Future Squinter? No Right to be Born
Well, we have fallen along way off the moral cliff in a very short time; from tossing away embryos with genetic defects for serious illness in infancy, to tossing them away because they are the wrong sex, to destroying those with a genetic propensity to adult onset cancer. And now, with the inevitability of sun in summer, embryos in Brave New Britain are be selected out if the future child would have...squinted. From the story:
Notice that it isn't even about the future born individual any more. But whether the family would feel stress. When asked if embryos with a propensity to a certain hair color would be selected out, the good brave new biotechnologist replied:Embryos are to be screened for a cosmetic defect for the first time in a British clinic. Doctors have been given permission to create a baby free from a genetic disorder which would have caused the child to have a severe squint.
The Bridge Centre family clinic, in London, has been licensed to treat a businessman and his wife to create the baby. Both the businessman and his father suffer from the condition, which causes the eyes only to look downwards or sideways.
Critics have said that the permission is another step on the road to creating only perfect-looking babies in the laboratory. The licence was granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to Prof Gedis Grudzinskas, who believes the landmark ruling marks a shift away from granting licences only for life-threatening conditions.
He said: "We will increasingly see the use of embryo screening for severe cosmetic conditions." He added that he would seek to screen for any genetic factor at all that would cause a family severe distress.
"[Hair colour] can be a cause of bullying which can lead to suicide. With the agreement of the HFEA, I would do it."Children are the new puppies.
Labels: Brave New Britain: New Eugenics
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:28 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Yikes, although hardly surprising.
Well, only being able to look down or sideways is hardly cosmetic. In fact, it sounds somewhat disabling. That being said, if I had a genetic trait that I felt I could not pass along to my offspring, I would not have any. I would adopt instead.
Apologies if I've said this before: I have a minor genetic anomaly known as Chotzen syndrome. Feel free to look it up. It's no biggie. It has some cosmetic effects and some functional ones, the latter being chiefly a propensity to deafness (though I am not deaf) and vision problems. Phenotypical manifestations vary widely, and some children require skull surgery to separate early-fused skull sutures to allow room for brain growth. But often that is not the case, as it was not for me or my children. The gene is dominant, and each child of a person with the anomaly has a 50% chance of having it. Funny facial looks are one of the chief symptoms, resulting from asymmetries in skull suture fusion. Sometimes one eye is notably lower than the other.
I am adopted and grew up not knowing why my face looked somewhat funny and why I was so short (another manifestation). It never even crossed my mind that there might be some specific "syndrome" that this manifested. My health was excellent, and I married and already had one beautiful child before finding my birth mother and being told about Chotzen syndrome. At that point I took a closer look at my lovely 4-year-old and said, "By golly, she has really high webbing between these fingers. I guess she did get the gene but it's hardly manifested at all in her." I think this is almost certainly correct. So I did a little research, realized it's no biggie, shrugged my shoulders and got on with life, including two more lovely children. The tops of their heads have funny shapes, and the third one has a low eye, like I do. They are all intelligent and happy. None required skull surgery. Nothin' to it.
But when I was first researching it, I had a conversation with a facial surgeon about what he'd seen clinically with it. After saying that people with it usually have a "very high quality of life," he _then_ came out with the suggestion that I could, if I wished, conceive in vitro and have embryos screened. It blew my mind. Here was this fellow essentially saying that I should try to make sure that someone like me or like my daughter would be bio-incinerated rather than born. Just "if I wanted to."
Designer babies, indeed.
(((Shriek!)))
I don't even think breeding puppies for looks is right, and now THIS???
This is what happens when I go away for a few weeks and lose track of what's going on - everything falls to pieces and I don't know about it until later!
Grrrrrrr....
I can almost (ALMOST!) sympathize with people who are disabled who want to screen so they can have disabled children - not that I think it's right, but given the insane way people treat their babies as objects, I can understand blasting to the world at large, "Hey, see this totally imperfect and not-pretty lookin' kid? I had him willingly, I *selected* his looks, and I adore him as is, case closed, so put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
Not that selecting for disabilities is any better - it still treats babies like objects. Fug. But at least I get why people would think that way in the onset.
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