New Eugenics: Selecting Embryos for Eye and Hair Color
Remember when we were told that IVF, coupled with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), would only be used to prevent serious genetic health maladies from being passed to the next generation? That was never true, of course. The intent was to get people to accept the principle that parents should be able to design their children, and that kind of thing is best promoted via the example of serious illness--just as in assisted suicide.
But anyone who thought such restrictions were ever intended to--or would--remain in place other than as a temporary political expedient, please contact me so I can sell you a bridge known as the Golden Gate.
Predictably, once it was widely accepted that parents should be able to decide not only to have children via IVF fertility treatments, but to decide which they want and don't want, well why restrict the right to reject unwanted embryos to those with genetic illnesses? After all, cosmetics often matter to a person's success in the world. And who wants a child one doesn't find attractive? So why not toss embryos because they will have dark skin or the wrong color eyes to match with the house's decor?
But Wesley, no one would be that shallow about their own children! Oh no? From the story:
So much for unconditional love of children.A US clinic has sparked controversy by offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring. The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year.
His clinic also offers sex selection...
This involves testing a cell taken from a very early embryo before it is put into the mother's womb. Doctors then select an embryo free from rogue genes--or in this case an embryo with the desired physical traits such as blonde hair and blue eyes--to continue the pregnancy, and discard any others.
Dr Steinberg said couples might seek to use the clinic's services for both medical and cosmetic reasons. For example, a couple might want to have a baby with a darker complexion to help guard against a skin cancer if they already had a child who had developed a melanoma. But others might just want a boy with blonde hair.
We are constantly told that the right of a woman to reproduce is absolute, including getting pregnant, aborting if the pregnancy is ever unwanted, and now, genetically engineering progeny to order. But no "right" is absolute. The time has long since past to put some regulatory controls over the wild, wild west of IVF.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 12:02 PM
27 Comments
27 Comments:
horrifying. But not surprising. After all, I don't view that as being any worse or better than selecting embryos that do not have certain disorders or aborting those that do. There seems to be widespread approval for that, so if the people who support selection based on down syndrome get horrified by this, they are fooling themselves-one is just as prejudiced/wrong as the other. If that's where we're going, than it only makes sense to let parents decide what kind of children they want-right down the sex and eye color. Appalling.
When I was in high school, I wrote a letter to the editor of our paper on this subject, after viewing a Barbara Walters special on IVF and the "possibility of this in the future." I expressed my dismay that we would "progress" to the point of trying to create perfect babies.
It was roundly dismissed by condescension or scoffing; most thought it unlikely that we would ever do this, and one person said there was nothing wrong with it.
I am amazed at how different a few decades has made in this area. I am also curious to see if there will be any inroads made into our cultural views on the acceptable limits of IVF.
No right is absolute? Doesn't human exceptionalism say that the right to life is absolute for humans?
This is what you GET with i.v.f. and "the wonders of science." This "eugenics" business is Nazilike, which is like human exceptionalism saying that humans are the "privileged" species. It doesn't work, SHS. The premises are wrong, it's defensive where it doesn't need to be, which is an index of its unsoundness, and it's circular. A lot of ground that could have been gained on crucial fronts with the time and energy misdirected against the "dangers" of animal rights. The wanting the benefits of animal research and "science" but not the ill effects is the same re animal rights as re eugenic i.v.f., and when it comes down to it human exceptionalism is eugenics too.
Humans, in fact, at least in the "better-bred" (no pun intended) strata of society, have been done sensible "good breeding" when arranging and approving marriages for quite some time, or at least used to; we breed dogs, cats, racehorses (which is fine if turning them out in a field and letting nature say yes or no, not fine the way it's done). As a matter of fact what we've done with other animals in terms of breeding, we're now doing with humans -- SAME as the ill effects of animal experimentation extending to them to us.
Ianthe: No. We can take life in self defense, for example.
This also reminds me of how desired traits change over time with social trends. For instance, in the 1930s, red hair was not popular. In the 90s, everybody wanted it. In the baroque period, being plump and pale skinned was a sign of status and was depicted as the ideal female form. Now, thin and blonde is the way to go. Thus, traits that people think are desirable now are simply reflections of what our society currently finds attractive. It's sad that more people don't care about this.
Wesley: Right. But that's the same argument the utilitarians use.
A co-worker of mine is 38 and pregnant for the third time. She's debating whether to have pre-natal screening done on the baby or not. On the one hand, she wants to be aware if her child has any problems, such as Downs Syndrom, but she's afraid that if the baby isn't "perfect" her health care provider will push her to have an abortion, which she refuses to do.
I mean, heck! When we possess the technology to help a woman who might have a problem birth, but she's scared to use it because we've become a disposable society, we've got problems. And sex-selection? Cosmetic selection? Doesn't this result in the death of the unwanted children? What happens if the "wrong" embryo is accidentally implanted and instead of a blond with blue eyes she gets a brunette with green eyes? She can't exactly send the baby back, so what then?
