Posted on 08/16/2012 12:22:09 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
These people aren’t like most of us.
There is, I once read, an identifiable section of the brain in which the conscience operates. The story was told of a workman who had an accident in which a piece of steel penetrated his brain. He survived, but was basically a psychopath afterward.OTOH there is the concept of brain plasticity:
According to that (weighty but very interesting) tome, there is an identifiable area of the brain which stores spacial memory. And if a brain scan is made of a man before and after studying for the examination one must pass to become a London cabbie, it will be seen that that portion of the brain actually physically grows with the application of the “mental force” of concentrated study.
- The Mind and the Brain:
- Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force
by Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon BegleyThe book even asserts that, in a young child at least, a whole hemisphere of the brain can adapt to the absence, through necessary surgery, of the other half - taking over functions that conventional understanding would imply would be permanently lost to that child. Indeed, adults who have lost functionality due to stroke can, with effort, regain that functionality. The lesson, clearly, is that discipline is everything. So that the case for genetically engineering ethics is not nearly as compelling as it could, to some, appear.
This professor is impressively ignorant of genetics.
I can imagine a young child saying that we should make babies that have wings so they can fly like birds all the way to Heaven or the Moon if they want to.
On a more serious note, though the dictionary does not make such an easy distinction, Americans imagine that “morality” is the unchanging dictates of Heaven, whereas “ethics” is abiding the relative laws “of and by” man.
That is, a person who is moral would have been moral 100 years ago, despite all the other changes in the world. But a person who is ethical only obeys the laws as written since they were last changed.
This being said, if you were theoretically able to make an “ethical” baby, the child would be an automaton to the whims of government. They would have no sense of judgment, nor could they deal with ideas like “jury nullification” of unjust laws.
On a more practical note, at least from the point of view of government, is breeding children to be like domestic animals, never reaching emotional maturity. Only wild animals achieve emotional maturity and cease being docile.
The same with humans. An adult human is capable and does not need much government. And if oppressed can turn savage.
In truth, we could tell as much by feeling the bumps of the kid’s skull as we can by genetic testing.
This sort of thing has been tried before. It was before any particularly direct genetic screening, but if you could prove you and your prospective mate were from good Aryan families, it would be approved...
Personality traits may well be entirely genetic.
Let’s see. Before this professor there was Charles Darwin, then there was Margaret Sanger, then Adolf Hitler. I would say this professor had a several mentors he learned from.
Great post.
When humanity finally goes under in thousands of years we will all be Conservative Republicans!
It seems like this would be obvious to anyone who’s ever been around a baby, but what do I know ... I’m not a “scientist.”
Professor is a blooming idiot!!
I know the science behind everything you can test for prenatally or even pre-conception. No one can stop Mosaicism, mutations that develop or occur even after the pregnancy gets started. No one can read it or test for it. There are no genetic tests for thins like autism, sexual dysfunction or difference (your GLBT), and most everything.
You can try your designer whatever and still come out with differences. Gd planned us well. It’s up to HIM no matter how you try. Ha ha ha.
Bringing back the old Spartan rules of checking each baby to see if they meet the standards? Those that don’t are left out to die of exposure.
Ever been around a set of identical twins?
Yes, a number of them. One thing I’ve noticed is one is brighter than the other ~ but that’s readily explained by factors other than personality traits.
You can do all the genetic engineering you want, but I believe that a person’s character and ethics is determined by the spirit within that person.
There ws never a shortage of helots.
Dystopia, Datopia ping. Thanks Cincinatus’ Wife.
In the movie “Gattaca”, the genetic enhancements were a personal choice. Parents who had natural children were seen as irresponsible, but it wasn’t illegal.
You could easily end up with “you didn’t engineer your child, it is sterilized and taken away”. Or, the cheaper version, mandatory genetic tests and forced abortions of children who don’t pass the test.
“makes them grow up into “ethically better children”.”
Oh, goody, the government already ‘educates’ them, feeds and houses them, pretty soon parents won’t have to do anything! I know people who would like this idea. I’m ashamed to admit it, but some in my own family. You could put a ‘genetically engineered’ Saint with them and you’d still wind up with an ethically challenged useful idiot.
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