodies who make statements which get quoted by journalists but otherwise influence nothing. For the most part, market demand dictates interventions and bioethicists are essentially an irrelevant speed bump in this process. If you don't like them, you can just ignore them.
dekhn 4y ago
At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be. I would say that in the area of reproductive science, you need to be exceptionally cautious about what's permitted as you are permanently modifying the germline, and society has very strong opinions about that. At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease (except in a limited number of Mendelian diseases) while also baking that harm into a person's genome so that if they do survive, their children may also inherit that. (I worked towards germline modification for several decades and concluded, well before He Jianku shat the bed, that we're not ready to do it, and there do need to be some guardrails preventing rogue scientists finding naive parents and getting them to sign inadequate consent forms).
- telotortium 4y ago
  What do you think about embryo selection?
- codeddesign 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - klodolph 4y ago
    No. There are lots of interventions available for possible gender dysphoria, and we have some nice options available like puberty blockers which are relatively safe. If you change your mind, you can stop taking the puberty blockers. This is easy. You can make a reversible decision first and take whatever time you need to make the less reversible decisions later, or never. That’s not how gene editing works—once you edit genes, it is hard to un-edit them.
- password11 4y ago
  > At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be. Are the consequences really that permanent? It's pretty easy (in China) to monitor a handful of test subjects with heritable mutations and make sure they don't reproduce. > At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease The potential upside of developing the science is huge, which is essentially what He is doing.
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    How, exactly, would you ensure they don't reproduce?
    - dudeofea 4y ago
      man-made horrors beyond your comprehension, that's how.
    - quickthrowman 4y ago
lo_zamoyski 4y ago
Your criticism is difficult to follow. There's a big difference between refusing an intervention and making use of one. I can licitly refuse treatment for a disease (the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary care), but I cannot licitly make use of immoral means to treat a disease. > If we allow parents to destroy embryos, why is it so controversial to allow them to modify them? Genetic modification as such, in the abstract, when therapeutic (fixing some genetic defect that causes a disease) may be licit in principle, but in practice, 1. our ignorance of genetics and non-trivial hereditary effects suggests we should be cautious, not only for the sake of the person whose genes are being edited, but because the change is not localized; that modification may not be transmitted to descendants 2. that embryos are subjects of modification introduces the standard moral problems of IVF (such as the objectification of human beings). If modification is not therapeutic, then the usual moral problems surrounding designer babies apply in addition to those that apply to IVF. Killing embryonic human beings is intrinsically worse, though the secondary genetic risks are obviously absent.
roywiggins 4y ago
To your last question, destroyed embryos can't suffer. Neither can genetically modified embryos that are destroyed or never get implanted. That's a pretty big difference! How would you feel about performing untested gene therapies on healthy babies?
- polski-g 4y ago
  Every medical therapy was "untested" at one point.
  - roywiggins 4y ago
    Do you think invasive therapies should be tested on healthy people who can't give consent? Because not doing that is sort of the base principle of modern research ethics. (it might be one thing if this was an attempt to correct a genetic disease in an embryo, but it wasn't. It was on perfectly healthy embryos.)
    - polski-g 4y ago
      Humans that are not immune to HIV are not "perfectly healthy" when the alternative is that they can be made immune to HIV.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
causi 4y ago
Why should we allow self appointed "biomedical ethicists" to dictate what interventions we can use? The medical industry seems to be largely divided into two camps: Camp A would happily sell allergy medication that triples your risk of diabetes, and Camp B would rather ten thousand terminal patients die in agony than kill a hundred of them with medication that cured the rest. It's simply the momentum of the world we live in. It's perfectly legal for a 45 year old woman to get pregnant by an elderly man, then chainsmoke, take caffeine pills, and get shitfaced every day of her pregnancy and create a profoundly disadvantaged baby whose life will be full of hardship. They can even do it on purpose if they want. The powers-that-be don't give a damn about human happiness or suffering; they just want to make sure it isn't them who gets blamed.
- depereo 4y ago
  I would suggest that 'the medical world' has fringes like that you describe but that the overwhelming, vast majority would take a significantly more nuanced view. Honestly even that description is massively underselling how much more comprehensive the ethical views of 100% of the medical profession has here. The fringes like that are a tiny rounding error.
- ska 4y ago
  This is a wildly inaccurate take. There probably exist examples of both the extremes you describe, but in such small numbers as to probably be irrelevant. On the whole the industry is conservative but changes fairly quickly.
steve76 4y ago
[dead]
braingenious 4y ago
> Why should we allow self appointed "biomedical ethicists" to dictate what interventions we can use? …We don’t? Nobody does? Ethicists aren’t cops. Nobody gets arrested by the ethics police or thrown into ethics jail. They have opinions which are then either ignored or supported by somebody in a political or managerial position. Why would we give cover to the people that actually make decisions about laws by pretending that some stuffy academics are omnipotent? edit: > If we allow parents to destroy embryos, why is it so controversial to allow them to modify them? There’s an entire profession of people that get hired to debate questions like that, they’re called… ethicists.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Georgelemental 4y ago
> If we allow parents to destroy embryos In my view, the greatest indictment possible of many of these so-called "ethicists" is that even as they obsess over non-issues, they make not a word of protest against murdering babies.