Very well, if no right is absolute then who shall decide what the limits of those rights should be, and on what criteria? Says who? Says you? Says the Pope? Put it up for public referendum? On the other hand, why not simply avoid the problem and let fools indulge their foolishness?
History Writer: There is always a dynamic tension between individual liberty and the public welfare.
To some degree the people decide what the limits are, or at least they should, in our system consistent with the Constitution that we the people established. The First Amendment, which is explicit, has reasonable limitations based on common sense and protecting the public (and in some cases, private) good.
Your presription is for social anarchy, eugenics, and crass consumerism in reproduction, which is where we are heading, attitudes that (along with other matters) will lead to the profound undermining of society which needs some commonality beyond radical individual behavioral license to be a society.
T E Fine, they can't make her have an abortion. But she could tell her doctor beforehand that she only wants a heads-up about any issues she will have to face, and that abortion is off the table. That's what I'd probably do. I'm assuming that she's in an HMO and can't choose her doc. In her situation, I'd probably try to find a pro-life doc if I could. The doctor who did my prenatal care was pro-life. I appreciated knowing that she valued my baby's life as a separate person even as she was taking care of me.
What amazes me is the people who say that slippery-slope arguments are always a trivial distraction.
TE Fine,
Encourage your friend to do the least invasive prenatal screening (sonograms at least) if it ill help her. Then, dig in, and don't let anyone tell her what to do.
With Down Sydrome, there is not much reason to know ahead of time except to "prepare yourself." Even the health problems that are associated with DS are not fixable until birth, I believe.
But some important diagnoses can be made by sonogram, such as spina bifida, and any necessary surgery can even be done prenatally.
Please give her your support. It just takes strong-willed people to stand up against docs and their twisted values. Also, there are prolife OBGYNs out there, if she has the option to look around.
Don't the fathers make the "choices" about "desired traits," too?
When people can't choose their own doctor because they belong to HMOs, or whatever, that's the beginning of we can't make choices about our own treatment, whether we or our loved ones live, etc. As I've been saying it takes a couple or few radical changes to change around the medical establishment and its twisted values: stop animal experimentation and get rid of insurance. It's amazing to me that people wouldn't undertand why, or would go on about what would we do without them, etc. Enough people wanted "change" to institute Obamanation, and they didn't even know what the change would be (well...). Well, these would constitute change, and wouldn't send the stock market down. Sure a bunch of corporations would go out of business; a lot of money would go back into the economy and be where it belongs instead of where it is now, too, and a lot of what's destroying us would end. Also the whole fertiity medicine enterprise has to end. Give those doctors jobs in barnyards and stables (not re breeding though; I mean re feeding, watering, mucking out, etc.)and don't let them back into medicine until and unless they see the light.
TE Fine,
follow holyterror's advice. Remind your friend that some prenatal screenings like amniocentesis are invasive and carry a small risk of miscarriage, and also while very accurate still can be wrong sometimes.
Wesley, I think your point in Consumers Guide needs to be made. Once we start down this road, it won't be about choice or personal taste anymore. Whatever fad is in-as SAFEpress notes changes from time to time, parents will be under huge pressure to conform. They will feel pressured-maybe moral pressure-to give kids certain kinds of genes that produce certain socially desired attributes. What parent could feel moral not produce gen rich kids and let them be gen natural by leaving it up to nature? I think this thing starts out shocking us then it start to control us. And then technology controls us instead of the other way around.
Another problem would be the changing fads. What if we design kids for a certain fad/taste/parental desire only to see if change a few years later? O well. They'll be seen not as exceptional creatures, they'll be viewed as an out of date produt like an old home that is deemed "dated."
Ugh...."out of date" children....
(shudder)
There's a mighty big elephant in the room here. It's analogous to the "right to die" becoming the duty to die.
Simply put: when genetic selection of traits becomes widespread, society will expect it as a matter of course. Parents who opt to have less-than-perfect "potluck" or "mutt" children without the aid of these brave new technologies will be ostracized, and their children might even face discrimination.
It would be easy to picture a medical insurance company--or the government, if it takes over US health care--saying that it won't cover genetic problems in children born the old-fashioned way without these technologies--or even insure such children at all.
Such scenarios are the real risk here. But I've said before that all fertility treatments should be banned due to population pressures worldwide as well as the bioethics issues presented in forums such as SHS, so maybe I'm simply a Neanderthal... Arrgh, said Og.
As TE Fine asked, what happens if the "wrong" baby is implanted? The parents wanted blue eyes and a brown eyed-baby is "accidentally" born. Does the couple sue the doctor? (Does the IVF service come with a money-back guarantee?) What do they do with the baby? I'd be extremely curious to follow THAT lawsuit.
