First UK "Designer Baby"

[Dak]

aww... i was quite enjoying the fusion between ectymology, gramma, genetics and ethics. I was going to try to nudge the conversation towards a discussion of the ethics of using semi-colons. or something.

 

getting slightly back on topic -- if, naturally, an allele's spread throughout a population would be suppressed by it causing the owner's death, and modern medicine over-comes this suppression by allowing the owner of the allele to survive, and then modern medicine artificially suppresses the spread of the allele, are we actually 'tinkering' with nature? i.e. do the two effects cancel each other out?

 

and i dont use the shift key either...

 

i'm with you there. i actually think we should get rid of the capitol letters: they dont really do anything, and we could trim the english alphabet down by 50%, making it easyer to learn and more compact.

[Dr. Dalek]

aww... i was quite enjoying the fusion between ectymology' date=' gramma, genetics and ethics. I was going to try to nudge the conversation towards a discussion of the ethics of using semi-colons. or something.

 

getting slightly back on topic -- if, naturally, an allele's spread throughout a population would be suppressed by it causing the owner's death, and modern medicine over-comes this suppression by allowing the owner of the allele to survive, and then modern medicine artificially suppresses the spread of the allele, are we actually 'tinkering' with nature? [/quote']

 

Well, it wouldn't be tinkering with nature to get rid of detrimental alleles through medical science if they would have been destroyed in the wild. This is because medical science has allowed people with detrimental alleles to survive and breed where nature would have done otherwise.

 

It would be more efficient to eliminate case,

[Martin]

BTW looks like a graduation shot Callipygous CONGRATULATIONS!

 

your location says NC----the two campuses there that I'm a bit familiar with are Duke and Chapel Hill (mostly with Chapel Hill which was the town where my parents retired to, beautiful campus and town) used to picnic in the parks around there and take the kid to the university Planetarium.

 

so if that is you in the purple mortarboard graduating from somewhere then I hope it is from UNC

 

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the ethics of reproduction are probably going to be settled (when and where the questions come up) more with the age group that is having the babies rather than the older age group that already had theirs---and is more like kibbitzers now

 

and who knows what those will think of as ethical considerations??? not necessarily what we tell them they ought to be thinking about.

 

the thought just occurred to me that what with globalization and competition a young couple might get the notion that they had an obligation to the community to have a kid who is a quick learner and hard worker, else how can you avoid getting more in debt to the chinese:-) and losing more and more of the industrial base??? Yikes they might start thinking, well, should we, as patriotic Americans, maybe test and do selection?

[Callipygous]

getting slightly back on topic -- if, naturally, an allele's spread throughout a population would be suppressed by it causing the owner's death, and modern medicine over-comes this suppression by allowing the owner of the allele to survive, and then modern medicine artificially suppresses the spread of the allele, are we actually 'tinkering' with nature? i.e. do the two effects cancel each other out?

 

 

my personal argument would be that humans are incapable of tampering with nature, since we are a part of nature. we have this issue where we feel the need to be special. it seems to have manifested in a belief that we are somehow above and seperate from the rest of nature because we have more intelligence. i disagree with that. were animals, just like the birds out there building their nests. we just learned to pick, and combine our building materials a little better than they did.

 

but aside from that whole argument...

if allowing an individual with a negative allele to survive is tampering with nature, then i would say that artificially suppressing that allele would counteract it, becuase the end result is still that the allele is no longer passed on.

[Dak]

"it is impossible for anything within nature to be unnatural"

 

I agree. But, whilst i dont really have an ethical problem with tinkering with nature, i tend to think we should avoid it for 'ooh, what does this do *boom* oh, probably shouldnt have done that" reasons.

 

i.e. untill we understand certain things to a much greater degree than we currently do, certain 'tinkerings' should be avoided including, arguably, eugenics (with the possible exeption of cases like this one).

[Callipygous]

i.e. untill we understand certain things to a much greater degree than we currently do, certain 'tinkerings' should be avoided including, arguably, eugenics (with the possible exeption of cases like this one)[/b'].

 

 

which has been my main point this whole time. i think there are some things we shouldnt mess with yet, but when you can identify an embryo that is going to have cancer, and instead choose a different one, thats a pretty clearcut choice.

[Dr. Dalek]

which has been my main point this whole time. i think there are some things we shouldnt mess with yet, but when you can identify an embryo that is going to have cancer, and instead choose a different one, thats a pretty clearcut choice.

 

So "what if" scenarios are irrelevant? We simply limit our actions until we have a greater understanding. Sounds good to me.