Where To Draw the Line With Embryo Selection? 727
Tjeerd writes "There is currently a discussion going on in the Netherlands about embryo selection. The process means that when using in vitro fertilization, you can check what kind of genetic defects will definitely become activated during life. When embryos with those defects are identified, they can be avoided or destroyed. The next step the government is considering is to make it possible to select against genetic defects which might become active in life, such as breast and colon cancer. Of course, this is a very difficult discussion; where do you start, and where do you end? People are worrying that there is no real limit, and that you could potentially check for every genetic defect. I think if you're in a situation where you or your family have genetic defects, you surely want to check whether your children would have them too. What does the Slashdot community think about this?"
Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I am not Christian, and certainly not Catholic. I have no concern, or consideration for a clump of cells.
Furthermore, I have a Penis. According to all the junkmail I get, it is a humiliatingly small penis that all the women laugh at hysterically, but the point is that I am a Man.
I don't think men should have any business telling a women what to do with their bodies, certainly not based on faith either.
That being said, if you could choose the genetic make-up of your children and spare them any diseases or malformations I would be hard pressed to form an argument against it. Especially, since I would want the same for my children.
So I understandably have a hard time agreeing that government could declare a position either way on this. They should just be silent and mind their own business.
One Word . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Gattaca
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, if you could choose the genetic make-up of your children and spare them any diseases or malformations I would be hard pressed to form an argument against it. Especially, since I would want the same for my children.
My argument against would be that folks that're "disabled" like me wouldn't have a chance to contribute to society as a whole....
In short, Beethoven. ;)
A counter example (Score:3, Insightful)
A weakness is not always a weakness.
Consider the old example that gets trotted out, time and time again: sickle cell anaemia. In the US, Australia, England, Canada, etc., it's a weakness, and is rare. But in Africa, it turns out that if you have one normal gene acting in tandem with one sickle cell anaemia gene (remember that genes always operate in pairs), you are more resistant to the effects of malaria.
Two sickle cell genes, and you're in trouble. One, and if malaria is prevalent, you're actually better off (but if it's not, you're slightly worse off.)
So just because a given gene variant is a weakness here and now in our society doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing overall. We simply don't know enough to judge the bigger picture in the general case.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, if you could choose the genetic make-up of your children and spare them any diseases or malformations I would be hard pressed to form an argument against it. Especially, since I would want the same for my children.
Genetic diversity.
Perhaps the only people who will survive the next great plague are the ones who do not have blue eyes nor blond hair.
Go for it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunately though, telling (and forcing) other people to believe what you believe seems to be a cornerstone of the human experience for the vast majority of people throughout the world. People don't want reasonable well thought out arguments; they want knee-jerk reactions that neatly fit into their black and white morality code that says when you start applying science to the process of human reproduction you're doing something very, very evil. Birth control is still widely rejected by certain religious groups as a sin so this new technology which seems even more heretical and is even less understood has little chance of being accepted. And with a broader group of people who are potentially offended by it, there's a greater chance it will be legislated to death.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Would I have been your kid?
There is no line. (Score:2, Insightful)
Humans aren't smart enough to choose (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Right... so what happens if being born female happens to be treated like a genetic defect in your country?
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is, how do you prevent people picking a child simply based on arbitrary cosmetic reasons? "You're going to have a daughter, but her breasts will develop entirely lopsided" Really? Crap, ditch that one, let's try another.
The situation is worse combined with what I mentioned in another thread... we're all guaranteed to develop a genetic defect that will express itself as us being unable to generate vitamin C... if I didn't like some odd element of my prospective child (say, "he doesn't have blue eyes and blond hair") then I could simply say, "it has a genetic defect, so I can ditch this one, and try again."
Basically, the question is, how much should we play the role of natural selection? Some mutations have a more or less neutral effect upon humans, or even a negative effect upon us, however that negative effect has a positive effect in other cases, and results in an overall increase.
The issue here is, we shouldn't be able to start mandating genetic purity, and we should only be able to dismiss a child for reasons that would cause a medical illness requiring treatment... not simply "they don't match what I want."
