"Christian" Eugenics
Dr. Albert Mohler, a national Christian leader, advocated in his blog a few weeks ago for what can only be described as the eugenic manipulation of fetuses--if and when it becomes possible--to prevent the babies from being homosexual. The blog entry is only now being reported in the mainstream press, and as you would expect, it looks as if it might become a firestorm.
Rather than rely on media reporting, let's analyze what Mohler actually wrote. To his credit, Mohler acknowledged the intrinsic equal worth of gay children: The biblical basis for establishing the dignity of all persons--the fact that all humans are made in God's image--reminds us that this means all persons, including those who may be marked by a predisposition toward homosexuality. For the sake of clarity, we must insist at all times that all persons--whether identified as heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, transgendered, bisexual, or whatever--are equally made in the image of God.
And he warns against eugenic abortion: Thus, we will gladly contend for the right to life of all persons, born and unborn, whatever their sexual orientation. We must fight against the idea of aborting fetuses or human embryos identified as homosexual in orientation.
But having also warned against the drive to create "designer" babies as if children are a matter of mere manufacture, Mohler undercuts his own intrinsic worth argument by claiming that it would be appropriate and "Christian" to redesign fetuses found with biological factors that would create a propensity to being homosexual: If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.
How is this in any less eugenics than, say, redesigning a baby with normal intelligence to be an Einstein, redesigning a child who will be diminutive, to be tall, or redesigning a baby with normal hearing to be deaf? Once we accept that children can be remade to suit parental desires for their children--which is a different matter than, say, correcting a heart defect--we have bought into Brave New World.
Labels: Eugenics' Designer Babies
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:40 AM
34 Comments
34 Comments:
Wesley, do you believe there is a bright line between defect fixing and enhancement?
I wish it were that easy. I think it is something like Potter Stewart's famous quote about obscenity: it is hard to define but I know it when I see it.
One issue is intrinsic worth. A baby with a heart defect is not going to be deemed more or less intrinsically valuable than a child without the defect.
Another issue to look at is whether the change is intended to fulfill parental desires, e.g., if religions belief is deemed genetic, a Richard Dawkins might want that engineered out of his progeny. That would be design.
What do you think?
I think part of the problem is that this guy is just talking without having anything even clear in his own mind. What does he mean by "treatment"? I wouldn't use genetic engineering even to avoid a heart defect. But surgery for a heart defect, or drug treatment even, if fine. So does he mean designing babies--trying to change their genetic makeup--or treating babies already in existence? If the latter, then I suppose the whole question would come down to the specifics of the treatment involved and, of course, whether homosexuality should be regarded as an abnormality for which treatment should be given.
Of *course* there's a biological basis for homosexuality - that has nothing to do with the way people choose to live their lives. Guys sometimes are programmed to like guys because of faulty wiring in the brain, and likewise females are attracted to females for the same reason.
I say "faulty wiring" because any species would die out if all the members were wired to be attracted to the same gender - it's not a bash and I'm hardly a homophobe, so don't worry about that.
But women are wired to be highly attracted to men, and sleep around with them - that's immoral in the Christian belief. And it says out-and-out in the Bible, any man who looks at another woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultry against his wife, so *that* is immoral in Christian belief.
Face it, you can't change the way a person's wired, and you shouldn't try. Altering a small person in the womb is stupid, illegal (against God's law), immoral, and evil.
I recognize where this guy is coming from and I don't condemn him - yet. But we can't mess around with babies that aren't born yet. There's too freakin' much damage that could be done!
God gave us ten commandments, and when we couldn't handle that he knocked it down to two - Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Anything else is commentary.
This is totally messing with the second one there. Don't support it.
Lydia: He seems to mean hormonal interventions to change the sexual orientation--if that is ever determined to be a cause. But there would be no reason why it wouldn't also include genetic engineering.
This is my view: We should not be messing with our progeny at the biological level to remake them in an image we would prefer, or to fulfill parental desires. With regard to the gay issue, if one set of parents can make a child with homosexual biological propensities straight through interventions during gestation, then another set of parents would be able to make a child with biological propensity to be heterosexual, gay.
Neither is right, in my view. I think our position should be to just say no to remaking children in such fashions. We have to find a good way to define therapeutic interventions, if they are to be done at this level, that sticks with human physical wellbeing, not behavior, capacities, or talents.
