Genetically engineering ‘ethical’ babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor
August 19, 2012
Human fetus (credit: drsuparna/Wikimedia Commons)
Genetically screening our offspring to make them better people is just ‘responsible parenting’, claims an eminent Oxford academic, The Telegraph reports.
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”.
He 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”.
He said that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality — with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics.
In the end, he said, “rational design” would help lead to a better, more intelligent and less violent society in the future.
“Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children. ”They are, after all, less likely to harm themselves and others.”
He said that we already routinely screen embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes. Rational design is just a natural extension of this, he said.
He said that unlike the eugenics movements, which fell out of favour when it was adopted by the Nazis, the system would be voluntary and allow parents to choose the characteristics of their children.
Comments (26)
by Bone Crusher
HOW DARE YOU post such a disgusting article. I’m a philosopher and this is the most unethical thing I’ve ever read in my life. Ethics are learned through philosophy. Instead of manipulating humans like they were a GMO experiment, how about they learn some ethic of their own. This puts irony on a whole new level. I am disgusted. Shame on you Zurzweil.
by guillefix
The main ethical issue that I think is going to spring from this is that this will most probable evolve into eugenetics, because some parents will want to engineer babies in ways that are konwn to be bad for society. In these cases, I think it’s reasonable the law would should and will be against them. However, I think that eugenetics is not a bad thing as long as is utlilized correctly. For example, realize that eumemetics has been a part of Human culutre ever since.
by Tracy
It still sounds like Fascism to me!
by Kostas
From the article:
“He said that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality — with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics”
Where exactly is this science that increasingly supports that view?
I have stumbled upon considerable evidence for the contrary, i.e. that genes are not initiators of behavior. It’s the interaction with the environment that manifests certain behaviors. An excellent video featuring scientists which describe this process can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhdsHxX0_FY
by SyntaxHD
Geneticly engineering babys in hope of designing a brighter/healthier more fluent society implies many things to me. First, it looks a bit like a cop out for all the enviromental structural flaws we might call societal evolution/revolution. Once we can design our babys we automaticly get the society we look for, but there is no denying that enviromental social factors play a huge role on the developement process of a baby!
Well I dont think that these kind of “medicine” should be abondend, there are people out there suffering from huge mental disabbilities many of them are in prison because of that. Its the question how large the genes play a role in thesse kind of behaviour properly a large one… But its not merely the fact of designing babies that baffles me its the objection that one might call dehumanization. The threat of maximum performance we in-vision for ourself in order to compete with … well ourselves!
These social Darwinism we live under for quite a while now crystallizes ,for me, more and more like a cancerous world view. Until we havent adress these moral/ethical contradictions I see no long term benefit these technologies will give us… we need a debate where we all are going and WANT TO GO! We are in charge now of evolution, so we have to decide wisely.As Juan Enriquez calls the transition from Homos Sapiens to Homo Evolutis.
by Karsten Matthijs Hartog
This is one of the sickest things possible imo. But Professor Julian Savulescu says this is voluntary opposed to the Nazi Eugenics Movement. I do not advocate making this illegal, I want social pressure to make people opt out from dabbling …
in this, nothing more.
If the majority of influential human(s)/groups supports this then our race will simply have to suffer the consequences, just like the moment, because this isn’t just new, it has already been happening, genetic manipulation, in more ways than what is suggested here.
If they succeed, then hopefully my blood will not survive this, and they will have to deal with the pestilent world they create, for a time, without me.
by SpottedMarley
I’m all for this, but first we all have to come to a consensus agreement on exactly what is right and what is wrong.. good, bad.. etc.
