Whats wrong with designer babies?

[HomoSapien]

Culture has affected evolution tremendously. No longer do superior biological adaptations and mutations ensure survival, it is culture now that determines how long an individual will live. We have come to a point in science where we know how superior traits come into existence, its though mutations and genes. Since we have not evolved much since the dawn or agriculture why can’t we help future humans by altering them genetically? We can make our offspring faster, smarter and stronger than we were. Natural selection no longer weeds out the weak and we now have hugh occurances of degenerate genes in our population. We are literally in an evolutionary stand still. If our limited intelligence has gotten us this far, imagine the mysteries of the universe that could be solved if we just tweaked ourselves a bit......

[Dak]

Natural selection does still work on the population to week out 'bad genes'; it's just that we're good enough at surviving and altering our environment that lots of genes that would have been bad now aren't.

 

short-sightedness might be a good example: it's generally a 'bad gene', but, with contacts, it doesn't really matter. maybe NS doesn't operate on short-sightedness, but, then, it doesn't matter that NS doesn't operate to lower the frequency of short-sightedness, because it doesn't matter if someone's short-sighted. If we hadn't managed to make short-sightedness irrelevent, it would matter, and NS would still be operating to supress short-sightedness (because being short-sighted would be relevent, and so effect one's survivability).

 

iow, NS will tautomagically work on things that it needs to work on, and not on irrelevent things that it doesn' t need to work on, if that makes sense?

 

as for eugenics: we don't know enough about exactly how genes interact with oneanother, or the exact effects of any actions we take, to tinker with our genome imo. better leave it up to time and evolution.

[mooeypoo]

Culture has affected evolution tremendously. No longer do superior biological adaptations and mutations ensure survival, it is culture now that determines how long an individual will live. We have come to a point in science where we know how superior traits come into existence, its though mutations and genes. Since we have not evolved much since the dawn or agriculture why can’t we help future humans by altering them genetically? We can make our offspring faster, smarter and stronger than we were. Natural selection no longer weeds out the weak and we now have hugh occurances of degenerate genes in our population. We are literally in an evolutionary stand still. If our limited intelligence has gotten us this far, imagine the mysteries of the universe that could be solved if we just tweaked ourselves a bit......

 

I wouldn't say we're at an evolutionary stand still, but i guess I see what you're saying.

 

I would say that the problem is the slippery-slope argument - only our experience make it non-falacious this time (imho), because governments and societies actually DO seem to systematically regress into the "division into 'classes'" idea.

 

The movie "Gattaca" is a great example of what "might be happening" with this problem. I am by no means saying that this should stop the technology (or that it CAN.. i am not sure we can stop it anymore) but it is a good idea to have this type of things in mind so we can try and avoid such a society.

 

~moo

[cryingmale]

I think the onus for disallowing the intervention of genetic tinkering rests with those wishing to outlaw it. If you can find no overwhelming argument to support outlawing the ability to either enhance, or "fix" the genes of someones' child or indeed themselves, then in a free society surely it should not be done so.

[mooeypoo]

I think the onus for disallowing the intervention of genetic tinkering rests with those wishing to outlaw it. If you can find no overwhelming argument to support outlawing the ability to either enhance, or "fix" the genes of someones' child or indeed themselves, then in a free society surely it should not be done so.

 

What about disease prevention?

[Daecon]

What's wrong with designer babies?

 

Poor people can't afford them.

[omnimutant]

The problem with designer babies is that it's possible that at some point we all end up with the same DNA. Now thats not necessarily a bad thing, except that by doing so we might be excluding(breeding out) future dormant mutation potential that might lead to some better mutations down the road. Basically, Designer babies would be too limiting.

 

Also I think it would make the world a pretty boring place if everyone looked the same.

 

Just because we can do something does not mean we should.

[Ladeira]

I agree when it's made to prevent diseases, but nothing else (like changing eyes' color, or things like that)..

I've been waiting for a huge evolution in technologies like that and I haven't seen nothing new, and when I see, they're things which will get till people in 20xx. I mean xx is a high number... =/ So.. I think it's future. Wait and you'll see.