Although I normally agree with you on things Wesley on this i'll have to take a different tack and disagree with you.
Try to look at it from Al Mohlers perspective. If you could treat a condition inutero that will dramatically effect a persons life, that will in all likelyhood result in all manner of suffering for them and early death from disease etc, plus make it easier for the person to live as they are made to live by design, then it is pretty hard to say no.
I think the real problem with this sort of treatment is that same-sex attraction is at best something that is influenced by some inutero hormonal levels or genetics and not something determined in that fashion.
Worse yet, from a biblical perspective, the variations in hormone levels to produce differnt temperamants in humans may be an intentional part of God's design.
After all, a God that creates 600,000 species of spiders clearly likes diversity in his creations, even if homosexual practice is not part of the right design of human beings and is not something to be practiced.
Note, I would strongly strongly contend that it is nurture factors and not nature factors that are overwhelmingly contributory to development of same-sex attraction.
I think he wasn't so much "undercutting his argument" as maybe being provocative, demonstrating why it would be bad to allow genetic intervention to any readers who up till that point had been disagreeing with him. It's a pretty airtight way to make the case that we shouldn't allow labs to try to alter the genetic expressions of people.
Mothers (and their husbands and their doctors and their priests, on the otherhand, we should allow to try to do whatever they want, if they think crooning show tunes or eating grapefruit or taking thiamin pills is going to make their child smarter or straighter or gayer, we have to allow that. I think the line could be: no "Central London Hatchery", no state or private labs should be allowed to attempt to alter the genetic expression in any way from the joining of a man's unadulterated sperm and a woman's unadulterated egg. But moms should still be allowed to eat grapefruit or take vitamins or listen to AC/DC, even though all that stuff will change the genetic expression of their offspring.
"Designer babies" is just sloganeering.
Frankly, I don't see how selecting sperm/ovum/embryo for any potential trait is morally different than picking a wife/husband on the basis of potential hair/eye color of a child. Sure, the methods are different and if that's what makes it immoral, then just say so. But to imply that "designing babies" is per se wrong, no, that doesn't make any sense. We don't normally question the motives of people mating together so I don't see why we should question the motives of embyro selection.
I don't normally agree with Christian fundamentalists, but here, strangely I do.
Oh yes, opening the door to the Brave New World - really, if you look past all these slogans, you'll see we crossed that line 1000s of years ago. Has the sky fallen? Nope.
I would say that the sky is cracking. The intrinsic value of human life is under sustained assault. As Leon Kass has put it, some of us will do ANYTHING in the name of extending life, we are making human life for the purpose of destroying it, we are seriously considering making children to order. Want your gay fetus to be straight, just add some hormones here and a new gene there. Oh, and YOU want your straight fetus to be gay? Sure, we'll do the same in reverse. We are wiping Down's people off the face of the earth--as we promote the Special Olympics. We are looking to the cognitively devestated as sources of organs and for use in medical experiments. And we are still part way in the starting gate of a long race.
I feel like it's sort of pointless to talk about all of this because it's never actually going to be the case that in utero hormonal treatment would be the major factor in causing a person who otherwise would experience same-sex attraction not to experience it. Whatever the biological situation might be, I tend to agree with the poster above who said that almost certainly environmental factors are far more important.
But speaking theoretically, I'm not sure I can go with the argument that such treatment must be wrong because then it "could be done the other way." I mean, couldn't we say the same of any treatment? "Hey, you want the hole in your child's heart surgically fixed? If we start doing that, then somebody else can come along and surgically _make_ a hole in a child's heart." Well, yes, they _could_. But if it's bad for the child to have a hole in the heart and better for the child not to have a hole, then we shouldn't be restrained from repairing it on the grounds that in our ethically confused society someone might decide to reverse the process.
But I'm wondering if perhaps part of what Wesley is thinking of here is the idea that same-sex attraction is not a physical condition at all to begin with.??
Lydia: No. It isn't about what causes or does not cause same sex attraction. It is about changing the biological nature of embryos and fetuses to fulfill parental desires about the kind of child they want. That turns procreation into made to order manufacture.
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Royale, what do you mean you don't see the difference? One is choosing your mate and having children together, one is breaking that into two seperate things. That has never been done before. Choosing a mate has been going on since complex life forms developed out of single celled organisms. Sexual reproduction was the big breakthrough that kicked evolution into high gear and moved life from chemical and biological into social patterns. But it has always been a male and a female choosing to mate with each other, and then their kids just come out how they come out. It's never been any other way, it hasn't been a slow continuum from primal mate selection to us genetically designing babies. We've always chosen a person to mate with. Choosing the genes in any way other than choosing a mate is completely new.
