Designer Babies

saathi · Mar 12th, 2009, 08:48 pm

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When a Los Angeles fertility clinic offered last month to let parents choose their kids' hair and eye color, public outrage followed. On March 2, the clinic shut the program down — and that, says transhumanist author James Hughes, is a shame.

According to Hughes, using reproductive technologies — in this case, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), in which doctors screen embryos before implanting them — for cosmetic purposes is just an old-fashioned parental impulse, translated into 21st century technology.

If nobody gets hurt and everybody has access, says Hughes, then genetic modification is perfectly fine, and restricting it is an assault on reproductive freedom. "It's in the same category as abortion. If you think women have the right to control their own bodies, then they should be able to make this choice," he said. "There should be no law restricting the kind of kids people have, unless there's gross evidence that they're going to harm that kid, or harm society."

Hughes' views are hardly universal. "I'm totally against this," said William Kearns, the medical geneticist who developed the techniques used by the Fertility Institutes for cosmetic purposes, in a newspaper interview. In the same article, Mark Hughes, one of the inventors of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, called its non-therapeutic use "ridiculous and irresponsible."

Wired.com talked to James Hughes and to Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, about genetic selection.

Wired.com: What do you think about using reproductive technologies to pick cosmetic traits?

James Hughes: It's inevitable, in the broad context of freedom and choice. And the term "designer babies" is an insult to parents, because it basically says parents don't have their kids' best interests at heart.

The only people who are consistent about this are the Catholics. They say that you have to accept whatever pops out of your procreative unions. But if you think that people have a right to choose how many children they have, or the partners they have them with — "I love you, but you're just too short, or too ugly" — that's a procreative choice.

If I've got a dozen embryos I could implant, and the ones I want to implant are the green-eyed ones, or the blond-haired ones, that's an extension of choices we think are perfectly acceptable — and restricting them a violation of our procreative autonomy.

I want to see a society in which parents can say, I want my kids to have the best possible options in life. That might include getting rid of obesity genes. Every child should be a loved child, but there is no virtue in accident.

Wired.com: But one could argue that obesity is a health problem, not a cosmetic issue.

Hughes: So parents are only allowed to have preferences about health conditions? What if we discovered that eating fish oil while pregnant increases intelligence, which it does? We're not going to say that you can't make certain dietary choices. In fact, we encourage them.

And would we say it was morally inappropriate for parents to stand on their head during copulation, if it made their children blond? I doubt it. The only reason this is different is because it involves embryo selection.

Wired.com: But isn't this going to produce a super-race of children born to people wealthy enough to afford artificial reproduction?

Hughes: Insofar as the choices are eye color and hair color, that's not going to exacerbate inequalities in society. It's a minor way in which greater wealth allows more reproductive choice, but it shouldn't be a reason to override reproductive freedom.

If PGD had the ability to double the IQs of children — which it doesn't — then that would be the sort of inequality that warranted a social policy against it. I'm worried about that situation, not hair and eye color.

Gross exacerbation of social inequality is a grave social harm. That's why we need universal health care, and universal access to any technology which provides profound enablement.

Wired.com: It's hard to imagine these ever being universally available.

Hughes: Medicaid has considered the provision of fertility services. Some say fertility isn't a health issue — but I think that's B.S. Having a saline breast implant put in after a mastectomy isn't a health issue, but we pay for it, because it improves quality of life.

Wired.com: Some ethicists say that non-therapeutic reproductive technologies shouldn't be used until the industry is better-regulated.

Hughes: Fertility clinics and reproductive medicine need a complete revamping of their regulatory structures. Many of the procedures are not being monitored for safety and efficacy. But those are the only two grounds on which to base a legitimate societal regulation.

Wired.com: Where do you draw the line? What if I want disabled children?

Hughes: We've been debating that for five or six years, ever since a deaf lesbian couple in Chicago wanted to use PGD to choose among the embryos they'd fertilized for one that inherited a form of deafness. They said that deafness is a perfectly benign condition, and that living in the hearing world is like living in the white world as a black person.