Analemma_ 4y ago

I dislike biomedical ethicists as much as most people here, but the anger here seems way out of proportion to their actual influence. They don't "dictate" anything; for the most part they're a bunch of noisy busybodies who make statements which get quoted by journalists but otherwise influence nothing. For the most part, market demand dictates interventions and bioethicists are essentially an irrelevant speed bump in this process. If you don't like them, you can just ignore them.

dekhn 4y ago

At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be. I would say that in the area of reproductive science, you need to be exceptionally cautious about what's permitted as you are permanently modifying the germline, and society has very strong opinions about that. At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease (except in a limited number of Mendelian diseases) while also baking that harm into a person's genome so that if they do survive, their children may also inherit that. (I worked towards germline modification for several decades and concluded, well before He Jianku shat the bed, that we're not ready to do it, and there do need to be some guardrails preventing rogue scientists finding naive parents and getting them to sign inadequate consent forms).

telotortium 4y ago
What do you think about embryo selection?
codeddesign 4y ago
[flagged]
- klodolph 4y ago
  No. There are lots of interventions available for possible gender dysphoria, and we have some nice options available like puberty blockers which are relatively safe. If you change your mind, you can stop taking the puberty blockers. This is easy. You can make a reversible decision first and take whatever time you need to make the less reversible decisions later, or never. That’s not how gene editing works—once you edit genes, it is hard to un-edit them.
password11 4y ago
> At least one point of those ethicists is to stop people who are naive from doing things with permanent consequences without first checking to see what those consequences would be. Are the consequences really that permanent? It's pretty easy (in China) to monitor a handful of test subjects with heritable mutations and make sure they don't reproduce. > At this stage of the science you're more likely to cause harm than cure disease The potential upside of developing the science is huge, which is essentially what He is doing.
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  How, exactly, would you ensure they don't reproduce?
  - dudeofea 4y ago
    man-made horrors beyond your comprehension, that's how.
  - quickthrowman 4y ago

lo_zamoyski 4y ago

Your criticism is difficult to follow. There's a big difference between refusing an intervention and making use of one. I can licitly refuse treatment for a disease (the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary care), but I cannot licitly make use of immoral means to treat a disease. > If we allow parents to destroy embryos, why is it so controversial to allow them to modify them? Genetic modification as such, in the abstract, when therapeutic (fixing some genetic defect that causes a disease) may be licit in principle, but in practice, 1. our ignorance of genetics and non-trivial hereditary effects suggests we should be cautious, not only for the sake of the person whose genes are being edited, but because the change is not localized; that modification may not be transmitted to descendants 2. that embryos are subjects of modification introduces the standard moral problems of IVF (such as the objectification of human beings). If modification is not therapeutic, then the usual moral problems surrounding designer babies apply in addition to those that apply to IVF. Killing embryonic human beings is intrinsically worse, though the secondary genetic risks are obviously absent.

roywiggins 4y ago

To your last question, destroyed embryos can't suffer. Neither can genetically modified embryos that are destroyed or never get implanted. That's a pretty big difference! How would you feel about performing untested gene therapies on healthy babies?

polski-g 4y ago
Every medical therapy was "untested" at one point.
- roywiggins 4y ago
  Do you think invasive therapies should be tested on healthy people who can't give consent? Because not doing that is sort of the base principle of modern research ethics. (it might be one thing if this was an attempt to correct a genetic disease in an embryo, but it wasn't. It was on perfectly healthy embryos.)
  - polski-g 4y ago
    Humans that are not immune to HIV are not "perfectly healthy" when the alternative is that they can be made immune to HIV.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

causi 4y ago

Why should we allow self appointed "biomedical ethicists" to dictate what interventions we can use? The medical industry seems to be largely divided into two camps: Camp A would happily sell allergy medication that triples your risk of diabetes, and Camp B would rather ten thousand terminal patients die in agony than kill a hundred of them with medication that cured the rest. It's simply the momentum of the world we live in. It's perfectly legal for a 45 year old woman to get pregnant by an elderly man, then chainsmoke, take caffeine pills, and get shitfaced every day of her pregnancy and create a profoundly disadvantaged baby whose life will be full of hardship. They can even do it on purpose if they want. The powers-that-be don't give a damn about human happiness or suffering; they just want to make sure it isn't them who gets blamed.

depereo 4y ago
I would suggest that 'the medical world' has fringes like that you describe but that the overwhelming, vast majority would take a significantly more nuanced view. Honestly even that description is massively underselling how much more comprehensive the ethical views of 100% of the medical profession has here. The fringes like that are a tiny rounding error.
ska 4y ago
This is a wildly inaccurate take. There probably exist examples of both the extremes you describe, but in such small numbers as to probably be irrelevant. On the whole the industry is conservative but changes fairly quickly.

steve76 4y ago

[dead]

braingenious 4y ago

> Why should we allow self appointed "biomedical ethicists" to dictate what interventions we can use? …We don’t? Nobody does? Ethicists aren’t cops. Nobody gets arrested by the ethics police or thrown into ethics jail. They have opinions which are then either ignored or supported by somebody in a political or managerial position. Why would we give cover to the people that actually make decisions about laws by pretending that some stuffy academics are omnipotent? edit: > If we allow parents to destroy embryos, why is it so controversial to allow them to modify them? There’s an entire profession of people that get hired to debate questions like that, they’re called… ethicists.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Georgelemental 4y ago

> If we allow parents to destroy embryos In my view, the greatest indictment possible of many of these so-called "ethicists" is that even as they obsess over non-issues, they make not a word of protest against murdering babies.