Yeah.. exactly
by Bri
The consesus is easy. They tell us which ones! Oh, there have been a few movies about that one. In my eyes we are morally and ethically bound to not listen to people who tell us that we are morally and ethically bound to there views!!!!!
by glen
Whimpyism keeps the pay me today and I’ll work free tomorrow from taking over. Design me in vitro now, or out-source me after. By all means see fit to teach or have taught me to read, and still try and keep from me what you have not, the rumors float there’s one that’s counter-factual, a mere contrivance of imaging, no appreciable value potential.and it’s expensive.
by Jim Lindelien
The good doctor has been watching too much of GATTACA and Minority Report and somehow took away the notion that those are good ideas, rather than eugenics all dressed up in techno speak.
by René Milan
In response to other comments: evolution is not the issue. Our decisions are part of the evolutionary process, and a decision is what Savulescu calls for. Granted “that it assumes an objectivist point of view”, but there are only two options: let the psychopaths running much of this planet now continue their reign (either agreeing to keep suffering from it, or to trying to establish separate communities elswhere), or eliminate the “personality flaws” lying the root of this problem. “This technology would” not “lead to abuse”, the abuse is already there, caused by those very flaws.
by dan
Selecting for such traits would simply be selecting a chance genetic trait and hoping it doesn’t confer any other negative traits. Far better would be to find those with a natural predisposition towards those negative behaviors who, through self control, have never been shown to engage in them. A much more self disciplined society would probably help to prevent harm to people than selecting for those who so far haven’t been violent, and just blindly hoping nothing in their environment changes that.
by Felix
Such initiative may very well bring the precisely opposite results – imagine a society of ‘ethical’ sheepish people which obediently perform whatever these in power ask them to, without even the possibility of a thought of violent protest.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions…
by Lance
Creating the “Master Race”? Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely! The proof of this is readily seen in articles like this one.
by You
This is a terrible and extremely dangerous idea. Nature creates a balance between each of us and our world in ways that the human mind cannot and will never understand. The consequences of such genetic engineering could be very ugly.
by Durabys
This will be a thing of the past. By the time they get over the hill of the pissed of fundies and ludites there will be DNA changing nanites and retroviral therapies..both real-time genetic change mechanisms, permanent and not only for children but adults and grown ups. Everyone could then become superman if they want to.
by Outcast
If parents make the decision for their unborn children then it cannot be considered voluntary since the children have no say in it, just like with babies who are baptized. Diagnosing people to gain control over them is already bad enough, they will never accept the fact that they cannot control the natural way of things but only themselves. The best one can do is to be loving and raise understanding while taking up a stance against tyranny.
by GatorALLin
next they will be saying… …this embryo has a 18% increased chance in your child showing future homosexual tendencies…and so we auto terminated it after noticing your drive through habits at chick-fil-a
or…Yes Dr. Smith..we understand you expect your future child to be a great surgeon just like you…but we are concerned the embryo you have chosen only has half the sociopath like qualities we would normally look for…we are concerned this child may feel too much…. and miss the narcissistic characteristics that often accompany great surgeons….. as you have requested….
….or…. yes we did select the fair/beautiful skin choice you asked for and so yes that does increase the chance of developing skin cancers later in life by an extra 11.8%…. and yes we did make sure the child will grow over 6′,3″ so that they have an 87% increase of excelling in athletics, but that comes with an increased cost of several rare but dangerous bone cancers at an extra rate of 3.9% and yes we did select the Heterochromia iridum of one blue and one green, but you know this does increase the chance of rental cancer after age 52 by an extra 1.9% as noted on form 21a14. Yes the larger cranium size does include a decreased risk of dementia by 6.4%, but this increases the rate of stroke after age 69 by over 6.1%. If you could just press your face hard against this scanner…2nd copy is yours and we have deducted the 6million bitcoins from your world account. Your “perfectChild” will be ready in about 6.8weeks, thank you for your order at StorkInc.
by René Milan
Nice to know we have a bonafide prophet among us.
by Foye Lowe
Bravo!
by Bri
I’d watch out about saying it’s a moral obligation. Evolution is always striving to make more adapted and thusly better offspring. In so doing it often makes inferior ones. Sometimes those inferiorities can have unexpected benefits. Strive for perfection but still embrace imperfection.
