I do see what you’re saying, but I think it is the same. They have a choice between going for a deaf or a non-deaf donor, and they’ve chosen a deaf one. So a baby will be born that has a high chance of being deaf. If they’d picked a non-deaf donor, then a baby will be born that has less of a chance of being deaf. It’s not a case of “all these sperm will one day become children”, it’s picking and choosing from a wide range that will not all be picked. So I say that it’s exactly the same as harming a non-deaf baby - they deliberatly picked sperm that would give them a high chance of deafness, and while it’s not as certain as actually harming a child’s hearing it’s the same motivation, and i’m sure that if the couple were given the chance to ensure that their baby was deaf with 100% certainty, they’d select that option.
As for the debate around deaf culture…well, i’m not sure. I’d say being deaf was definetly a handicap, but OTOH deaf people are fluent in sign language, a skill that most of us hearing people lack (unless we know a deaf person and need to communicate with them). Is the lack of that skill also a handicap? I’d say it was, the only difference being that we have the choice and ability to overcome that handicap, and deaf people do not have the same with their disability.
People with a disability in one sense make up for it by developing their other senses much more highly. So a deaf person might be able to see or smell really well for instance. There is a blind painter who sees just with his visual cortex. He envisions the item and paints it. His visual cortex is actually unusually active, more active than most people with sight.
Having kids if you are deaf is not immoral. They might have a lot of reasons for not giving their kid a hearing aid, there are more factors that go into it. Lots of deaf kids learn English just fine without being able to hear, they learn to read lips.
There are a lot of preconceptions in this thread that I am skeptical of. They would be giving the gift of life to a creature that wouldn’t have been given that gift otherwise. Are you saying you’d kill yourself if you lost your hearing? That it’s better to not be alive at all, than to be deaf and alive?
There is nothing immoral about it. It’s an amoral issue.
Der Trihs Most people lack full usage of their senses.
As I said to Der Trihs, I like my genes. I’m also not perfect. I’m not super attractive, I don’t have the best social skills, and I’m not supremely intelligent. If I choose a mate who doesn’t compensate for my “shortcomings” genetically, does that make me unethical? Don’t I have a choice who I mate with?
Say I have a choice to get sperm from a tall guy of average-intelligence or a short guy of superior intellect. Am I being unethical for going with the first guy, just because I feel that being short is a handicap? Would it be unethical for me to desire the shorter, brainy guy’s sperm simply because I’m short and brainy as well? Both situations seem equally “unethical” to me because you are limiting your child somehow, regardless of your choice.
If I have this ethical imperative to create the “most optimal person ever”, what role do my genes have, in all their inferior glory? And why do my genes have to take second fiddle to whatever society deems as “better”? I hope we never get to the point when we’re required to get our zygote’s genetic profiles cleared before a panel of “experts” before we can hatch them.
There is nothing unethical about wanting to have a child who’s like you. The very essense of sexual reproduction is unethical, if we believe this.
Also, people with nominal psychic ability have trouble communicating because there aren’t other psychics running around teachings them to utilize their abilities, and teaching them how it works, not a whole lot of scientific study going into the subject just yet. This would all change if the majority were telepathic.
Telepathy is not a fair comparison, because if the world were telepathic as a whole, then telepaths would be able to tap into the internet with their brains so to speak. It would be an entirely different culture. The difference between telepathic and not is a much wider gulf than the difference between deaf and able to hear. A more fair comparison would be Hellen Keller to someone with use of all their senses.
Telepaths would be able to build a non-hardware based neural net amongst telepaths eventually. Of course all levels of society would interoperate but it would be a world of ubermensch and untermensch for sure. Imagine being able to simply download knowledge to a pupil.
In this case, no difference; deafness is a form of damage.
Intelligence is a major part of what seperates us from the animals and defines us as being people. Being more intelligent is better; worrying about skin color is foolish. Racial predudice can be overcome, but stupid is forever.
So what ? I am not the slave of my genes, or I’d be trying to seduce/rape and impregnate every woman I could.
I would not hesitate to rewrite my genes if it could be done safely; if I could, I’d get rid of them entirely and stick my mind in a nice android body.
We live in a society that rewards obsession, ruthlessness and greed; that doesn’t make it right or desirable.
The kid wasn’t given a choice.
No I didn’t, for just that reason. I don’t need more Luddism.
By that rule no one should reproduce, save by cloning; any other method is inherently unpredictable.
I have serious trouble believing we will be worse than nature; nature is uttery ruthless and mindless; hopefully, we will at least try to do a good job. Nature doesn’t, and doesn’t care.