"Lydia: No. It isn't about what causes or does not cause same sex attraction. It is about changing the biological nature of embryos and fetuses to fulfill parental desires about the kind of child they want. That turns procreation into made to order manufacture."
I don't really think this case is necessarily a case of that sort of thing.
I have a good friend of mine whose wife has a brother with Muscular Dystrophy. She is a carrier for it. If there existed an inutero or invitro treatment for Muscular Dystropy (apart from the currently recommended eugenic abortion) would that be problematic ? Unless you say yes that is problematic I think I see the disagreement between you and Al Mohler.
One of you is looking at same-sex attraction as something akin to Muscular Dystrophy while the other is looking at same-sex attraction as essentially benign and just a normal variation.
So it makes sense that you would not see eye to eye on this point.
Is that a fair assessment ?
John,
Yes, the methods are different. I wrote that.
But selective breeding has been going on for 1000s, if not 100000s of years. So, the mere PRINCIPAL of people doing what they can to design what their children do and are (i.e., DESIGNING BABIES), is very, very old.
I always bring this up on threads like this because I've never gotten a good answer from the readers of this blog:
Why is it that pre-marital genetic screening for diseases is not considered "designing babies"? The PRINCIPAL at work is the exact same.
The only difference is the method. If that's the moral objection, then please watch your vocabulary because designing babies, in PRINCIPAL, many would consider OK.
"the genetic makeup of another individual. It's information; what you do "
Again, this is discussing the METHOD. You consider genetic tinkering immoral, fine.
But to screen embryos, ovum, sperm, or even people for genetic diseases, or anything, is a form of designing babies because it's simply selective breeding but with humans.
Thus, designing babies in the abstract is OK.
That's my point.
Now, HOW should we design babies? Screen people (i.e., hedging our bets) or genetic tinkering? I don't believe I've made any much argument for either.
Jason,
Yes, I think it's an interesting question: Are the waters being muddied here by the question of whether homosexuality is abnormal or not? Shouldn't that be a different question?
If the idea is just that pre-natal treatment of disorders is wrong, then I can't agree with that. It's clearly false for physical disorders. Pre-natal surgery for spina bifida is often successful and has been an important breakthrough. The same is true of pre-natal surgery for diaphragmatic hernia.
If the issue is a problem with the recklessness of hormonal treatments of very young children, then I do agree with that. Frankly, I think any such treatment would almost certainly do more harm that good. But that's an "in practice" issue, not an "in principle" issue.
But it doesn't seem like it can be in principle wrong to engage in pre-natal treatments of biologically-based mental disorders. Maybe it would make the questions clearer if we picked something different to talk about theoretically--say, bipolar disorder. Now, older children are treated with meds for bipolar disorder. This may not always be wise, but it isn't in principle wrong. Would it be engaging in "designing children" if a way were found to treat children pre-natally who had some strong inclination to bi-polar? Again, it might be an overly risky treatment and hence foolish to engage in, but I would think it should be evaluated like any other treatment--risks, benefits, how much is known about the treatment, etc.
Royale, choosing a mate is not just a crude method of designing children. In humans, like most species, the couple choose each other to be their companion and partner, not just to conceive children, and the genes of their children take distant second to considerations like personality, wealth, lifestyle, etc. Even if choosing a partner for their genes was all that it was, as in cases of choosing a one-night-stand sperm-donor, it is still just choosing a person to conceive with, not choosing the genes of your child. And, even when a person chooses a partner for their healthy genes, they still (up till recently) use their own genes. Designer babies might not have a genetic connection to either "parent".
So, I am refusing to accept this "it's a different method" idea. They are two different things. Choosing a mate is choosing a mate, not designing a baby, and it goes back to the beginning. Creating babies in any way other than a male and female choosing each other to mate with is completely different and brand new.
Gregory,
I didn't ignore anything that was worth commenting to.
Your discussion of qualitative differences was vague.
What are you talking about? Which procedure? What mastery of others? Implanting genes into a fetus? Embryo screening? Sperm screening? Ova screening?
Are all these the same qualitatively? I would say no.