[pioneer]

This has been considered in the past. The way it was originally proposed is to do selective breeding. When test tube babies became a reality the debate was taking sperm from the males with the most desirable traits and breed this with brainiac super models. It sounded good in theory until one realized they may never be allowed to breed. The flip side of the coin is if we wish to shift the population to superman and superwoman you need to phase out undesirable breeding traits. It didn't go further than debate.

 

With advances in genetic manipulation, the debate is back but in way that allows everyone to breed. We breed, pull out the defects, and add a few choice extras under the hood. There is an interesting social consequence. The baby is no longer entirely yours, genetically, but it is part adopted. It has less in common with the parents in reality, but more in common with their imaginary image of the ideal child. For example, a frail set of parents breeds and adds the super athletic genes. Now the child does not have the parents needed to make use of that capability. The parents may need to farm out that obligation, to surrogates, who will act as adopted parents for the adopted genes.

 

Say you add a dash of Einstein, how does a parent know how to help that child, if they are slightly above average? When they are adding these genes in their fantasy baby, they picture the final result grown up. There is going to be far more work and cost then ever considered. You could end up with a large generation of repressed gifted children who rebel. This would be good plot for a science fiction novel.

[Sisyphus]

It occurs to me that there already exists a similar phenomenon in sexual selection. True, it's just picking from existing genes instead of willfully altering them directly, but the principle is almost the same. When picking a mate, you are already essentially picking and choosing what genes you want in your children, and those genes are not necessarily helpful to survival, only to finding a mate.

[arnoldschwartz]

Diversity is a beautiful thing and designers babies will reduce diversity. End of the day can you see anyone wanting to have a fat child on purpose if they had a choice, or a child who will have an iq.

[lucaspa]

No longer do superior biological adaptations and mutations ensure survival,

 

they never did. Talk to PhDP about the probability of a beneficial mutation being fixed. It is not 1. There is a thing called "nonselective mortality".

 

it is culture now that determines how long an individual will live.

 

And culture is part of the environment! It is part of selecting for genetic variation.

 

Since we have not evolved much since the dawn or agriculture why can’t we help future humans by altering them genetically?

 

Because you aren't nearly as smart as natural selection!

 

We can make our offspring faster, smarter and stronger than we were.

 

So? That is not necessarily "better". This shows that you don't understand evolution and natural selection. You are assuming that some traits are always "better". Not so. Whether a trait is "good" or "bad" depends on the environment. Change the environment and you change the trait from beneficial to deleterious, and vice versa. You are also forgetting that most traits are polygenic and that everything comes with a cost as well as a benefit.

 

What are the costs of increased intelligence? For one, you need a larger brain and that requires more energy. That's fine as long as you are in a situation where there is abundant food. But change the environment to one of limited food and the larger brained people starve! If you've changed everyone what you have now done is make H. sapiens exinct!

 

We are literally in an evolutionary stand still.

 

Any large population is at an evolutionary standstill. That's what "stasis" is all about!

 

If our limited intelligence has gotten us this far, imagine the mysteries of the universe that could be solved if we just tweaked ourselves a bit......

 

Yeah, but that tweaking depends on that limited intelligence. I don't want to put the future of the species in the hands of people with as limited intelligence as you've displayed.

[profescher]

There is a saying, do not walk before you can run. over many decades scientists have learned it is often better not to interfere in nature, when we have there have often been consequences we did not like and were not prepared for.

 

In addition we cannot simply become a race of super people, or hand out talents and abilities or beauty, everything comes at a cost, a trade off. for example the cheetah has evolved to be super fast, but at the cost of strength. Morals, hard work a good example and lots of love, will take our children further than genetics ever will.

[the tree]

Because you aren't nearly as smart as natural selection!

Since these are such completely different kinds of smart I'm going to say that that doesn't make any sense.

There is a saying, do not walk before you can run.

Something being an adage doesn't actually earn it any credibility.

over many decades scientists have learned it is often better not to interfere in nature, when we have there have often been consequences we did not like and were not prepared for.

Sure, global warming and super-bugs are fairly nasty, but I'd say that on the whole the reduction of famine and illness has been a good thing and I can't think of any particularly drastic consequences to the invention of irrigation systems or vaccines. Of course some people still yearn for the smallpox ridden days of yor where a oxen dragging a plough without wheels was considered cutting edge, but most of us like to eat regularly.

