Genetically engineering 'ethical' babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor

From the L ondon Telegraph
Via, BlacklistedNews.com

Genetically screening our offspring to make them better people is just 'responsible parenting', claims an eminent Oxford academic.Professor Julian Savulescu said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a "moral obligation" as it makes them grow up into "ethically better children".The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to "harm themselves and others".The academic, who is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader's Digest.He explained that we are now in the middle of a genetic revolution and that although screening, for all but a few conditions, remained illegal it should be welcomed.

Um... Ok. I fully disagree with this! Responsible parenting? IMO, responsible parenting is NOT modifying your childrens personality before they are born! This is just sick to me! Designer babies... And this 'professor' has the audacity to say its responsible?! Wtf!

He said that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality – with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics.By screening in and screening out certain genes in the embryos, it should be possible to influence how a child turns out.In the end, he said that "rational design" would help lead to a better, more intelligent and less violent society in the future."Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?" wrote Prof Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor in practical ethics."So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice."To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality."Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children.

A 'moral obligation'!?! Really dude?! First, i have never read anywhere that you could stop alcoholism by modifying genes, that is an environmental thing.. Secondly, this guy is promoting eugenics and in readers digest too! Unbelievable!!
Is it moral to screw with nature just so you can have a designer baby?! Not to mention, he is promoting doing illegal screening of children to make them 'better'
Ugh!

Incidentally, there is a poll on the telegraph website.. When i saw this story it was about 80% opposed to this crap, so thats a positive at least!

Thoughts?!

I saw the movie... I really liked it. Pretty interesting world to imagine.



I think this Professor saw the same movie....entirely TOO many times. He almost describes the process and reality of genetic screening and correction of children in that plot to the last detail.

In a world where almost every good deed brings 2 unforeseen consequences..I think we're a few centuries away from where anyone ought to be playing God with genetics within Humans. Either changing it or screening based upon it. What could go wrong here? Everything.

I'm all for that small step in the direction of post/trans/meta-human development that starts with embryonic customization.

Eventually, hopefully, hopefully within our lifetimes, such engineering can go beyond embryonic and develop into tailoring people at will, with custom manufactured viral packages, or nano-tech.

Whatever the case I look forward to a better world with better, more capable, less disappointing people in it.

Originally posted by Druscilla

I'm all for that small step....nano-tech.

Whatever the case I look forward to a better world with better, more capable, less disappointing people in it.

Sarcasm aside, you do understand you are wishing for a world you wouldn't fit in..?


BTW - that avatar fits you better...

Originally posted by facelift

Originally posted by Druscilla

I'm all for that small step....nano-tech.

Whatever the case I look forward to a better world with better, more capable, less disappointing people in it.

Sarcasm aside, you do understand you are wishing for a world you wouldn't fit in..?

I disagree.

Given the ability to self modify; to physically adapt, as well as mentally/cognitively up to the point of even having engineered/printable replacement bodies, the matter regarding 'fitting in' would likely not be that large a consideration given the variability of human imagination (and the theoretical expansion of such with modification) where preferences on phenotype expression may very well go the way of fashion with some expressing what today may be considered outlandishly strange or even frightening and freakish, so, no, 'fitting in' would not likely be a problem.

There may very well occur sociological elements and belief systems based on extremes of species purity, and species modification at both ends of the spectrum, as well as systems in between, but, all of such is likely quite very far distant in the future.

Still, methinks it'd be fun to print out a human sized velociraptor body for a day to run around with claws clicking, and/or any other variations of casual, practical, professional, aesthetic, athletic, environmental variability that such post-human possibilities could offer.

Originally posted by Druscilla

I'm all for that small step in the direction of post/trans/meta-human development that starts with embryonic customization.

Eventually, hopefully, hopefully within our lifetimes, such engineering can go beyond embryonic and develop into tailoring people at will, with custom manufactured viral packages, or nano-tech.

Whatever the case I look forward to a better world with better, more capable, less disappointing people in it.

