I’d do it. I’ve never had an problem with the issue of genetic/hormonal engineering of fetuses.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
And the irony would be if said straight child turned out to be infertile? Personally, I find the very idea vile and disgusting.
I just think the idea that “we can’t modify our babies because every zygote is a unique and perfect flower” is silly. It reminds me of the anti-GM food movement, which is even more ridiculous. As long as it doesn’t intentionally harm the future child in a quantifiable way, people should be able to make “designer babies” if they want, and I would want that. As for unintended consequences, well, I certainly wouldn’t do it without the process being tested rigorously, and if there were still problems, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Unintended consequences doesn’t just apply to the individual children. We would not find out, perhaps for a couple of decades, if there were wider social implications to this action. The human species has flourished pretty successfully so far with a range of sexual/mating/bonding/family forming behaviour. To suddenly start ‘correcting’ that might have results that, in the end, are less desirable than making sure your child has the sexual orientation that you desire for him or her.
And again, as a queer person, the thought of someone having deliberately selected my sexual orientation for me in utero strikes me as a form of harm. There are many facets of my personality that would be changed if that one facet was.
Furthermore, although we can wildly speculate what we could do if there was a simple on/off switch on sexuality, there isn’t. The exposure in utero to particular hormones that correlate with sexual orientation have also been shown to have correlations with numerous other traits, including assertiveness, fertility, math and spacial ability and some sporting abilities. Now, all that is bearing in mind that all of these correlations only amount to a probable outcome, not a definite outcome.
I display a trait that correlates with bisexuality and assertiveness in women, and lo, I am bi and quite assertive. It also correlates with higher mathematical than verbal skills. If you ever saw me calculate a tip, you’d see that 'tis to laugh. So it’s a pipe dream to think we’re precise enough to really just flip a switch.
Thank heavens.
It wouldn’t be harming you any more than nature already did by choosing for you against your will, and it’s not as if the natural is always a force for good.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
That’s pretty much my attitude; I consider bisexuality to be superior to either hetero- or homo-sexuality, because it contains the options of both.
I actually agree with this - I’m a full eugenecist when it comes to removing birth defects from the population because if we have the ability to do so it would be wrong to make someone suffer something debilitating. If my blind child asked me why I didn’t use gene therapy or in-utero manipulation to give him/her the ability to see I would not be able to credibly say “So that with your special traits you could add to the rich tapestry of life”.
So do I think people should be able to screen out defects and genetic diseases? Yes. Do I think parents should get to choose the sexuality of their children? No, because there isn’t a need for it. Hence why I also don’t agree with the notion of picking height/hair colour/eye colour/left of right handedness or a lot of other traits that some people might desire in their children but aren’t essential.
Whilst like Vox I have nothing against the principle, I do think the question has to be asked “why are you doing this?” and unless the answer is “to ensure my child doesn’t suffer unnecessarily” then you shouldn’t do it - but this is ethics, not science. These kinds of therapies do tend to have unforeseen consequences that can act as a price tag, and I’d be just as unhappy telling my designer baby with an unexpected problem directly related to the in-utero therapy “I did this so you could be more like my idea of what a person should be and I’m sorry it hurt you”.
One man’s defect is another man’s way of life. I find your two remarks amusing, because who gets to pick what’s a defect?
I know people who would certainly choose to abort myself, and I know of others that would fully choose to have a child like me or to an even more debilitating form because it’s sometimes easier/preferred by the parents (I’ve got Hearing loss for those more inquisitive). I also know people who would argue that being a homosexual would cause undue suffering to the child growing up and others who would argue (as many of you have done) that it’s a perfectly acceptable way of living.
That’s why I’d decline on the whole idea of designer babies, it’s either all or none with a very steep slope if you try to play anywhere else. Either you allow people to make the silly choices of choosing their genders, their sexuality and removing the “defects”, or you don’t give them that power of customization at all.I think People are foolish in that sense to give this sort of power to a person is just going to cause more problems then it’s worth.
If you want to play “God” that’s fine. But just play God with your own kid, and don’t try telling others what they should or should not screen out as a “defect”.
If One fully believes that we as a Human Race could get together and agree on that simple principle, then perhaps this whole thing could work out without any problems. But I’d also call you an foolish Idealist and tell you about my Nigerian Banking Friend who is need of someone just like You (General you, not you specifically IP)…
Well of course, therein lies the difficulty, and I agree that once you start there is the question of where do you stop.
I find this one easy to answer - defect is a congenital defect that leads to a substantial disability: blindness, 100% deafness, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, downs syndrome, extreme osteoporosis etc. Whilst I’m sure parents of downs syndrome children might disagree with me that it’s not something that needs to be fixed, I don’t think any parent of a child with cystic fibrosis would argue that their child should have to suffer that.