In addition we cannot simply become a race of super people, or hand out talents and abilities or beauty, everything comes at a cost, a trade off.

There aren't any negative effects of say, spot cream or eye surgery. So why would you be so sure that there would be negative effects of boosting our natural regenerative abilities?

for example the cheetah has evolved to be super fast, but at the cost of strength.

Cheetah's are still pretty damn strong.

Morals, hard work a good example and lots of love, will take our children further than genetics ever will.

Oh come on, that's a an obvious false dichotomy.

[iNow]

We'll likely be hearing about this designer babies thing from those who give a rats pecker about what the Vatican says or thinks (after all, the church was so spot on with Galileo and other "immoral" scientific advances these past few centuries):

 

 

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/article/552805

A Vatican bioethics document released today condemns artificial fertilisation and other techniques used by many couples and also says that human cloning, "designer babies" and embryonic stem-cell research are immoral.

 

The long awaited document from the Vatican's doctrinal body marked a big step by the Vatican into the brave new world of biotechnology, an area in which governments around the world are struggling to formulate legislation.

 

The document also condemns new drugs that block pregnancy from taking hold, such as the so-called "morning-after pill" and the drug RU-486, which blocks the action of hormones needed to keep a fertilised egg implanted in the uterus.

 

These drugs, as well as the IUD (intrauterine device), which has been in use for decades, were deemed to fall "within the sin of abortion" and are gravely immoral.

 

 

It's only a matter of time before they equate condoms with abortion.

[Psycho]

There aren't any negative effects of say, spot cream or eye surgery. So why would you be so sure that there would be negative effects of boosting our natural regenerative abilities?

Because if you or I went and preformed eye surgery the person would end up blind and that is the equivalent of anyone with their current knowledge trying to genetically "improve" the human race.

 

If anything the correct way to go about this would be to have one child with on allele, one with another until all combinations are fulfilled through multiple progeny too observe which are the best alleles, but that isn't going to happen.

 

Then of course you would have to have all the progeny in all conceivable future environments to make sure whatever occurred they could still adapt to it, as it is all great being super fast but not if when the temperature reaches above 35 degree they die of exhaustion.

[pioneer]

The DNA is an integrated system. One potential consideration is altering components for one desired affect, leading to possible side affects. Medicines have this problem all the time. It may be perfectly designed to help with condition X, but possible side affects may include a,b and c. It may not be as simple as changing one part and all others stay the same.

 

There may be certain designer classes of changes which will have few side affects. But there may other with immediate or delayed sided affects that occur later in life. This does not mean we should not try to improve the state of the art. but the first generation of experiments will have duds. Personally I would wait to they get it right.

 

Here is the analogy. The young man tries to make his car look cool by adding larger diameter tires. Now he is smoking cool. These new tires will rotate slower at any speed so his speedometer is now off. The larger radius also changes the torque between the hub and road, so the engine appears sort of bogged down. This also means higher torque during braking so his brakes wear faster. So now he needs to re calibrate the speedometer with a conversion kit, change the gearing in his transmission and maybe enhance the brakes. It started cheap enough.

 

In the case of designer babies, who pays for the side affects and the care for the duds? It may be easier for companies to go bankrupt once the first wave of side affects hits. Then the tax payer or insurance companies will then has to pay for the re-fit. We may need to make laws of accountability, first to make the cost is not passed on. What this would do is slow the pace of commercial offerings so science doesn't get too far ahead of itself. Putting new tires on is easy but the rest of the refit may get complicated.

[profescher]

Tree: Something being an adage doesn't actually earn it any credibility.

 

Well you have to admit it's really good piece of wisdom.

 

Sure, global warming and super-bugs are fairly nasty,

 

That doesn't really cover it. They are man made problems and we knew it may happen and we did it anyway, the science behind Global warming has been there for decades and we knew about drug resisstance would happen when we made antibiotics. When it comes to designer babies, we know a lot is possible and we know that if you get it wrong there can be terrible side effects. We just do not have enough knowledge about the consequeces and how to avoid them.