I'm with you 100%. The most common argument (aside from "ya'll can't play God") is the whole "intervening with evolution" argument. I think that argument is bunk. Much of human evolution has stemmed from discoveries (fire) and inventions (shoes and spectacles). If our science has reached a point to where we can improve ourselves genetically, then it would only be natural to do it. It's a part of evolution.

Originally posted by Druscilla

I'm all for that small step in the direction of post/trans/meta-human development that starts with embryonic customization.

Eventually, hopefully, hopefully within our lifetimes, such engineering can go beyond embryonic and develop into tailoring people at will, with custom manufactured viral packages, or nano-tech.

Whatever the case I look forward to a better world with better, more capable, less disappointing people in it.

I dunno.

I'm all for physical genetic designer babies. You know - - inherited genetic defects - etc.

But "moral"? Who determines what is Moral?

reply to post by Druscilla

Originally posted by Druscilla

I'm all for that small step in the direction of post/trans/meta-human development that starts with embryonic customization.

Eventually, hopefully, hopefully within our lifetimes, such engineering can go beyond embryonic and develop into tailoring people at will, with custom manufactured viral packages, or nano-tech.

Whatever the case I look forward to a better world with better, more capable, less disappointing people in it.

It's posts like this that make me so happy that I have probably less than 20 years left to live. I don't want to live in YOUR world.

Originally posted by Annee

I dunno.

I'm all for physical genetic designer babies. You know - - inherited genetic defects - etc.

But "moral"? Who determines what is Moral?

I agree. There's the rub.
There will be those that shout the ever predictable "playing god", those in between or on the fence, and still others that are more than eager for post-human existence to get underway.

Who gets say so on what transpires?

As technologies open up, there will likely develop international refuge states where certain processes are allowed, like a medical Amsterdam.

Originally posted by Druscilla

Originally posted by Annee

I dunno.

I'm all for physical genetic designer babies. You know - - inherited genetic defects - etc.

But "moral"? Who determines what is Moral?

I agree. There's the rub.
There will be those that shout the ever predictable "playing god", those in between or on the fence, and still others that are more than eager for post-human existence to get underway.

Who gets say so on what transpires?

As technologies open up, there will likely develop international refuge states where certain processes are allowed, like a medical Amsterdam.

I'm atheist - - and 100% for science progression. The fight over stem cells is ludicrous.

However - - - no one can forget Josef Mengele.

Originally posted by darkelf
reply to post by Druscilla

 

Originally posted by Druscilla

I'm all for that small step in the direction of post/trans/meta-human development that starts with embryonic customization.

Eventually, hopefully, hopefully within our lifetimes, such engineering can go beyond embryonic and develop into tailoring people at will, with custom manufactured viral packages, or nano-tech.

Whatever the case I look forward to a better world with better, more capable, less disappointing people in it.

It's posts like this that make me so happy that I have probably less than 20 years left to live. I don't want to live in YOUR world.

So, what you're saying is that you're happy and quite content with a world where people are forced to live in mutated, broken, malformed bodies they're born with, as well as those that need suffer through disabilities caused by accident, trauma, or any other cause?

Nice.

If we can engineer our own bodies, even replacement bodies, no one would ever need be mentally/physically handicapped through birth, disease, or accident ever again.

reply to post by Druscilla


As technologies open up, there will likely develop international refuge states where certain processes are allowed, like a medical Amsterdam.


Processes are already in place to allow those that search diligently to attain certain medical procedures that will benefit the recipient...


For $20k you can get your embryonic stem cell shot, and in of all places TJ, Mexico...and it's not some B rate operation. Check into it...if you don't like the price or location, you may not want it enough, as ego affects our own rationale.

So, what you're saying is that you're happy and quite content with a world where people are forced to live the in mutated, broken, malformed bodies they're born with, as well as those that need suffer through disabilities caused by accident, trauma, or any other cause?


So, what have you done..? You seem to be proselytizing, yet can you validate your own stance..?


ALCOR patient A-2559 right here...and that's only the beginning.


