The Flip Side of Transhumanism
The social forces set in motion by those who believe it is proper to manipulate the genetic traits of our children, are becoming increasingly apparent. Now, as reported in a column by Dr. Darshak M. Sanghavi in the New York Times, some people with disabilities are pre-selecting their offspring to exhibit disabilities. A recent survey of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis found that 3% of prospective parents pre-selected their embryos to have a specific genetically-caused disability.
Exhibiting the truly harmful terminal nonjudgmentalism of our age, the writer of this column, a doctor who treats fetuses with developmental difficulties, finds this just peachy keen: "[A]s a physician who helps women dealing with complex fetal diseases, I've learned to respect a family's judgment. Many parents share a touching faith that having children similar to them will strengthen family and social bonds.
"Of course, part of me wonders whether speaking the same language or being the same height guarantees closer families. But it's not for me to say. In the end, our energy is better spent advocating for a society where those factors won't matter."
What a cop out. The latter desire, which we all share I hope, is incompatible with the "it's not for me to say" mentality. Regardless of legality, the presumption of the right to select progeny for specific traits--whether to enhance capacities or select for a disability--reflects a truly alarming trend, and we need to say so clearly. It reduces procreation to an act of mere shopping and doctors to mere order taking technicians. This obsession with control isn't healthy for our children or our culture.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 9:45 AM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
I am reading Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self in which he discusses epochal changes in Western self-understandings of the self and how we decisivelt shifted toward a new instrumental self understanding in the era Descartes which this current inertia seems to be merely bearing out. Perhaps little can be done until we begin to reach new articulations of the self that are just as epochals as Descartes and Augustine before him and Plato before him. So much of modernity can seem infuriatingly dulled!
I doubt it can happen. Thanks to MTV, we are now literally like that old SNL skit, "Short Attention Span Theater." Our minds wander if someone speaks longer than 1 minute or writes for longer than a page.
You swim in deep waters, raskolnikov.
Worse than that, how many people these days really want to spend time in self reflection, to understand their "selves" and to understand their place in society? Not very many from the way I've seen things. Too much emphasis is placed on "self esteem," resulting in people coming to believe that the world owes them a comfortable existence. Understanding themselves makes people uncomfortable, rather like having one's self esteem lowered. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but it certainly is pleasant... rather the way sheep live pleasant lives, right up until the slaughter.
Pleasant until the chickens come home to roost. I know from experience.
Taylor cites an interesting quote by Francis Bacon stressing technological gain as the criterion of genuine knowledge and characterizing the philosophies includig that of Plato's as specious for not producing such. The bottom line was they hadn't produced a "single experiment which tends to relieve and benefit the condition of man, and which can in truth be referred to the speculations and theories of philosophy." It's not all false but the problem is that it is taken as all true. Can you prove experimentally that a baby has value? Huh? Huh? That is the darkside of these intially good intentions, it seems. Uh, no. Ok then, so back to Mayan blood sacrifices.
Can you prove experimentally that an adult human possessing all of her faculties has value? How do you weigh value? One can suggest that value is weighed by output, i.e. by what the person is capable of producing, or the work she is capable of doing. But does that prove anything?
TE Fine, you know I was speaking tongue in cheek, right? I should have used quotes. But of course I can't. And leaving the value of little daughters to something as muddied as "situation ethics" as a poster on a previous thread suggested certainly doesn't make the situation better. It is in fact unethical to leave many matters such as little daughters to "situation ethics". How do I define the value of a life? Let me pause for reflection which is something I rarely do...Well, I think we are valueless without each other. I think there is a dangerous way in which that can be construed but what I am getting at is that man only finds his fullness of meaning and value in relation to every other and whatever harm or murder we do to the least among us is therefore a diminution of us. It was not just an empty platitude when John Donne said in his sermon, "No man is an island entire of itself...", and it still is not. Our whole society, the whoe West and those under globalization suffer by these shady calculations, it seems to me. But all I do is mainly protest it in front of a computer.
rasholnikov: "Well, I think we are valueless without each other." I wouldn't put it so starkly, but you have put your finger on a crucial aspect of what it means to be human, I think.
What is it they say about the pen being mightier than the sword? Imagine how powerful that makes a computer.
raskolnikov:
"TE Fine, you know I was speaking tongue in cheek, right?"
Absolutely. I was expanding on your comment by adding that bit about adults; to me, it's exactly the same question. Some people are determined to try to "measure" human value.
And listen - protesting in front of a computer is still getting involved. You're expanding your knowledge base, right? I can tell - you're pretty well-read, given the books you're quoting, and I very much enjoyed the "Mayan blood sacrifices" line. You just keep protesting and keep being an intellectual. You'll encourage others.
And as for you worrying that I misunderstood you, I'm sorry I wasn't clearer in what I was doing. Sometimes I forget just how void the internet is of human emotions and how hard it is to convey what one wishes to say without turning a reply into a novel. You'll note that I end up using mostly analogies to explain myself. It's hard to comment in cyber-space without sounding off at times.
Wesley,
I'm trying to figure out your objection here. Is it....
1. because the medical community is allowing this?
2. genetic screening FOR disabilities?
If the latter, then I'm confused, as I would expect you would say that embryos with disabilities should have the same right to life as those without disabilities.
T E Fine,
I have a great short stort a la transhumanist future that I wrote while in college. I might post it in its entirety on my blog. You would love it, as I wrote it when I agreed with you on bioethics.
Royale -
Please do post it; I'd enjoy seeing more of your work. And while I'm sorry that our bioethics aren't exactly the same, I wanted to thank you for the fun and engaging conversations we've been having lately.
You think it is okay to design a child to have a disabilty, Royale? You think it is fine to mold a child like a pot of clay, whether via enhancement or selected disability?
I think it is wrong because I believe ordering a child like he or she were a product is wrong. It is dehumanizing and it distorts our views of children as whole beings onto themselves and into products to fulfill our desires.
If one is a Darwnist, it also interferes with natural selection. If one is a person of faith, it is playing God. If one believes that children should be absolutely free to be whoever they are, we should leave their genes alone, for we are not creating opportunities but limiting the child's future with the raw power of genetics. If one believes that it is wrong to intentionally make a child disabled, it could be construed as child abuse.
And it is hubristic in the extreme, as if we have the wisdom to design a child to order--or the right. It is a form of slavery.
But, Royale: Your next question might be, what's wrong with slavery?
I think it is terrible to design a child with a disability.
But they weren't "designing" children. They were selecting them.
According to the article, the parents had a number of embryos to choose from. They choose the embryos with genetic disabilities.
But I repeat my analysis of your objection. If life begins at conception, then the children with genetic disabilities have every right to life as those without.
I think this a terrible tragedy. If anything, this proves what I've been saying, that not all embryos have a right to life.
Well, they certainly don't in our culture. But we still might be able to prevent them from being reduced to objects and commodities.
Much of this arises from a lack of restraint. Leon Kass warned that once we put procreation literally into our hands, we wouldn't know where or when to stop.
Selecting to have a disability, or a boy, or selecting out an embryo that might have a propensity for adult onset cancer, as is happening now, is merely the first crude step toward presuming to design. It reflects a similar eugenic mindset.
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