-Becky Miller
RI Right to Life
K-Man: You just raised the most important issues. The only places I disagree with you are in why i.v.f. should be banned: I don't care about population pressures worldwide, and I don't believe in bioethics,, which involves discussions over things that just shouldn't BE, and i.v.f. just shouldn't be, period. It isn't natural and it isn't healthy and it isn't wise, and those doing it should be locked up, and those wanting it shouldn't be reproduced at all, and that's the end of it. In fact it, and eugenics, comes out of the belief that we're so darned special that we're entitled, and what's really special about life isn't special, and that's on all fours with human exceptionalism, which wants to have things both ways, and I wish it would hurry up and figure out why that's arrogant and impossible. No i.v.f. No animal experimentation. No insurance companies. No pharmaceutical companies. Those things happened, a lot of problems would disappear right quick. Personally I'm not worried about the teeming masses of humanity; the lab animals have more sense than their "humanly exceptional" parents did, but no choice.
It all begins by appealing to that utopian desire for the absence of suffering. IVF was given to us because couples were suffering from infertility. It was promoted and embraced because parents wouldn't have to suffer the loss of a child due to genetic defect or illness. And very, very soon they will sell the general public this horror. It will go something like this: "Teenage girls with red hair and large breasts suffer from depression at greater rates than blond haired boys. You wouldn't want to have your daughter suffer through years of depression with the possibility of her committing suicide, now would you? Of course not. No parent wants their child to suffer. We can prevent that from every happening. Let's give you a blond son." Or here's one: "Blue eyed boys risk developing macular degeneration. You don't want you son to suffer through losing his sight when he's 70 now do you. We can prevent that from happening. Let's make you a brown eyed baby girl. Yea!!" It's all about the suffering--or lack of it.
May God have mercy....
It just shouldn't be. It's agaonst nature. Population problems for teeming masses of humans, I couldn't care less about; laboratory animals don't have choices; humans do. People not being fertile, well, that's their problem. There is at least one fertility doctor I know who says that his mission is because there aren't enough white people now. Well this isn't the way to get more or less people, it's just something not to do. It's part of the same arrogance that is human exceptionalism. Anyway, it's nothing new that some parents are demanding re their kids. This is going on at the same time as they are trying to get them to learn to read while still in diapers, swim when they belong in a crib, get into the right pre-pre-school...all very nice but all part of the same syndrome. Anyone who can't reproduce shouldn't be reproduced, and there are a whole lot of other people who shouldn't be in to the bargain and they are enough trouble already.
Marie: You hit the nail on the head. That's the excuse. That's how we got the mess with the pharmaceutical companies; every night on the news with Walter Cronkite every ad was for some headache remedy, etc. Funny we don't hear about headaches as much any more; I don't think it's because everyone has gotten used to taking excedrin; I think they're on to other things now.
I think what's also important to note that when there are no "limits" on individual "choice," new values come into play that begin to infringe upon legitimate personal choices. For instance, we have this technology to select eye color and detect disease. Already, this type of screening has resulted in the abortion of 90 percent of down syndrome fetuses. There is social pressure to do so. It's not just about preserving society, it's about preventing the creation of a society like Nazi Germany and other totalitarian regimes.
Just like there's "technology" that can keep alive elderly people whom doctors have messed up and caused to need to be on it, but there is social pressure -- and medical/hospital pressure -- that because someone is old, they should die. We've already GOT a society like that. That's how we ended up with this yahoo in the White House who's destroying everything, and that's how those around him got to where they are, and that's how people got dumb enough to elect him. It's been going on for quite some time.
Just Chris, Holy Terror -
Thanks both of you. I found out today that she's going ahead and having the prenatal screening done, but she's made up her mind they're going to keep the baby under any and all circumstances, and her husband says the same thing, so yay! Personally, I don't think there's going to be anything wrong with her baby. She's in good health and is taking care to ensure she has all the proper nutrition and exercize. Besides, I hate to borrow trouble. I have faith that things will work out for the best. Bless both of you for your strong, kind words.
This is the same the Nazis intended to do before they could use genetic manipulation. They did it the old fashion way. Mating the strong, healthy, germanic looking individuals and killing the ones with "flaws".
We condemn that, but not this which is the same?
We are reaching new levels of hypocrisy. Bravo!
Well we did it to non-human animals and no one said anything.
lanthe, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was a fact that other species (with very few exceptions) do not associate mating and pleasure. It's a function of instinct and not of will, is it not? Are animals faddy about what traits are desirable in their offspring? I doubt it. Do they encounter moral implications of creating an 'optimal' race? That would probably be great for them, survival of the fittest and all; some even kill their young, as witnessed by anyone who's ever watched those documentaries. I'm not by any means for abusing animals but you simply can't compare them to humans across the board -- the comparison quickly gets ridiculous.
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