As for mastery of others - does it matter if the "other" doesn't even exist yet? Without falling into discussing when "others exist" (i.e., conception, implantaton, birth), I would just say that it shouldn't either way.
Why? Because of all the sweeping statements about the "intrinsic value of human life", may be you don't comment about that, but definitely Wesley does. If all human life is so important for its own sake, then I must conclude that all human life is worth creating. If not, why not?
Take someone with Down's Syndrome, by allowing a person who is genetically at risk to have children with DS to abstain from procreating, for no other reason than the risk of DS, are we not saying that people with DS have less right to even be conceived? I think so.
And that is precisely the moral contradiction here, to which I have not received a good answer.
I don't think you've asked a good question. Are you saying we should force people to conceive even if they don't want to?
Wesley, I agree that there is no bright line between defect fixing and enhancement. Further, as with all dichotomies, the harder we look for the line, the more clearly we see a spectrum.
Potter Stewart's comment, that one knows when the line has been crossed, is (perhaps ironically) insufficient unless one embraces a purely individualistic and relativistic ethics. Laws and social norms, in non-oppressive communities, reflect diverse perspectives, no two of which may exactly match. One may see obscenity where another sees beauty. One may see an opportunity for enhancement where another sees a defect to be fixed. So we work together, as here at Secondhand Smoke, to persuade each other to see the world more alike, and thereby to affect our laws and social norms accordingly. The irony would be that Stewart may have intended his comment to appeal to some kind of absolute ethics, yet we find ourselves unable to judge the value of such an appeal without returning to either pure relativism or objectivity in the form of shared subjectivity, and the latter tends to deem insufficient the value of a single individual's appeal to the absolute.
As I see no bright line between defect fixing and enhancement, I see no bright line between human and non-human. Well to each side, I feel comfortable judging between the human and the non-human, yet at the center, I lose my comfort. Humans are exceptional, and so merit exceptional consideration, yet when have they become human and when have they ceased to be human? When have they become something exceptional relative even to humans, thereby meriting exceptional consideration relative even to humans? When have they become something unexceptional relative to humans, thereby not meriting exceptional consideration? When does human life begin and end? When does it become something meta-exceptional?
In addition to seeing no bright lines, I see no straight lines. If a human loses 10% of its parts, we should not simply conclude that it is 10% less human, or even less human at all. Yet, eventually, that which was not human becomes so, and that which was human becomes not. Over a relatively short period, there is change from the unexceptional to the exceptional, from the exceptional to the unexceptional, and perhaps even from the exceptional to the meta-exceptional. I don't know whether such changes can be described adequately in terms of percentages, but they happen and appear to do so without bright or straight lines. When considering these changes, in all their real complexity, we cannot depend uniquely on appeals to exceptionalism or intrinsic worth, because that which we are considering is on neither side of the abstract line, on whose practicality we usually depend.
Lincoln: Thank you for your thoughtful post.
Yes, Stewart's statement--no doubt made in frustration--is inadequate to the task at hand. I feel his pain.
How can something that is not human, become human? We can easily determine whether an organism or being is human through biological means. Indeed, there is a very bright line between human and non human. For me, that is the proper first question: Are we dealing with a living human being or human organism?
In terms of human life, there should be a separate standard from how other life is treated. There should be lines that we do not cross in our treatment of other humans, for example, not using some human life instrumentally even if there is a payoff for other humans.
With regard to our animal friends, it is precisely because we are human that we have duties to treat them humanely, keeping in mind the human good to be derived by proposed uses. In short, I believe in the animal welfare model, as opposed to animal rights.
In this regard, unlike with humans, the capacities of the animal also become relevant. The acceptable ways to treat a chimp should differ from the acceptable ways to treat a mouse, for example. But I don't believe it is right to state that a chimp with higher capacities than an infant or disabled human should have greater moral value. Once we go down that road, we have accepted a subjective view of human life, which means that the attributes that matter morally depend on who has the power to decide. It also dooms any hope of achieving universal human rights, with the most defenseless becoming the most vulnerable to exploitation.
Then, we have to add in what should be a legal requirement with regard to the care and treatment of humans and animals, and what our individual moral duties may be regardless of what the law may allow.
How can something that is not human, become human?
I assume he's talking about genetic chimeras, where human genes are added to animal genes in some proportion. Should such embryos be implanted? Well, I don't think any embryos should be implanted, even if they are natural human embryos, but you have backed yourself in to a corner on this, and might feel they should be implanted, since they are partially human and exist. Then it's a slippery slope.
