Eugenics is Eugenics in Whatever Direction it is Aimed
DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID). Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle. Ballard's stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations, including the British Deaf Association (BDA), which is campaigning to amend government legislation to allow the creation of babies with disabilities. 
We've heard stories like this before: In the UK, deaf parents want the right to ensure having deaf children through embryo selection. From the story:
Defenders of the proposal seem to be playing tit-for-tat:
A clause in the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which is passing through the House of Lords, would make it illegal for parents undergoing embryo screening to choose an embryo with an abnormality if healthy embryos exist. In America a deaf couple deliberately created a baby with hearing difficulties by choosing a sperm donor with generations of deafness in his family. This would be impossible under the bill in its present form in the UK. Disability charities say this makes the proposed legislation discriminatory, because it gives parents the right to create "designer babies" free from genetic conditions while banning couples from deliberately creating a baby with a disability.Two wrongs do not make a right. Designing children to be deaf is just as morally wrong as selecting embryos out because they will be hearing impaired. The proper course is to block the eugenic provision now in the bill, not add more such pernicious ingredients into an already noxious stew.
Labels: The New Eugenicsw
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:07 AM
15 Comments
15 Comments:
The Sunday Times has misrepresented this campaign completely. We are NOT about designing deaf babies, we are about trying to stop eugenics. Basically the UK parliament is trying to pass a clause which makes selection legal and where a deaf embryo amongst others would never be allowed to survive. Amongst other groups.
This is about media mispresentation of deaf people (again).
This also affects the ability to be egg or sperm donors ... parliament is making a statement who is permitted to reproduce and who is not. Who is permitted to survive and who is not, that is eugenics and that is something we are trying to respond to.
Did you know if you have severe refractive errors, i.e. long or short sighted, you aren't allowed to become a donor. Eugenics?
More about our campaign and what we are really about here (including my letters to the Sunday Times): stopeugenics.org
I'm glad to learn that. We agree that all eugenics is wrong. My concern was and is that opponents of the pernicious policies about which you oppose not fall into the same trap. If there are good letters to the editor to the Times correcting their approach to the story, or if the paper issues a correction, let me know.
Wait - someone with severe myopia (like mine) can't be an egg donor?
Granted, I don't believe in creating embryos outside the womb because it cheapens the lives of the infants, but just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I don't understand it. Someone wants to have a baby and can't get pregnant under normal circumstances wants help in having a baby. Fine, I can comprehend that. But you have to fit some kind of bill of health to be allowed to donate eggs? You're right, that is eugenics at work.
The only difference between me and a deaf woman is that, with corrective lenses, I'm temporarily fully able-bodied. If the modern Eugenics movement were to have its way, the average lifespan of "healthy" people would be about thirty to forty years, and then we'd all be zapped. And that's only among those of us privelaged to be born in the first place.
Blah
Remember this story?
Not allowing egg donation by carriers of Tay-Sachs is also eugenics. Do we want to bring children into the world whose inescapable destiny is to suffer and die by the age of 5? Where do we really want to draw the line?
By the way, if people who know they are carriers of Tay-Sachs choose to adopt rather than have children of their own so that they don't perpetuate this tragic inheritance, this is also eugenics.
Laura is right, once we have the ability to detect prenatal genetic defects then we are either going to be practicing eugenics or sticking our heads in the sand. And most people aren't going to choose ignorance.
I'm thinking less of detecting prenatal genetic defects and more of choosing not to conceive children if certain defects are possible or likely.
And then there's a big difference between (a) an individual electing not to reproduce due to having these genes, (b) a donor-egg or sperm organization screening out donors who are carriers of things like Tay-Sachs, sickle cell, or hemophilia, and (c) laws that state that people who have these traits cannot donate eggs or sperm. Because after (c) may come (d) wherein people who have these traits can't legally conceive the old-fashioned way either. In the realm of universal/rationed health care this isn't far-fetched. All are different points on the eugenics continuum.
"It marks the end of loving our children unconditionally."
I felt a sharp pain of sadness when I read this line. Such a profound statement about the course of Western civilization.
(d) wherein people who have these traits can't legally conceive the old-fashioned way either.
Already people with these traits feel pressure to use donor gametes instead of their own, effectively negating whatever "right" they still have to use their own. There won't need to be a law against using one's own flawed genes, because merely allowing gamete donation will generate pressure and everyone will make the personal choice to do what James Watson says they should do. Liberal eugenics is more effective than coercive eugenics.
We probably can't outlaw using "better" gametes just yet, but we can surely pass a law that affirms everyone right to marry and every marriage's right to conceive with the couple's own unmodified gametes. The only degree of choice we should have about creating children should be choosing the other person we want to conceive with, and that person should also choose you, not just to conceive with, but to marry.
Hi i'm new posting here and am not totally familiar with the motivations of most of the posters assertions.
Assuming i am forced to select a gamete and have a kid don't i want what's best for them ? Why is it better to leave their phenotype up to a random genetics crap shoot? Stepping beyond disease and subtle inconvenient disorders like Astigmatism or keratosis pilaris. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keratosis_pilaris)
"It marks the end of loving our children unconditionally" I think if anything it galvanizes the fact that we do love them.
Is the problem here that hitler tried this by forced pairing ? Or is the objection primarily religious ?
Anyway i don't think it's a good idea to play games of Russian roulette when some of the chambers are loaded with generally distastfull things. However i must make a subtle amendment, if they are your kids that is not my concern but please, i beg you to keep your philosophy out of others lives unless they solicit it.
FullMentalJackpot: Thanks for stopping by.
Our desire for hyper-control is both destructive and ultimately fruitless. It is destructive because it quickly descends into eugencics and a loss of belief in the equality of human life. It is fruitless, becuase we can't know the future.