I know the deaf community is against fixing deafness and don’t see it as a disability and in fact some have gone as far as to say they’d select for a deaf child if possible, but I call bullshit on that approach because what possible reason could you have for deliberately taking away a one of a person’s senses other than you want them to be like you?
Beyond that I don’t think there is a need to alter anything else, and by all means as a prospective parent try and argue that sexuality is a disability if you think you can but I think you’d be on to a loser, and I would hope that medical ethics would govern these kinds of operations and that that would count for something.
If it is, which I would say it is due to the spiritual environment of the womb, using artificial hormones to force a change would be IMHO causing additional problems to hide the original one. The child as he grows and if he starts seeking out who he really is will have to uncover both changes.
I would opt to fix the kid. I say fix because while I have absolutely no issues with gays and lesbians, it still is the result of something that breaks down somewhere in the chain and gets some wires crossed. I see no reason to saddle the kid the wrong plumbing for his/her wiring.
What an ignorant thing to say. Our entire existence as intelligent beings is the result of “wires getting crossed.”
I don’t believe that kind of intervention would be harmless. And no amount of assurances from the profit-driven medical establishment could make me believe otherwise.
I can sympathise with wanting an easier life for a child, but I think the problem with that approach is that ensuring a heterosexual child, even for good reasons, perpetuates the prejudice. A widespread use of this option would create further ability for other kids to pick on the gay kids that don’t get changed. Choosing to give your kid an easier life would mean that they’d have to choose their own kids to have an easier life, and their kids, and so on, because the situation will remain.
That doesn’t make all wire crossings a great idea. Being gay is biologically benign, with no physical drawbacks, but it has other issues. The biggest one… unable to conceive a child with their spouse. That to me is a rather large problem, bordering on catastrophic, and is enough reason for me to want to fix it in my kid if i had the option.
Would you mind elaborating on this? I have heard people say this before, but I don’t quite understand how it is ‘catastrophic’.
In response to this and anyone else who thinks homosexuality is a drawback because it doesn’t result in genetically similar offspring from two same sex parents, does this change your opinion at all?
While there are a hell of a lot of questions about it still and it may have some serious drawbacks, we’re far closer to producing children from same sex parents than we are to curing homosexuality in the unborn.
I failed to mention in my brief OP, that the primary reason for my choice is to ensure my children do no have to deal with social prejudice particularly in the middle and high school stage of their lives.
In order to empathize with what its like to grow up gay, I’ve relied on my own experience of what its like to be different from the crowd. My personal experience is being saddled with bucked teeth for which I got the nickname “bucky”. I rarely smiled openly and at one point tried to break my front teeth with a hockey puck. I had no problem eating. The family was poor so there was nothing that could be done about it. It wasn’t until I went to university that I used some of my earnings during co-op work terms to pay for getting my teeth pulled and replaced with a partial plate.
Given that experience, I spent huge sums later in life to correct the teeth of both my daughters and helping out to pay for orthodontics for a nephew. I did not want them to suffer like I did.
That is why I’m somewhat surprized buy some of the responses above, particularly gay people. Were you able to hide your orientation during your teenage years? Was being gay then less a negative socially for you as my experience? Are you confident that one day your gay children will be free of social prejudice?
To address the quoted post , I would agree that intervention would magnify the the offence to the remaining gays. I’ve often considered that straight teeth is not naturally as common as it would appear today and if orthodontics never came about I wouldn’t have suffered as much as I did. But that is life. Most parents want the best for their children and if they can give a leg up for their children over other children, they will do so.
Some people also don’t want to pay their taxes. The generally accepted societal response is to tell them, “Screw you, pay them anyway,” in the interest of the greater good. (As for how this fits in with libertarianism, I think that there is a special line drawn with children, so this would fall under the same category of supporting vouchers for education.)
And just to clarify my position, I’m not calling for jumping into these kind of modifications without any research or a good idea of the risks and side effects. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone doing it in the very near future because scientists have no idea how to do this kind of thing. But, to use an analogy, the way I see it is that, currently, we’re playing Yahtzee and putting the dice in that little cup so that we can’t see what they are until we lift up the cup and see whether we made a good roll or a bad one. The dice are still there, whether we want to look at them or not, and whether we want to do anything about them before it’s too late or not. But what if we could design the cup so that dice rolled in it came out with a full house or a royal flush every time? As long as it could be done reliably, this, I think, would be better than sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that the way the dice came out originally would have been for the best.
Although, to be honest, there is a good point that bisexuality might be the best choice for the child. And I don’t see how the point that it might “continue the prejudice” outweighs the immediate benefits for the child. If there were a similar, harmless procedure that black parents could choose to undergo to make their child come out white-looking, would you be just as against allowing them that choice if that was what they would rather have?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris