Eventual outcome would be at the bottom of the slippery slope of, - Who decides what your off-spring will be and if and how many you can have? -
Why don’t we just breed robots, programmed for “correct” behavior?
Wait a minute I know this name... oh right he is the editor of the ethics journal that published the article by two ethicists who proposed that infanticide was just a form of late abortion.
“So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice.”
AND your Secretary of Health and Human Services will be happy to make that ‘choice’ for you.
“Oh, I’m sorry sweetheart, you are unable to conceive.”
“Dr. Mengele, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine ... Dr. Mengele, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine ... to the operating room”
I could imgine that traits of independence, personal responsibility, and work eithics will be the first traits to be screened out.
Genetically screening offspring to create an army for the elite.
So we will have a society of intelligent wusses. B.S. We will always need warriors but I’m sure that warriors can be created too. Have you ever read Brave New World?
Whose ethics?
This is just another take on the 'salvation by works' angle.
This is absurd. A moral code is a set of Chosen values. It is a product of cognition. Babies do not have the kinds of cognitive skills to do this. There is no instinctive moral code. Now if you really want to improve the Human race then you need to prevent stupid people from breeding. Also liberals but I repeat myself.
Now, a thought. There's currently a theory on the table that the mutation(s) that causes CF (cystic fibrosis) is the reason any human beings survive the recurring visits of what we know as The Black Plague.
It's like sickle cell disease. You need one factor only to have immunity to the infection being protected against. If you have two factors you suffer from the pain of sickle cell. If you have no factors, you just die from malaria.
In this case, if you have one copy of the factor you are immune from black plague. Alas, if you have two you may die quite early due to CF. If you have no factors, if black plague comes around you just die.
So, it may be possible through careful genetic counseling to create a race of humans who do not have the CF factor. No one would have CF anymore.
Then when the Black Plague visits again, and the antibiotics fail, everyone will simply die.
Like to note that what happens with CF, since those without the factor can survive to breed ~ you end up with a population without CF factor. Over time they come to dominate and might grow to be as much as 90% of your population. Other places maybe they're only 50%, and in other places 10%.
This would explain why the death rates reported in the Medieval period were all over the place. In some places everybody died. In other places hardly anyone died.
So, what's the ethical value in stripping the CF gene from humanity? It kills and it saves both!
Maybe we should be putting chastity belts on everyone and screening them before they are allowed to contribute genetic material to a conception?
“We’re marching to a faster pace.....look out, here comes the master race!”
I hope they find a “gay gene” because then when somebody asks me if they should genetically engineer children, I will say, sure! we can engineer them now to be raging Heterosexuals!
I wonder how many people on the side of Homosexuality would be all in an uproar over the “eventual extinction” of gay people via genetic engineering?
“The Boys from Brazil” (1978), starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and James Mason.
Reminds me of “A Brave New World.” I guess the ethicist thinks he’s an Alpha and he should get to decide who becomes Betas, Gammas, etc.
There, I fixed it.
He’s advocating harm to unborn babies. He’s unethical. He needs to be screened out. It’s a moral obligation to screen him out.