I’ve got a whole host of faults, but I am who I am. I wouldn’t be angry at not being a super genius, or taller, though I would prefer to have had better eyesight and no liking for expensive cheeses. Genius isn’t easy or fun. There are advantages, but there are also very big disadvantages when it comes to the child’s happiness and well-being.
I think the case in the OP is extremely complex, but I come down on the side opposed to what the parents did. Why? Because say the child is born and then both parents die. Suddenly, what had been an advantage turns into a huge disadvantage.
(Of course, one of the reasons I won’t reproduce is that it seems so silly to me. Why in the world would I love myself so much that I need a copy? I’m okay, mind you, but the world is just fine with only one of me.
Or, as my husband puts it, “Our child would be one of Satan’s minions, but not ambitious enough to be one of the big cheeses.”)
There is nothing stopping me or anyone for that matter from walking around with earplugs. The vast majority of people have a choice between being able to hear and being deaf each day. Since nearly every single one of them choose hearing don’t you think being able to hear is more valuable than being able to smell better? Do you have cite showing that deaf people’s other senses are heightened?
Do you have a link for this painter? Even if visual cortex is unusually active he still has no way of knowing what he is putting on the canvas.
Such as?
They still can’t pronounce words correctly and there is nothing stopping a person that can hear from learning to read lips. However, for most people its not worth the effort becuase hearing is much more effective than reading lips.
Meaningless argument becuase no matter what they choose they will be giving the gift of life to a creature.
Of course not but its a lot better being able to hear than being deaf.
This is just junk. No one is arguing that we should attempt to breed deafness out of the population.
You don’t have an ethical imperative to create the most optimal person ever and no one is arguing that. What people are saying is that it is unethical to actively try and give your off-spring a disability.
Is short height a form of damage? Deafness is an abnormality, yes, and it confers distinct disabilities. But deafness isn’t necessarily the result of damage. It can be a genetic trait just like blue eyes or double-jointedness.
Does this always hold true? Can you think of a time or place when the course of a human’s life was shaped more by the color of their skin than their intelligence?
But then you wouldn’t be the same person. Your “youness” is the result of your genes interacting with one another.
We also live in a society that says some traits are handicaps while others are not; that doesn’t make it right either.
And neither were the millions of other deaf people born out there.
No one is given a choice in how they will come out. I wish my mother had gotten inseminated by a man with narrower calves, but she did not. I guess I’ll just have to live with my big-ass calves.
The movie isn’t anti-technology. It’s anti Big Brother.
No, there’s a difference. You just can’t see it.
Say I see a handsome, intelligent, charming guy and decide to have a baby with him. We make a handsome, intelligent, charming baby and all is well.
But what if I don’t find a man and decide to go the clinic route? I tell the geneticist I want a handsome, intelligent, charming child. A geneticist tells me he put “intelligent”, “handsome”, and “charming” genes into the sperm he injected my egg with. He tells me I have 90% chance of having a handsome, intelligent, charming baby. But the geneticist also put in a gene for “above-average metabolism”, which interacts badly with the “charming” gene when exposed to my genes. This interaction affects other genes and their interactions. The result is a child who is morbidly overweight and has an over inflated ego. Not what I imagined when I set out to have a “perfect” child.
My handsome intelligant charming man has all the bugs worked out. I know his genes are interacting well with other. The traits I’m attracted to my be encoded by unique, superior genes, or they may be the result of interactions resulting from his run-of-the-mill genes coming together with cues in the environment. His genes might not work well with mine, true. But at least I get to see the manisfestation of his genes beforehand, and I have some idea of what they look like when they hit the environment. The “old fashioned way” isn’t inherently better, but in a way it’s safer and cheaper.
And maybe that’s alright. What society wants, as you said earlier, isn’t always right or desirable. People tend to act according to what’s popular and trendy. I don’t relish the idea of “designer” children. You might select for the next Einstein or Gandi, but your neighbor would have every right to select for the next Hitler or live-action Homer Simpson. And there would be no objective reason why your neighbor’s decision would be any less idiotic than yours.
Actually, there are people on this thread arguing just that. They are saying it would be unethical for me to choose to have an child with my intelligence rather than one who is an astronomical genius. I would be “limiting” it, they say.
But I don’t feel limited by my intelligence. Just as I don’t feel limited because I can’t read minds, fly like a bird, or multiply four digit numbers in my head.
A deaf person doesn’t feel necessarily limited by their deafness. Surely there are a lot who do, but then again there are a lot of “normal” people who feel limited by the deck of cards they were dealt too.
Right, its unethical to actively try and give your child a disability (disability is stretching it in this case but the point is valid). That doesn’t mean you have an ethical duty to try and breed super babies. It simply means that if you have a choice in the matter you should choose the option that gives the child the best chance at a good life.