Religion has nothing to do with it, although I notice that eugencists tend to be the ones bringing that topic up the most. It has to do with universal human equality, equal moral worth, and universal human rights.
We are enriched by people with disabilities or other "defects," not diminished. What diminishes us all is when we presume to decide which of us is better and more desirable than others. And that includes would-be parents.
Perhaps people keep bringing up religion because you work for the crypto-fundamentalist Discovery Institute, whose specialty is masking religious agendas as something else.
Your arguments are extremely weak. If "we can't know the future" implies that all attempts to affect the future are futile, then I guess we should stop all planning, saving, striving, and all other human activities that aim to produce a particular kind of future over another.
hi Wesley
Thank you for the blog adn the opportunity to engage in this discussion.
I disagree on the issue of destructive because humans are not equal even though they are granted equal rights. Some are smarter , some are better athletes and more able to survive severe trauma, some are astonishingly beautiful. If anything genetics has shown us we express variability in our traits and our capabilities. Denial won't lead to anything but perpetuating a cruel lie to everyhuman on earth.
When you say it's fruitless, this doesn't make sense to me. But the previous poster pretty much sums it up. We might not know the future but we can certainly use stastical reasoning based on empiricle data and plan for specific events.
On the issue of religion i am agnostic and dont' think religious arguments should ever be applied to sceince in the interest of a group that may have members that are not religious. Otherwise your establishing a theocracy. This should ,as i said before, be a personal issue within a family on how they interpret their particular beliefs and metaphysical mandates relative to certain technologies.
You say we are enriched by disabled people, and that may be so, if by enriched you mean it gives us an opportunity to perform acts of charity and feel compassion. But in the meantime those feelings and altruistic stimulations are provided by disfigurment, impairment, decrepitation of a human being. This is the price somebody else pays for us to feel compelled to do these things ? We must shun technologies that free people from these burdens so they can live for the sake of stimulating the generation of our good will? Your in a sense asking somebody else to live for your sake the ultimate form of socialism or dictatorship. In addition it sais something even more abhorrent about our society that we need disease and must distribute it along with suffering in order to be good.
Infact i have astigmatism and dont' particularly like it. I don't see how this mild biological inconvenience enhances anybodies life ? Is somebodies life better because i must wear glasses and contacts ? Maybe the optometrist who relies on my money for exams but if he's intelligent enough to to become an optometrist can't he get into another technical field that doesn't require him to rely on disease/disorder to survive in a world were we could potentially erase this disorder pre-implantation?
If anything it sounds like your justifying an extreme form of Munchausen syndrome,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_syndrome, taking from another so that you may benefit as a parasite would to it's host.
FMJ: A lot of disabled people, even those with very profound disabilities, don't see their lives as you do, e.g. lives of suffering and decrepitation you describe.
All of us, it seems to me, are important regardless of capacities or abilities. And if human rights are to mean anything, each of us must be seen as having equal value and worth.
I don't think of other human beings who may need help as being parasites. Your comments border awfully close to social Darwinism to me. And that is a dangerous place for us to go.
Thanks for taking the time to post on SHS.
I'll try to cover you point by point here.
I cannot speak for a diseased person on the issue of their particular disease. Some people may actually enjoy the progression of their disease and derive immense pleasure out of immobility or physical disfigurement or other type of impairment. Others, however, do not, and I am just guessing here but I would imagine that the ones that suffer from their ailments are much higher in percentage. Thus I would much rather err on their side and correct the disease before it manifests in ALL. I will submit there are cases where people actually struggle to reach a diseased state, parents expose their children to chicken pox, adn there is a rare neurosis called body integrity identity disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_identity_disorder where the victim actually desires their healthy limbs to be lost. The later however is considered a disease itself so peopel who thrive off of their diseases are in a clinical sense diseased.
The only possible issue i can see with my reasoning here is that if we are selecting embryos to correct or avoid this disorders /diseases we rob a egg or spermatazoa from a potential shot at life. In that sense i'm committing mass holocausts daily by not making sure every 1 of my sperm find a healthy egg.
I'm sorry i think you missed a lot of what i said in my previous post. Never did i call the individual who relies on others a parasite because of his disease. I called the people who are enriched by people who are diseased on the virtue of their disease, the otherwise healthy. Thus the comparison to mechanisms syndrome
I'm did not advocate social darwinism in any statement i've made on this blog. If you define social darwinism as competition between individuals, groups, nations or ideas drives social evolution in human societies. i did not endorse using this mechanism, as nothing human is competing here.
FMJ:
"On the issue of religion i am agnostic and dont' think religious arguments should ever be applied to sceince in the interest of a group that may have members that are not religious."
We've seen this argument carried out before. Nazi doctors who experimented on humans in the concentration camps come to mind. Japanese doctors who experimented on American POWs. You don't have to have religion to have ethics, of course, but I think we can't afford to be very rigorous in excluding religion as a source of ethics.
"The only possible issue i can see with my reasoning here is that if we are selecting embryos to correct or avoid this disorders /diseases we rob a egg or spermatazoa from a potential shot at life. In that sense i'm committing mass holocausts daily by not making sure every 1 of my sperm find a healthy egg."
As I've posted here before, a single sperm has the potential for creating any one of an infinite number of human beings, as does a single ovum. Once an embryo is formed, that is, one sperm and one ovum have combined to provide the complete genetic code to describe a human being and that human has begun to form in the womb or in the petri dish, a specific individual exists that did not exist before. I thought about this many years ago when I thought I needed to develop an opinion about abortion and I asked myself where the bright line is between person and non-person; where is the qualitative, not the quantitative leap. That is the only one I could come up with. Everything before is potential, everything after is on a continuum of development.
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