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Originally Posted by ZrByte
Ok, heres how it would go.....
Situation 1: have a boy with a 50/50 chance of getting it (if he has it he will also be a carrier) If he does have the dissorder he will have either a difficult life or a normal one cut short when the dissorder finally cuts in.
Situation 2: Have a girl who lives a perfectly normal LONG life (providing no unforseen circumstances) who still has the same odds of inheriting the gene as a male sibling but whom will never suffer from it.
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In any debate on morality, there are always examples that seem to support the 'lesser' (for want of a way of describing it in a neutral manner) choice.
There is also Situation 3: Don't have a child.
Since in this case we're talking of something we
know there is a chance of (rather than an unexpected illness) there are further choices.
It is pointless debating the issue on the premise that the only options are 'total freedom to choose for whatever reason at all', or 'no choice' - because that kind of polarisation doesn't actually explore the issues.
So even if your example is a good reason why it should be allowed, doesn't mean that it should therefore be allowed in
every instance.
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Originally Posted by ZrByte
I know wich I would choose  And I would say not suffering with the dissorder would be one big advantage, wouldnt you? |
It certainly sounds like an open-and-shut argument, since I would have to be a monster to suggest otherwise.
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Originally Posted by ZrByte
Though when further gene manipulation becomes possible it would be possible to irradicate any genetic dissorder thus rendering the medical need to choose gender null and void.
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In some cases there is already an option of genetic screening - that way you'd be looking (I would have thought) for an embryo that has neither the disease or carries the genes - best of both worlds?
However that leads us to a completely different, if not unrelated debate.
An interesting quote from the original article:
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Josephine Quintavalle, speaking on behalf of Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE),said: "There is absolutely no way that the public in the United Kingdom is in favour of designer babies, social sex selection, animal-human hybrids, human reproductive cloning, or any other brave new world proposal."
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BTW - in the above I think that genetic selection embryos AND selection of an embryo with a view to tissue matching with a sibling (e.g. for transplant etc.) are both in the 'designer baby' category.
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Originally Posted by Ramrod
I don't see whats wrong with selecting sex (or for that matter, hair/eye colour).
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So what
is your limit of acceptability?
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Originally Posted by Ramrod
Saying that we are playing god isn't exactly a rational argument against it.
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Depends on your views on God. If you were to believe in His role in these matters then, quite rationally, it would equate to trying to be like God.
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Originally Posted by Ramrod
Saying that it's against nature isn't an argument either. Thats just expressing wooly sentiments.
*kevlar flame proof suit on*  |
Don't know about 'woolly sentiments', but since the humans doing this stuff are part of nature, then
maybeit isn't against nature? However, we are tinkering with the stuff of life, without really understanding what we're doing or what effects it may have.
Obviously, without research we'd never know, so as the genie is out of the bottle anyway, I certainly think that intelligent, ethical research is necessary - there just seem to be so many scientists prepared to run before they can walk. That may be because they realise it will take many years (probably more than their lifetime) for this science to fully develop, and they feel they ought to do what they think they can, while they can.