Re: [DIYbio] Re: Privately funded designer babies

On Fri, Feb 15, 2019, 1:41 AM <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me wrote:

Volume is a poor proxy for quality, though. Not to disparage list old-timers like you or Bryan of course, but if someone posts less or arrived more recently, it really has no bearing on the validity of an ethical argument or a well-sourced/well-reasoned scientific argument.

Checking the archives, they've posted 6 times since 2009, and the quality seems high, but statistics requires high sample numbers to have well backed-up p-values. My point was, in this forum, we have a small sample size to draw on.

This then brings another fulcrum into play, which is, I think, what Quetzal was getting at. It's well-trodden turf in ethics that if you interfere in someone's life or health without consent, then there is a distinction to be made between "medical" or "remedial" interventions, and everything else. So, when you are called to account for why you made a designer baby with double-muscling, and that baby ends up having severe issues giving birth naturally to her own children.. the question is, did you do this for the child's own good (medically/remedially) or for reasons more frivolous?

But this is no different than with traditional selective breeding that everyone already practices and is legal and not talked about negatively in politics or religious/ethics circles... I mean, I could procreate with some quite diseased person and no one is waving a finger (publically anyway). Why is editing an embryo (and in fact the prosposal under discussion is not that, it's gamete editing) with good intentions but potential negative effect worse than intentionally mating with known less-fit people?

And this, then, raises an even greater, more intractable question of whether you can even say with any seriousness that you know what's "better" and what's not. For a big span of recent history, it was considered "better" to have a penis and pale skin.

Sure, I assume hybrid vigor is going to be better for my offspring, thus I mated with someone from around the globe, but I am *only* going on past evidence (and our SNP data). I don't know for sure he won't have some weird disease that stops him from living a long healthy life.

Today, it would still be considered "better" by many to have a better-than-mean IQ, and to have more muscle mass, and to be neurotypical, and to see into infrared and ultraviolet..
Some parents will want their kids to be immune to alcohol, cannabis, cocaine. Some will want their kids to have no sex drive, to reduce risk of sin. Some will want their kids to be cis-heterosexual, and will happily buy into someone's scam to make it happen even in the absence of a scientific basis. Some will want their kids to have animalistic features because uwu furry babies.

I don't think anyone here is recommending or supporting non-scientific procedures. At least furry kids can always go to a barber or get electrolysis. Scams of any sort are already supposed to be protected against by the powers that be, like the FDA. Scams != Ethical quandries.

None of these are medically or remedially justifiable things. "Designer Babies" invites people to make these life altering decisions for other people.

Again, people already do that all the time when they choose mates with less-fit characteristics... Or choose to perform (legal) genital mutilation, or other legal unrecoverable mutilation like pierced ears. Not to mention all the psychological trauma or simply misguided lifestyle training.

That's why this debate is not new. It started with the Eugenics craze, reignited with PGD, and with gene editing it's appearing again. But the technology improving doesn't actually change the underlying ethical quandary, which is that outside of limited cases (where a harm or loss or failure to thrive can be identified), you and I have no right to decide another person's fate without their consent.

We already did that when we engaged in o

procreation... Maybe you never were depressed as a child and screamed in pain "why did you even have me???" "Why didn't you just abort me???" But I sure have.

So bring on your perfect gene editing that doesn't ever lead to unintended consequences

Having kids the good old fashioned way also has tons of unintended consequences... This is a boring rebuttal.

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