Originally posted by QueenofWeird
reply to post by tezzajw
This is not about genes being manipulated! Via IF several foetuses are created and then checked to see which ones are free of the breast cancer gen.
I'm going to spell this out because a lot of people seem confused. You got this exactly right.
Eggs are taken from the mother. Sperm is taken from the father. The two are combined to produce embryos. The embryos are allowed to mature to a
certain point (blastocyst, I think the stage is called). At that point they are screened for a particular gene (in this case BRCA-1 but theoretically
it could be anything). The ones that have the gene are discarded and one or more of the ones that don't have the gene are implanted in the mother's
uterus. From there it goes pretty much like nature planned.
So at this point there are two major ethical issues:
1) you are deliberately creating multiple embryos all of which
could become babies, knowing that you're going to throw out most of them. For
people who are pro-life, this should be morally identical to having sex with no protection because you can just have an abortion if you get knocked
up. I don't understand why there is so little outcry from anti-abortion activists about IVF. Anyone, that's issue one: the deliberate creation of
embryos in the knowledge that you'll toss them out.
2) you are choosing which baby will get to have a life based on one particular trait. In particular, you are deciding that any female babies you
conceive that are likely to develop breast cancer at some point
would be better off not being born. How many breast cancer survivors would
agree to that one?
I don't understand the leap to designer babies or talk about creating perfect people.
"Creating perfect people" is probably way beyond us for quite a while. Just think about what the vet said on the last page of this thread in terms
of how many detrimental traits have been introduced and encouraged by manipulation of the gene pool of domesticated animals through selective
breeding. But designer babies? That's pretty realistic.
You may not be tinkering with the genes directly, but you are deciding which ones to allow and which to prevent. The most blatant possible use is in
choosing a baby's sex. Want a little boy? Just make a handful of embryos and we can toss the girls in the medical waste bin. It's not the same as
dictating height, weight, and hair color, but it is a baby-to-order.
What I can understand though is that some people might feel that women with that cancer gen should adopt instead of having own babies. Then
again people who feel that way must only have sex to conceive otherwise it would be throwing away perfectly good semen.
There are probably people who feel that way, and again I'm troubled. Do breast cancer survivors really feel that they would be better off not having
been born? Do their parents wish they had had a different kid instead?
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Aside from the ethical implications of choosing one embryo over others, what about the repercussions medically and economically?
We know a lot at this point about which genes are associated with certain conditions. But we're still pretty darn ignorant about a lot of how genes
get expressed. It's only been a few years since they were calling most of our DNA "junk DNA" in the belief that it didn't have much point to it.
Now it seems like it has a vital role in gene expression.
Think again about the dog breeds the vet talked about. Did people breed certain types of dogs to have hip dysplasia? No, of course not. They bred them
for other traits, and the hip dysplasia hitched a ride. What if there is another gene that hitches a ride with BRCA-1 but is beneficial? Or not a gene
but a segment of "junk DNA"?
I'm sure the scientists have checked out these possibilities as best they can – if I thought of it, the geneticists certainly did
But there
can always be unforeseen consequences.
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And economically. At least here in the US we rely on insurance companies (filtered via employers) and pharmaceutics companies to control our financial
access to health care.
I read a thread recently on a court ruling that employers can refuse to hire smokers because of the increased health expense incurred. Do we really
want them to have a say in how we have babies? If I know that a genetic condition that is curable but will require expensive treatment runs in my
family, am I okay with my employer telling me that they won't cover a pregnancy and child health care unless I make sure that the baby won't have
that gene by doing IVF and screening for it?
Yuck.