I argue in Citizen Cyborg that I wouldn't want to see a law saying you can't do this, but I'd want to see strong moral sanctions.

The reproductive autonomy of parents should be protected at a high level — and that even includes decisions that impose a degree of harm on children.

Wired.com: But what if I wanted to have a child who was deformed?

Hughes: I think a principle developed by Peter Singer is useful: If you think parents should be punished for taking that ability away from a child who's already born, that's probably harm.

http ://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/designerdebate.html

what is the term designer babies? it looks like an attraction to couples who want their babies in a certain way. the agency who was designing 'designer babies' is shut down but what are the chances that it will be accepted in the main media? do people really want their children to look a certain way, be a certain way?

Blonde Baji · Mar 14th, 2009, 12:33 pm

eww. Its gross.
It will be accepted by people with time.

Blonde Baji · Mar 14th, 2009, 12:34 pm

but its still gross.

adeeba · Apr 24th, 2009, 02:59 pm

*yuk*...this is going against Allah Taa'ala

saathi · May 13th, 2009, 08:11 pm

it is getting accepted with time .

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Human cloning taking place in Middle East

An undisclosed country in the Middle East is hosting a human cloning laboratory.

A leading scientist in cloning has told a weekly Dubai-based magazine he has estabished a lab for human cloning.

Dr Panayiotis Zavos, the Cypriot scientist who is trying to clone a human baby for the first time, told Arabian Business the lack of anti-cloning laws in some Middle Eastern countries made the region attractive for cloning research.
Asked if he had a laboratory for cloning in the region, Zavos said: “The answer to that is yes.” He refused to disclose the exact location.

“My next efforts will be taking place in the Middle East because it is a lot easier an environment to work in. The Middle East is where I have to go as an opportunist, as someone who wants to do something. You go into the environment which is conducive to you doing something,” he said.

Dr Zavos added the Middle East’s patriarchal culture coupled with high infertility rates could prove to make it a lucrative region for future cloning.

According to Arabian Business in 2005, the UN General Assembly approved a non-binding declaration banning all forms of human cloning, which was backed by all the GCC countries, except for Oman, which abstained.

Dr Zavos claimed in 2004 to have successfully cloned the first human embryo for reproductive purposes, however there is no evidence to support his claim. Last month he said he had created a human and cow hybrid embryo for study purposes, using the skin cells of Cady, a dead ten year old American child.

In an interview with The Independent newspaper eralier this year Dr Zavos said he was not looking to create a human super race.

"We are not interested in cloning the Michael Jordans and the Michael Jacksons of this world," he insisted. "The rich and the famous don't participate in this."

http://www.kualalumpurnews.net/story/499331

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Sweden Rules Gender-Selective Abortions Legal

STOCKHOLM, May 12, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Swedish health authorities have ruled that it is not illegal to kill a healthy unborn child based simply on its gender, according to Swedish news service The Local.

Doctors had asked health authorities about the matter after a woman from southern Sweden had two of her children killed in utero for being an undesired sex. The woman had already given birth to two daughters.

The gender was determined during an amniocentesis requested to determine whether the child had a disability.

Concerned doctors at Mälaren Hospital then asked Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare to determine a protocol for future instances in which they "feel pressured to examine the foetus's gender" without a medical necessity.

The medical board responded that such requests must be accommodated.

According to Swedish law, abortion is legal on any basis whatsoever up to the 18th week of gestation, and therefore the board said doctors cannot deny a mother seeking to have an unborn child killed because it is the wrong gender.

A medical ethics consultant told The Local in March that mothers regularly travel to Sweden from Norway, where sex-selective abortions are illegal, to abort unwanted girls.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09051201.html

middle east seems to have become a hotbed for human cloning . the high infertility rates are pushing some regions towards human cloning .

maybe sweden , the way it has legalized gender - selective abortions , is next on the list for human cloning .

Blonde Baji · May 14th, 2009, 02:32 am

middle east ;faints;

This is BAD !!!