5 ms·

> instead of gambling, you can choose to treat having a genetic disease like being infertile ... I'm totally comfortable if we decide that this sort of thing is

• lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
  We are childless. We could use legal reproductive tech like IVF, but we refuse to do so on moral grounds. This is painful for us, but we accept the reality of it, because, among other reasons, we refuse to commoditize human life and to kill human beings[0] to satisfy our desire to be parents. So please avoid the ad hominem and do not presume that moral opposition is merely some kind of flippant and insensitive response coming from those who are not affected. There are plenty of couples who make this moral decision, because they grasp the moral reality of the situation. No one is entitled to children. No one is entitled to any kind of child. This entitlement is precisely what makes it commodification. Children are not property. They are not a product to be customized. They’re human beings, and no one is entitled to another human being. It is good and natural to want children. It is good and natural to want healthy children. It is good and natural to marry and to try to have them. But it is not good to think you deserve them or that you are entitled to have them - and to have them in a desired condition - at any cost or by any means. A real parent puts his child’s good - real or potential - before his or her own, but this attitude of entitlement gets it exactly backwards. It involved begetting children from a fundamental position of disrespect toward them as human beings and toward all those who were thrown out in the process. While there is no moral issue in principle with gene therapies that involve correcting genetic defects in an embryo in the abstract; in practice, there is a lot we don’t know about genetics, the details of the process matter, and the flippant overconfidence of startups is worrying But doing screening and terminating ‘undesirable’ embryos is gravely immoral. [0] An embryo is not some ontologically other that later magically transubstantiates into a human being. “Embryo” and “fetus” describe stages of human development, like “infant”, “toddler”, “teenager”, or “adult”. It boggles the mind how blind and numb we are as a society to this reality, and so easily dehumanize human life in its early stages, simply because it doesn’t look like it does at more mature stages, and because it suits our desires.
  • bonsai_spool 11mo ago
    I disagree with your framing around embryos being human (largely because we're using our current scientific understanding to change what was intuitive into some abstraction that, itself, we don't understand - consider that pregnancy may be much more common than we know, but that otherwise 'normal' acts may harm these otherwise unknown pregnancies. Do we then prescribe the behavior of women after every sexual act they complete? But a mother causing the unintentional death of her progeny has always been wrong and socially punished.). I do agree that we don't consider the morality of what science is allowing us to do and I appreciate your arguments.
    • lo_zamoyski 11mo ago
      > consider that pregnancy may be much more common than we know, but that otherwise 'normal' acts may harm these otherwise unknown pregnancies But unintentional harm during the normal course of living is a different matter, right? There's a difference between an accident or acting out of ignorance on the one hand and intentionally harming someone. You don't provide an example of anything "normal", so I can't address it specifically. Furthermore, moral actions involve proportionality. For instance, consider a pregnant woman who has developed cancer. Chemotherapy is quite dangerous to her child, but it may give her a very good chance of surviving. Can she licitly take chemo, knowing this risk, or even knowing that certain harm will come? Yes, she can, not because her unborn child's life is less valuable than hers, but because her life is on par with that of her unborn child, and for that reason, she may take chemo to save her life with the unintended side effect of her child's harm or even death. (She isn't using the harm or death of the child to benefit, hence "side effect".) > I do agree that we don't consider the morality of what science is allowing us to do and I appreciate your arguments. I appreciate your recognition. Human beings have a bad track record in the morality department, and with the power that the scientific process gives us, we are like toddlers with a a shotgun.
  • greygoo222 11mo ago
    Human life is valuable because of critical properties, such as the ability to have complex thoughts, feelings, and desires. A couple cells in a petri dish don't gain moral status owing to having DNA matching Homo Sapiens. That's ridiculous.