by Mr.x
Maybe you should read a basic introduction to evolution.Evolution is probably the most misunderstood thing people like to employ for feeling good in the wake of having understood (for feeling good you just need to think you have) or explained something.2.Basic things: First evolution is not a striving, material/metaphysical, unified force ( reification of allencompassing forces is another manifestation of a concept called “naive theories”, to do it is to mistake internal conceptualization for external reality, something humans are inclined to do because of their nature as social beings), Second: The only thing that matters to evolution is producing offspring that produces offspring.Add to that repetition like the one you would find in an open loop error in programming, e.g informational patterns are being expressed and acted out through their material expressions, again and again, maybe until eventually, you shut off the pc or the hardware breaks down.Evolution is a purely materialistic process, and based on some kind of trial and error.It is like billions of algorithms inside living stuff interacting with and reacting to everything else and themselves.One just has to think about various insects etc to see that there must be some truth in it.They remained essentially the same over large periods of time and some of them can exhibit quite complex behavior.Others just reproduce billionfold and die in a day, without too much concern for any further adaptions.
This notion of evolution also fits with ideas about complexity like those of Mr.Wolfram.Invoking occams razor/probability theory says we do not need to invoke further conceptions like seeing adaption as an additional end in itself.Think about it, being too adapted to certain things can lead to an increase in existential risk (think ice age) and/or less offspring e.g most of humanity seems to stem from 1/3 of those men who ever lived, and 2/3 of the women who ever lived.Being strongly adapted is favorable for women and bad for men, from an evolutionary point of view.This probably explains some differences between the genders.These differences seem to represent some practical value, otherwise they would not be there for long (or maybe coupled to other benificial stuff).
Thinking that evolution occours simply on a species based level is part of an historical example of naive theories.It is a gross oversimplification and mind projection into something that neither has a mind nor exist in a materialistic way outside of our heads.
Genes that won’t profit the individual in terms of reproductional value would go extinct quickly, even if they benefited the society at large.Notice how strongly this kind of “evolution” would fit in with one important abstraction we call society.It makes sense to us because we project our social stuff into reality, e.g value judgements etc.
Concerning imperfection: I think perfection is only possible in a relative way, related to a moment in “spacetime”.Killing to much variation can lead to increased existential risk, something people underestimate because it obviously did not yet happen to extinguish homo sapiens. Therefore people think it unlikely to the point of being almost impossible.
Btw: Invoking evolution often leads to fake explanations, overly vaque circumscription without having any quantifiable or testable consequences.
by Mr.x
The problem with “ethically designed babies” is that it assumes an objectivist point of view.Who said that your ethics are right, if there is such a thing (especially timeless).For example, having problems to harm others is a thing of definition, and could lead to extinction of a genetic line through failure of reacting the right way to a violent situation.Let’s call it the Jesus-effect: The more you are the way Christians think Jesus has been, the less likely you are to procreate and live up to your statistic life-estimation.
I also think this technology would lead to abuse, e.g genetically designered elite versus the working poor, governmental supersoldiers and assassins, dictatorships “designing” their own people etc.
Furthermore: In order to have rational design, one first must be rational.This is harder than it sounds.
Anyway, I don’t think these technologies can be stopped in the long run, and their consequences are hard to see since one must take the timespan of them operating, interrelationships with other technologies and their induced sociatal changes etc in account, leading to massive complexity.Therefore it is generally easier (because of higher probability) to predict trends than special developments.
by clains
If there is no such thing as ethics or objectivity there cannot be a discussion about the immorality of a designed elite, people created for a specific purpose, etcetc. If you think these technologies cannot be stopped, you should hope for an open discussion. An open discussion about the right course of action presuppose that at least some actions are (objectively) more unethical than others. Only once people admit that some actions are more or less ethical than others are they in a position to be wrong about their own position. Otherwise it would just be irrational proclamation of opinion x and y.
by DougW
Let’s not be naive here people. There WILL be genetically engineered children, whether anyone likes it or not. The question is only when, not if. Also, don’t delude yourself, people will be picking attributes that allow their offspring to prosper financially first and foremost, and that includes beauty, intelligence and strength (in that order unfortunately). Again, if you are thinking people will pick traits like ‘less violent’, you are almost certainly overestimating society.
by FredB
…And the genetically engineered children, based on their engineered genetics, will make genetic choices for their children . A brave new feedback loop. Who would be surprised if “compliance to authority” was a most desired trait?