For Centuries...

Originally posted by facelift

ALCOR patient A-2559 right here...and that's only the beginning.

For Centuries...

Good for you. Being a corpsecicle isn't my idea of life extension, but, we all have our desires limited by what time we feel we have left to achieve them.
Perhaps, should I reach such an age where my mortality becomes a ticking concern, I may invest in becoming a corpsecicle.
For now, however, I'm hedging on proven modifications and developmental advancements into the future.
The technology is still in its infancy, and given a few decades, we may very well see some amazing things.

Perhaps, centuries to come, we can debate again.

Originally posted by Druscilla

Perhaps, should I reach such an age where my mortality becomes a ticking concern, I may invest in becoming a corpsecicle.

Ewwwwwwwwwwww!

I did my thing - raised my kids - - - I'm not in any profession that's going to advance humanity - physical or otherwise.

I would just like to go with minimal pain.

My family knows - - don't hold on to anything. I don't want any physical energy holding me to this plane.

No grave - no ashes - no funeral.

A send off party? Definitely!

reply to post by Annee


I get the "ewww" factor. Getting frozen is indeed "ewwww".
Still, being nice, I gave the concession that upon reaching whatever withered advancement of age that could pose such consideration, such consideration might be had.

I'm not the one that is

ALCOR patient A-2559

I'm currently NOT in line to get frozen with possible, maybe, could-be, fingers crossed hopes of getting revived.

I am, however, waiting in the wings, as well as contributing financially through stock options, for other avenues.

Right now, I'm still vigorously healthy, active, and energetic looking forward to many many decades of life should no accidents or any other cause interrupt my run.

Originally posted by Druscilla

I'm not the one that is

NO - - I know that wasn't you.

Right now, I'm still vigorously healthy, active, and energetic looking forward to many many decades of life should no accidents or any other cause interrupt my run.

That's great - - and as it should be.

I'm 65. Did a lot of living. Raised my kids and grandkids. Now I'm just coasting along. I have no need to live forever.

reply to post by Nspekta


here we go again,

the eugenecists should be made to take their own medicine
and flushed from the gene pool.

those who wish to live and be treated as animal breeding stock
or machines,
can simply drop all claims at being human and of participating
any further in the Human Adventure.

to anee: stem cell research for repair or organ replacement
is superior to cannibal organ transplantation
however uising it for modifying genes should be grounds for the Anathema

also evolution, human or otherwise has not ended

reply to post by Nspekta


this is the same eugenics movement that had colored and poor folk in the us forcibly sterilized and financed the best known practitioners of eugenics of the 20th century, the nazis [screw godwin]
for some insight into the conspiracy by the corporate science and scientists who've repackaged this filth with dialectic materialism and tricked it out in a new dress
its nowadays calling itself The Neuroscientific View of Life
which along with Genetic Pre-determinism may very well be the pseudo-philosophical basis for the major acts of mass murder and genocide to be perpetrated during the 21st century:
Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died Tom Wolfe
From neuroscience to Nietzsche. A sobering look at how man may perceive himself in the future, particularly as ideas about genetic predeterminism takes the place of dying Darwinism. . www.orthodoxytoday.org...

The neuroscientific view of life

This, the neuroscientific view of life, has become the strategic high ground in the academic world, and the battle for it has already spread well beyond the scientific disciplines and, for that matter, out into the general public. Both liberals and conservatives without a scientific bone in their bodies are busy trying to seize the terrain. The gay rights movement, for example, has fastened onto a study published in July of 1993 by the highly respected Dean Hamer of the National Institutes of Health, announcing the discovery of "the gay gene." Obviously, if homosexuality is a genetically determined trait, like left–handedness or hazel eyes, then laws and sanctions against it are attempts to legislate against Nature. Conservatives, meantime, have fastened upon studies indicating that men's and women's brains are wired so differently, thanks to the long haul of evolution, that feminist attempts to open up traditionally male roles to women are the same thing: a doomed violation of Nature.