 

on the whole the reduction of famine and illness has been a good thing

 

Yes but we haven't actually reduced famine a great deal, especially considering we have just had a ten year economic boom and now we're headed for recession it will only get worse. And illness is effected by the super bugs you mentioned, it's likely to get worse before it gets better. There are emerging infectious diseases, HIV is increasing worldwide and so on. We can do a lot, but just because we are able or have the technology, it doesn't mean we do do it and many patients cannot have life saving treatment because hospitals cannot afford it.

 

I can't think of any particularly drastic consequences to the invention of irrigation systems or vaccines. Of course some people still yearn for the smallpox ridden days of yor where a oxen dragging a plough without wheels was considered cutting edge, but most of us like to eat regularly.

 

Not really comparable to to modifying DNA. Cloning Dolly the sheep was an incredible piece of work, but there were many unviable clones who died during pregnance, resulted in still birth and sheep born deformed and unable to survive long etc. And it is becuse we don't know what harm we could cause to people, that it is unethical.

 

There aren't any negative effects of say, spot cream or eye surgery. So why would you be so sure that there would be negative effects of boosting our natural regenerative abilities?

 

Regenerative abilities are a far cry from designer babies.

 

Cheetah's are still pretty damn strong.

 

Compared to you or I. But they still have traded some strength and endurance for thier speed and it limits the size of prey they can sucessfully catch. If you were to successfully make a super strong human, how would it affect the rest of thier body. A change in body shape. Perhaps bones will need to be denser and stronger, leading to reduced flexibility, or the extra weight may put a strain on bones not equipt to deal with the job. How might growth hormone need to be affected?

 

We don't know all these things, thats why it's not safe and not ethical.

 

And that "false dichotomy" has done me proud for ten years. I don't need designer babies, i've brought mine up to be people I'm proud of.

[housedoctor]

I think it really depends what you mean by wrong. To me if you are designing them as how you would like them maybe it could be wrong to me however I wish I was all the things I'm not so in my case I wouldn't have mind. Some probably would have. I think I would definitely want to take diseases or bad genes from my gene pool for my daughter or son. It's just something a parent does. I guess it would be considered wrong. But in that case why do we even bother to help save the problems we have now? Because we want change. We want a better life. I wish I didn't have the problems I have now. I think it largely depends. Some decisions your child will thank you for some they won't.

[mrburns2012]

Culture has affected evolution tremendously. No longer do superior biological adaptations and mutations ensure survival, it is culture now that determines how long an individual will live. We have come to a point in science where we know how superior traits come into existence, its though mutations and genes. Since we have not evolved much since the dawn or agriculture why can’t we help future humans by altering them genetically? We can make our offspring faster, smarter and stronger than we were. Natural selection no longer weeds out the weak and we now have hugh occurances of degenerate genes in our population. We are literally in an evolutionary stand still. If our limited intelligence has gotten us this far, imagine the mysteries of the universe that could be solved if we just tweaked ourselves a bit......

 

How do you plan to deal with the mess? (let's say there was a complication.) Design new human waste disposal equipments?

[Mr Skeptic]

I think the onus for disallowing the intervention of genetic tinkering rests with those wishing to outlaw it. If you can find no overwhelming argument to support outlawing the ability to either enhance, or "fix" the genes of someones' child or indeed themselves, then in a free society surely it should not be done so.

 

I mostly agree with that, but the people in favor of doing something new are generally expected to show that it is safe/a good idea as well. Still, I think that the requirement to demonstrate safety is already built into our legal system, as otherwise they may get sued to bankruptcy.

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Also I think it would make the world a pretty boring place if everyone looked the same.

 

Plus, we'd have to find other excuses to discriminate and wage wars.

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If anything the correct way to go about this would be to have one child with on allele, one with another until all combinations are fulfilled through multiple progeny too observe which are the best alleles, but that isn't going to happen.

 

No, that is the dumb way to do it. Even evolution is not that slow. You would be waiting till the end of the universe, and you still wouldn't finish.

 

Why not let some researchers add new alleles, and then let natural selection either choose them or not. Ie, we could replace some of the mutation process with intelligent intervention.