Well, if you had higher intelligence you could do everything you can do now in addition to other stuff like quantum physics. Are you not limited in your ability becuase of your intelligence since you can’t do quantum physics? Now that doesn’t mean your life is horrible nor that only smart people should breed. Its just that if you have a choice, simply looking at intelligence, more is better.
A person that is deaf from birth has no idea what they are missing. How could they possibly comprehend what a symphony sounds like and why it gives me pleasure? If I asked you 20 years ago if you would miss the internet if it went away you would probably say “whats the internet?” Now that you have experienced the internet wouldn’t your life be limited in some way if you could no longer access it? Of course it would be becuase it would prevent you from doing something that you clearly enjoy, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this message board.
While a deaf person might not feel limited by his inability to hear that doesn’t mean he isn’t. I get terribly sick when I smoke marijuana but I don’t feel limited by my inability to toke up but what do I really know? My inability to take marijuana without making me sick might be preventing me from experiencing the great feeling of being high. Does that mean my life is worthless and my parents should have bred better? Of course not but if my parents had chosen to deny me the ability to experiece marijuana I would be pretty pissed at them and it would have been a pretty terrible thing to do to me.
Dogs are infinitely more limited in their capacities than human beings. Is it wrong to bring one into the world?
This question is a pretty broad one: many disabled people are very very unhappy about the idea of aborting fetuses they see as “one of them” just because it will be disabled. This has a heck of alot to do with the whole abortion/humanity question in general.
If I lived in a world of telepaths, then I would be disabled. If the average IQ of all around me was what we now call an IQ of 190, then I would be “dumb.” These are the realities, we are defined in relation to others, not in isolation.
“Deaf culture” is well and good but it is by its nature an insular world. Within that culture they are normative. No doubt they like that. They can choose to exist in that small subset of society as their normative culture or they can try to adapt to society at large. If they choose to exist in society at large then they are handicapped relative to everyone else. They have made their choice that they prefer to be normal in a subculture. But they are trying force a choice on a child to be. A hearing child of deaf parents can choose to exist in the deaf culture. They’ve seen it their whole lives, they have first hand experience of its advantages from seeing how much their folks like it. They can speak in sign. They could, as an adult, choose to wear earplugs all the time. Obviously few would.
In this case the parents are beyond the normal parental narcissim. They are consciously removing choices from the child’s life for exclusively selfish reasons. This is no different an ethical question than if parents who are both quadruple amputees are ethically justified in having the Mom take thalidomide to maximize the child’s having no limbs and being more like them.
The analogy doesn’t work, unless you know someone with zero height. Being short isn’t like being deaf; short people aren’t missing body parts/functions.
No. Even a slave can think; a dog can’t ( not at our level at least ).
No, my “youness” is a mental function, not a genetic one. That’s why brain death is the death of the person; if the mind is gone but the genes remain then the person is gone.
It’s not “society”, it’s reality. The deaf are damaged; they are missing a capability.
Having a deaf child by accident is different than having a deaf child on purpose so it can be a political tool.
Having a stupid or genetically evil child ( or whatever term you want to use ) is indeed objectively inferior, unless you want to argue that being evil and stupid is just as good as being smart and good. Not all things are relative.
They were never our equals, so we deprive them of nothing. I do disapprove of breeding them in ways that renders them defective/sick, however.
Thats not the question. The question is whether its moral to actively choose to limit your off-spring’s abilities. That is a much, much different question than the morality surrounding aborting or not aborting a deaf fetus.
On one hand, I find the attitudes of this couple disturbing. The fact that they are not getting their child a hearing aid, possibly delaying his language skills troubles me.
However, I’m with monstro on genetic manipulation. I would say it’s one thing to try and avoid possibly debilitating and fatal conditions (hemophilia, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, etc), it’s quite another to try and deliberately create a super human child. If only because the result may not be pleasant.
(The super genius child who goes to college and studies physics at age 5 may end up feeling like a freak, or be unable to relate to human kind. And may have a lot of extreme issues down the line-depression, sociopathic tendencies, suicidal feelings, etc)
What would the difference be between this and a mother starting to take heroin before the pregnancy? Let’s say the mother wouldn’t have gotten pregnant unless she could have an addict baby, then the baby wouldn’t have existed had she made another choice.
The baby could have existed in a ‘non-addict’ version (I don’t see how having a pool changes that), which is indeed one of the possibilities, if she hadn’t chosen to maximize her risk.
There is, as the title of my thread suggests, a fundamental difference in the realm of intent. If a hetero coupled picked each other so as to maximize the chance that their offspring would have genetic defects, then they’d be just as guilty.
And if one is already going to be choosing sperm aren’t they obligated not to deliberately and with full intent select based on maximizing the chance of injury or disability to their children?