Wilson himself has wound up in deep water on this score; or cold water, if one need edit. In his personal life Wilson is a conventional liberal, PC, as the saying goes—he is, after all, a member of the Harvard faculty—concerned about environmental issues and all the usual things. But he has said that "forcing similar role identities" on both men and women "flies in the face of thousands of years in which mammals demonstrated a strong tendency for sexual division of labor. Since this division of labor is persistent from hunter–gatherer through agricultural and industrial societies, it suggests a genetic origin. We do not know when this trait evolved in human evolution or how resistant it is to the continuing and justified pressures for human rights."

"Resistant" was Darwin II, the neuroscientist, speaking. "Justified" was the PC Harvard liberal. He was not PC or liberal enough. Feminist protesters invaded a conference where Wilson was appearing, dumped a pitcher of ice water, cubes and all, over his head, and began chanting, "You're all wet! You're all wet!" The most prominent feminist in America, Gloria Steinem, went on television and, in an interview with John Stossel of ABC, insisted that studies of genetic differences between male and female nervous systems should cease forthwith.

But that turned out to be mild stuff in the current political panic over neuroscience. In February of 1992, Frederick K. Goodwin, a renowned psychiatrist, head of the federal Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, and a certified yokel in the field of public relations, made the mistake of describing, at a public meeting in Washington, the National Institute of Mental Health's ten–year–old Violence Initiative. This was an experimental program whose hypothesis was that, as among monkeys in the jungle—Goodwin was noted for his monkey studies—much of the criminal mayhem in the United States was caused by a relatively few young males who were genetically predisposed to it; who were hardwired for violent crime, in short. Out in the jungle, among mankind's closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees, it seemed that a handful of genetically twisted young males were the ones who committed practically all of the wanton murders of other males and the physical abuse of females. What if the same were true among human beings? What if, in any given community, it turned out to be a handful of young males with toxic DNA who were pushing statistics for violent crime up to such high levels? The Violence Initiative envisioned identifying these individuals in childhood, somehow, some way, someday, and treating them therapeutically with drugs. The notion that crime–ridden urban America was a "jungle," said Goodwin, was perhaps more than just a tired old metaphor.

That did it. That may have been the stupidest single word uttered by an American public official in the year 1992. The outcry was immediate. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representative John Dingell of Michigan (who, it became obvious later, suffered from hydrophobia when it came to science projects) not only condemned Goodwin's remarks as racist but also delivered their scientific verdict: Research among primates "is a preposterous basis" for analyzing anything as complex as "the crime and violence that plagues our country today." (This came as surprising news to NASA scientists who had first trained and sent a chimpanzee called Ham up on top of a Redstone rocket into suborbital space flight and then trained and sent another one, called Enos, which is Greek for "man," up on an Atlas rocket and around the earth in orbital space flight and had thereby accurately and completely predicted the physical, psychological, and task–motor responses of the human astronauts, Alan Shepard and John Glenn, who repeated the chimpanzees' flights and tasks months later.) The Violence Initiative was compared to Nazi eugenic proposals for the extermination of undesirables. Dingell's Michigan colleague, Representative John Conyers, then chairman of the Government Operations Committee and senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, demanded Goodwin's resignation—and got it two days later, whereupon the government, with the Department of Health and Human Services now doing the talking, denied that the Violence Initiative had ever existed. It disappeared down the memory hole, to use Orwell's term.


***

Anyone with a child in school knows the signs all too well. I have children in school, and I am intrigued by the faith parents now invest—the craze began about 1990—in psychologists who diagnose their children as suffering from a defect known as attention deficit disorder, or ADD. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether this "disorder" is an actual, physical, neurological condition or not, but neither does anybody else in this early stage of neuroscience. The symptoms of this supposed malady are always the same. The child, or, rather, the boy—forty–nine out of fifty cases are boys—fidgets around in school, slides off his chair, doesn't pay attention, distracts his classmates during class, and performs poorly. In an earlier era he would have been pressured to pay attention, work harder, show some self–discipline. To parents caught up in the new intellectual climate of the 1990s, that approach seems cruel, because my little boy's problem is...he's wired wrong! The poor little tyke —the fix has been in since birth! Invariably the parents complain, "All he wants to do is sit in front of the television set and watch cartoons and play Sega Genesis." For how long? "How long? For hours at a time." Hours at a time; as even any young neuroscientist will tell you, that boy may have a problem, but it is not an attention deficit.