[lucaspa]

I think the onus for disallowing the intervention of genetic tinkering rests with those wishing to outlaw it.

 

I'm afraid you have just Shifted the Burden of Proof -- a fallacy. In general, people wanting to change the status quo have the burden of proof.

"In most arguments, however, it is usually the side that supports altering or rejecting the status quo--the current beliefs, practices, and information--which has most of the burden of proof. The more controversial the matter, generally speaking, the more evenly is the burden of proof shared by all sides; and the more extreme or unusual one side of an argument is, the greater its burden of proof. "

"Intentionally shifting the burden of proof, in order to avoid offering support for one's premises, is a logical fallacy. " http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/claims/truth.html#burden

 

In regards to medicine and our society, the burden is to show that a new treatment is, first and foremost, safe and second, effective.

 

Mr. Skeptic: Why not let some researchers add new alleles, and then let natural selection either choose them or not. Ie, we could replace some of the mutation process with intelligent intervention.

 

The problem with this is that we are dealing with people. Do you want your alleles (all the rest of the alleles in your children) being put at the mercy of some researcher on what he/she considers a "good" allele?

 

The problem I have with your idea of "intelligent intervention" is what I have stated before: in comparison with natural selection, we are just plain stupid. Natural selection is so much smarter than we are that it's no contest.

 

I can see replacing some alleles, such as for the changed allele in muscular dystrophy or Tay Sach's, to the normal allele in the population. But trying to make a "better" allele? Forget it. We are not smart enough to foresee the interaction of an allele with all the other genes and with all the rest of the environment to know what is a "better" allele than the predominant one in the population.

[Mr Skeptic]

The problem with this is that we are dealing with people. Do you want your alleles (all the rest of the alleles in your children) being put at the mercy of some researcher on what he/she considers a "good" allele?

 

If I don't, then I don't need to accept any tinkering with my children's genes, nor make babies with someone who has said genes. But it's not like most people check their mate's genes before choosing a mate, so sometimes they end up with mutant genes.

 

The problem I have with your idea of "intelligent intervention" is what I have stated before: in comparison with natural selection, we are just plain stupid. Natural selection is so much smarter than we are that it's no contest.

 

But that is a strawman. What I suggested here was assisting the mutation step, not the natural selection step. So if you want to use this argument, then you would have to argue that we are dumber than random mutation. While faithful replication of our DNA is important, our bodies also allow for some mutation, even though most mutations are not beneficial. This is because it increases genetic diversity, which is vital to long-term survival, which is more important than immediate fitness. Adding new genetic diversity via genetic engineering seems like it would be mostly a good thing, and of course also won't prevent natural mutations.

 

I can see replacing some alleles, such as for the changed allele in muscular dystrophy or Tay Sach's, to the normal allele in the population. But trying to make a "better" allele? Forget it. We are not smart enough to foresee the interaction of an allele with all the other genes and with all the rest of the environment to know what is a "better" allele than the predominant one in the population.

 

No, but we could take a guess and put it out there, then see what natural selection has to say about it.

 

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And if, as you say, we are so much dumber than natural selection, perhaps you should stop eating plants and animals that resulted from artificial selection. Eat like a hunter-gatherer or a farmer that farms wild plants and animals. It would probably even be a bit healthier, though the amount of land needed to sustain such would be impressive.

 

While applying artificial selection to humans (even in a purely voluntary manner) would most likely reduce individual reproductive capabilities, I think that we have a right to decide for ourselves what sort of traits we want -- even at the expense of reducing our evolutionary fitness.

 

Our goals need not be the same as those of natural selection -- even for ourselves.

[visceral]

In theory I would have no problem with it, in reality you would probably get hordes of parents who all wanted blonde blue eyed children with an IQ of 140 or over. Like someone else already said people would end up all having the same DNA.

 

Plus lots more families seem to want sons for some reason. You would probably get a skewed gender ratio as happened in China when they enforced their one child policy.

 

Also if you created people with very enhanced abilities you could end up with one section in society being vastly superior with the 'normal' people being discriminated against.

 

As much as I like the idea of being able to decide what your kid would look like and what they'd be good at, I don't think it should be legal unless for medical reasons.