But it was made to be deaf, that was the intent. That they were maximizing their risk without it being a given doesn’t seem to alter the issue. And can parents really choose anybody they want to father their children? What if they picked a donor who would have the highest chance of passing on paranoid schizophrenia or a similar disorder to their children?
Doesn’t the intent matter?
Obviously not. But also, you prefer guys with dark hair. That’s the intent in that situation. Likewise, if you decided to pick a breeding partner in order to maximize a genetic defect, that would be the intent.
I don’t see why abortion would matter. The intent remains the same, no?
Deaf culture may very well be valid, but so? Judging from support meetings and such, there’s also addict culture. Would it be fair to start taking heroin before a pregnancy? Also, being deaf is objectively a disadvantage. Many states have laws against driving with headphones on because it reduces situational awareness and is dangerous. Not being able to drive a car safely, for instance, is a disadvantage. Not knowing if someone is shouting a warning to you is a disadvantage. Not being able to have a conversation on a normal phone is a disadvantage. Not being able to communicate with someone who doesn’t know ASL and isn’t giving you the opportunity to read their lips (if you even know that skill) is a disadvantage.
While deaf people certainly aren’t “worse” than anybody else, it’s certainly a disability. And if it’s not, it needs to be removed from the ADA. Right?
Isn’t that the crux of the issue? “In and effort to esteem their identity and worth…” they would have children a certain way. Isn’t that the very definition of vicariously living one’s life?
Really? Always? I always thought that ideally raising a child was an altruistic endevour. Bringing a life into this world as an extension of your ego just seems wrong. Autonomous human beings deserve to be treated as such. We no more own our children then we do other people.
These two are not mutually exclusive.
But isn’t the point that they are trying to create one? Isn’t the intent the matter? They’re not altering the development, they’re trying to select that path of development. Does it really matter if they have that intent before conception or the day after?
But does having different degrees of adaptability eliminate the fact that some are still disabilities? Isn’t there a downs syndrome culture? Why not, if not?
But, as pointed out, there is a difference between a socially constructed negative and an objective one. If prejudice were to disapear tomorrow black people would (correctly) be viewed as the equals of everybody else. But if the same were to happen for deaf people, they still couldn’t drive a car safely.
How is that a distinction that isn’t a difference? People can, for instance, leave and move to a different community or country. Although it’s an extreme example, it’s definately a possibility. But deaf people cannot move somewhere where their hearing gets restored.
So would you advocate removing deaf people from the protections of the ADA?
Eh… it’s always somewhat spurious to make judgements about reality based on fiction, like folks who judge human nature based on The Lord of the Flies.
But being short isn’t on the ADA. And in either case you’d be trying to do the best in choosing a partner when there aren’t any perfect partners. But it is materially different than having the intent of selecting based on a quality which is a disability.
You honestly don’t see a difference between trying to maximize and minimize a child’s abilities? What about trying to have a healthy baby with all of their arms and legs versus a baby born without arms? I always thought that ‘differently abled’ was used because it was PC. The ADA isn’t the “Americans who are differently abled act”, after all. I mean heck, everybody has different abilities, but some are entitled to protection under the law.
[quot=Askia]There’s also a reason multiculturalism holds the view of all cultures being essentially the same in terms of innate worth and importance, rather than ranking them by longevity, population size and distribution, and global influence (as many tend to do), including the culture of the deaf.
[/quote]
Why does this have to do with culture? Sure, deaf culture is as valid as any other, so? There is, of course, heroin addict culture. Multiculturism would demand that we view that as equal to any other culture, right? But would it be correct to try to make a baby a heroin addict? They’d fit in at shooting galleries, which multiculturism would say are equal to libraries and museums, right?
Of course it isn’t. But if someone selected a partner who was deaf because it meant their children would be? Doesn’t the whole issue come down to intent?
There wouldn’t have “been a creature” otherwise, unless it was floating around in Platonic Form Abstractionland.
Wow, I don’t think anybody’d said that. But if you’re choosing a have child, then it’s better to minimize risks of birth defects, and wrong to maximize them.
Is it? It doesn’t look like it. Isn’t there a difference between ‘improving’ traits and trying to damage them? Can’t you be for having a “normal” non-altered, non-disabled baby without having it be eugenics?
On the other hand, the adult with a 110 IQ in a world with an average of 190 might feel a little unhappy, especially since he may very well be unemployable.
And you totally skipped the statement I made before that, saying that being above average intelligence is one thing. But deliberately trying to create a child with an IQ of say, 600 when the average is 190 is entirely different.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t try to give my child the extra edge if I could. I’m saying I wouldn’t try to take it to extremes.