Nevertheless, all across America we have the spectacle of an entire generation of little boys, by the tens of thousands, being dosed up on ADD's magic bullet of choice, Ritalin, the CIBA–Geneva Corporation's brand name for the stimulant methylphenidate. I first encountered Ritalin in 1966 when I was in San Francisco doing research for a book on the psychedelic or hippie movement. A certain species of the genus hippie was known as the Speed Freak, and a certain strain of Speed Freak was known as the Ritalin Head. The Ritalin Heads loved Ritalin. You'd see them in the throes of absolute Ritalin raptures...Not a wiggle, not a peep...They would sit engrossed in anything at all...a manhole cover, their own palm wrinkles...indefinitely...through shoulda–been mealtime after mealtime...through raging insomnias...Pure methyl–phenidate nirvana...From 1990 to 1995, CIBA–Geneva's sales of Ritalin rose 600 percent; and not because of the appetites of subsets of the species Speed Freak in San Francisco, either. It was because an entire generation of American boys, from the best private schools of the Northeast to the worst sludge–trap public schools of Los Angeles and San Diego, was now strung out on methylphenidate, diligently doled out to them every day by their connection, the school nurse. America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! It never lets you down!
***
Thereupon, in the year 2006 or 2026, some new Nietzsche will step forward to announce: "The self is dead"—except that being prone to the poetic, like Nietzsche I, he will probably say: "The soul is dead." He will say that he is merely bringing the news, the news of the greatest event of the millennium: "The soul, that last refuge of values, is dead, because educated people no longer believe it exists." Unless the assurances of the Wilsons and the Dennetts and the Dawkinses also start rippling out, the lurid carnival that will ensue may make the phrase "the total eclipse of all values" seem tame.
The two most fascinating riddles of the 21st century

If I were a college student today, I don't think I could resist going into neuroscience. Here we have the two most fascinating riddles of the twenty–first century: the riddle of the human mind and the riddle of what happens to the human mind when it comes to know itself absolutely. In any case, we live in an age in which it is impossible and pointless to avert your eyes from the truth.

Ironically, said Nietzsche, this unflinching eye for truth, this zest for skepticism, is the legacy of Christianity (for complicated reasons that needn't detain us here). Then he added one final and perhaps ultimate piece of irony in a fragmentary passage in a notebook shortly before he lost his mind (to the late–nineteenth–century's great venereal scourge, syphilis). He predicted that eventually modern science would turn its juggernaut of skepticism upon itself, question the validity of its own foundations, tear them apart, and self–destruct.

Originally posted by DerepentLEstranger

those who wish to live and be treated as animal breeding stock

Well - - ya know what - - lower form mammal animals seem to be a lot smarter then human animals when it comes to reproduction.

They don't breed randomly. And the females breed with the top proven male.

Originally posted by Annee

Originally posted by DerepentLEstranger

those who wish to live and be treated as animal breeding stock

Well - - ya know what - - lower form mammal animals seem to be a lot smarter then human animals when it comes to reproduction.

They don't breed randomly. And the females breed with the top proven male.

not sure at the mo' if it was Philip Wylie in his "The Magic Animal"
or ayn rand's The Fountainhead

[s]he wrote something to the effect that we would be horrified if we saw a bird break it's young's wings

and then push it out of the nest, yet human society does exactly that.

this is just more of the same being sold, using false advertising, as "improvement"

do take to the time to read the article [it is a bit long, but i doubt you've ADD ] i linked to
in my previous post, it's very informative concerning those who would turn humanity into robots

i kid you not ma'am, there will be major wars fought within the next 20 years
over the matter.