Re: [DIYbio] Which country has the most progressive human GM laws? China?

On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 4:49 PM, Cathal Garvey
<cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
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> The hot person you'd like to mate with should have a choice in the
> matter.

I never said my partner wouldn't be in on it.

> Whether the resulting child has any choice is just the hard
> fact of nature, but imposing further unilateral decisions on someone's
> genetic fate based on your perceptions of "cool" is against the basic
> outlines of bioethics; informed consent and beneficence.
>

But simply put, people choosing to mate, choosing to smoke and drink
while pregnant still happens. Weird experimental drugs that in the
past lead to child birth deformities were intended to harm the
children, it just turned out that way, then the drugs were banned for
that use (can't remember the drug name now).

> When you act in the direct, objective interests of the child it's
> acceptable, although that requires two prerequisites:
> A) The technology must be ready, or you are taking a risk with someone
> else's entire life and genetic fate. That rules out
> germ-line/embryonic genetic therapies for the next decade at least.
> B) You must have someone objective and disconnected to sanity check
> your idea of "beneficent", *especially* if discussing your own
> offspring, for whom you will certainly have no objectivity.

Sure, and this measure will surely differ among groups. What are my options?

>
> You'll be thinking "a child, much less an unborn one, can't give
> informed consent, so it falls to the parent". Yes, that's true, so the
> parent must give informed consent. But you have to accept that, as a
> parent, your ability to be "informed" when you give your consent is
> undermined by your lack of objectivity; get a second, objective opinion.

I agree. I'll probably have a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth opinion.
Maybe I'd post the plans to the DIYbio group.

> It is likely that, after lots and lots of legal, ethical and moral
> wrangling, society will come to a set of legislation-backed norms that
> will effectively act as a hard "bioethics committee" by simply banning
> what's decreed to be unethical.

Again, the point of this thread was to gauge the different worldly
opinions. Maybe I'll have to go to Canada or Mexico, or Thailand or
India or China to get exactly what I want done. The fact that wars
rage says enough about differing opinions, ways of life, ethics.


The real point of this wasn't to dive into ethics at all. I'd like to
keep it to facts, I'm sure there must be countries where they might
not have any ethics board that would care, but also maybe not the
equipment/resources.


--
-Nathan

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