That's probably true, at least for the immediate future. Of course, in 50 or 100 years, our knowlege may increase to the point where the risk of side effects is minimal. In any case, the lack of knowlege is a practical concern, not a moral one. I can understand why a doctor or the FDA might advise against genetic engineering. I would like to know why the Pope is condemning it.
Another issue is that it reduces the child to a commodity to be bought or sold based on desirability. It cheapens life. *Oh, you're not prefect. We don't want you.* Then what do you do with this imperfect child? Destroy the embryos because they didn't meet our qualifications for a *perfect* child? Killing children like squashing fruit flies is not the answer.
Destroying children, whether perfect or not, is immoral. No confusion on that one for me. That's why I specified in my hypothetical example that the genetic engineering used would not involve the destruction of embryos.
To oppose genetic engineering because of how it is done is one thing; to oppose it because of what it does is something different.
I know a man who was born handicapped and his parents were told to institutionalize him because he would never amount to anything. The man is a genius even with physical handicaps.
Of course. I'm not suggesting that the handicapped don't have value or that they can't lead meaningful lives. But suppose that man's parents had been offered a procedure to correct the his handicap as a small child. Would it have been wrong for them to have cured him of his handicap as a small child? What if they had cured him when he was just a tiny embryo?
And when you mess with genes, who says it only affects the physical?
The physical as opposed to what else? The mental? The spiritual?
What else? Man is all of those. Science has no idea what they are and what controls them.