But there is a huge clear line, I don't get how anyone can miss it: the child of two humans is human, and we should draw the line right there. People can only be created by the union of a man and a woman and carried in a woman's womb, and no other method. Anything created by that method is human. Anything created by any other method should not be considered human and should not be allowed to be created or implanted. There's no need to speculate about how we would treat such a creation if one were born, we should concentrate on how we will treat the people involved in that unethical endeavor.
I think it's easy to find a clear bright line:
All I know is what I read in my Bible:
"The word of the LORD came to me, saying, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart."
--Jeremiah 1:4-5.
No matter what, we shouldn't mess with babies. Period. You monkey around with a poor kid's body before he's born and you're going to make a mistake somewhere and that child'll be hurt severely, without any way to fix it.
There are just too many things that we can screw up for us to even think about it.
That which is not human becomes human, for example, during the typical conception process. Humans consume materials that are organized into sperm and egg. Sperm and egg join into zygote, which continues to develop ultimately into another human. I see no bright or straight line in this between the human and the non-human.
On the other hand, as a human dies, at what point is it no longer human? Is it a point? I see no point . . . and neither do I see a straight line departure from human.
Lincoln: According to embryology text books, a zygote is a distinct human organism. At that point. Nothing happens after that to transform it into a human, it is a human at the earliest stage of development.
That isn't philosophy. It is embryology. Whether that new organism should have a moral status is not embryology or biology. That is a matter of philosophy.
So, to clarify a bit, I am not necessarily talking about non-human animals. In fact, the emotions associated with that probably just make it more difficult to communicate. We need look at nothing more than the non-human materials of which humans are composed. When have they become exceptionally organized (become human)? When have they ceased to be exceptionally organized (cease to be human)? When might they be meta-exceptionally organized (become neohuman)?
Wesley, when does a zygote become a zygote?
Lincoln,
I know your question was not directed at me, and I probably won't be coming back to see your response, but I wanted to offer a response to your question with a question: When does stubble end and a beard begin?
The exact point of transformation can't be defined precisely, but that does not mean we can’t tell the difference between a bearded face and clean-shaven one. My point? Just because we don’t know the precise moment two gametes cease to exist as they form a new human organism, does not mean we can’t know that the event has occurred, and recognize the presence of a human being when we see it. The simple fact of the matter is that before conception occurs we have two gametes, and after it occurs we have a new human being.
What does this scientific uncertainty about the precise timeing of the formation of a zygote have to do with this issue anyway? Nothing. Syngamy occurs at the unicellular stage of human development. Gene therapies, embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and ESCR all occur at the multi-cellular stage. The kind of stuff Smith is discussing involves multi-cellular entities; i.e. those who have already undergone syngamy. There is no question, then, that the “thing” under discussion is a human being. While we may not have epistemological certainty concerning the precise moment it came into existence, it is absolutely clear that what is being operated on or killed is a distinct human being at the time.
Jason, that is true only if you are a person that considers a zygote to be fully human. I'm not arguing against such an idea, but am pointing out that in the same way that you cannot indisputably identify when a zygote becomes a zygote, you cannot indisputably identify when a human becomes a human -- or ceases to be a human either for becoming more or less than human.
Lincoln,
Work is slow this morning, so I had a few minutes to check back. Thanks for your response.
Whether one considers a zygote human is not a subjective matter; it is an objective, biological fact. Things that exist exist as something. What is the zygote? It exists. It has being, but what kind of being does it have? Biology makes it clear. To identify the kind of being a zygote is one looks at its genetic code. The zygote has a diploid set of human chromosomes, and the gentetic fingerprint of human beings. The only conclusion, then, is that its being is of the human kind; i.e. a human being.
This conclusion is biologically airtight and beyond dispute. What can be, and is disputed is the value of human beings. Are all human beings valuable, or only some (or the scary option...none)? If only some, why? What is the demarcation line for human value, and how is that line rationally justified? That is the only valid debate (a matter of philosophy). The biological question is settled. A zygote, when it actually becomes a zygote, is a member of the human species. It possesses everything that makes a human, human. All it needs is a suitable environment to mature according to its kind.
What Jason just wrote.
Jason, are all zygotes perfect? At what point is a zygote not perfect enough to be any longer considered a zygote?
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