What you "want" is to get away from natural selection and move towards some artificial selection, and while some of that is good (preventing down syndrome, and some other disorders) at the same time... we need to be careful what we throw away, or eliminate from the human genome by conscious choice.
What constitutes 'weakness' or 'defect'? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the real issue, in my opinion where it is GROSSLY obvious that a defect will harm the child severely then we should. I really doubt our science (and scientists) are capable at present at deciding what is a 'defect' when no studies have been done and data is not available, since what one might consider a defect, may not be, or maybe tied to a whole host of other issues once development starts, after all if you're going to discard emybryos with percieved small 'defects', the error in judgement of what constitutes a defect is rather large.
If we coul we would monitor and control the growth and eliminate 'defects' during the whole term of a pregnancy or even as we grow throughout are life but this is just not feasable realistically, at some point an embryo is 'good enough', and I really don't think we have the knowledge at present to judge very accurately what constitutes a 'defect' at smaller levels without studies and long term data to back it up.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:1, Insightful)
so what happens if being born female happens to be treated like a genetic defect in your country?
The same thing that happens now in these countries, except with less bashing babies' brains out or tossing them in the dumpster to die.
Re:Go for it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except you're not. With the current technology you are selecting out embryos which carry single nucleotide polymorphisms [wikipedia.org] which are associated with certain deleterious traits. You are not selecting for "healthy", you are selecting for "not diseased" and not even that, just "less likelihood of being diseased" (likelihood depends on the specific trait).
The problem here is you don't really know what else you are selecting for or against. Again, in most cases, you aren't testing for the deleterious gene(s) itselft, you're using a proxy marker. Lots of unknowns here. I'm not sure I would be embracing this technology just yet.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:0, Insightful)
In short, Beethoven. ;)
If someone wants to have a disabled kid on the off chance that he's a Beethoven then fine. If society wants to raise up a few disabled kids on the off chance they're Beethovens well that's OK too.
What I would have a problem with would be if society forced me to bear the burden of raising a disabled kid on the off chance that society might benefit from a Beethoven. To put it another way, I don't personally like Beethoven's music enough to make it worth the trouble of raising a disabled kid.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Right... so what happens if being born female happens to be treated like a genetic defect in your country?
You population dies out or moves away?
Re:What constitutes 'weakness' or 'defect'? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes I am replying to my own post, hit reply there before finishing. I mean that what one might consider 'smaller defects', are they really 'defects', how does one determine defect from being different? If one looks at how life evolves, we might consider many species today as a result of 'defects'.
So when considering smaller defects, just what is the evidence for it's implications, and what kind of data do we have on them? That's the question I'd ask before discarding them.
I don't see a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Either it works or it doesn't, for improving offspring.
(2) Lots of people won't be able to afford embryo selection, so humans will continue to explore both options.
I don't see a problem.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously not, since "you" wouldn't be wanting anything. The counterfactual always hopelessly muddles questions of identity.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is no line. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true... animals have some "rights" conferred to them... c.f. that football guy who got in trouble for hurting dogs.
There is a line... if it would cause serious harm to a child that develops from it, yeah, that's not cool. Basically, you should be able to choose to discard a child, where allowing them to live would be considered cruel. Uh... down syndrome is questionable in this category (they enjoy life, they're just a burden upon parents... I would say, "sorry, not a disqualifiable condition) while cyclopia is definitely in this area (cyclopia typically causes spontaneous abortion on its own, and animals/humans born with cyclopia typically don't live very long at all.) as would something like severe osteogenesis imperfecta (weak bones, say like Mr Glass? they tend to die very early in life because of traumas) although non-severe osteogenesis imperfecta? Nope, sorry. It's just a medical inconvenience, not a medically cruel condition.
The issue comes, if we find a gene that leads to an increased risk of homosexuality (a lot of personality traits seem to be governed by genes, and conditions, and don't show a perfect correspondence, like say, being able to roll your tongue) Would a fundamentalist family be able to dismiss this, because they thinks it's a religious sin?
I totally understand where you're coming from, and for the most part, I have to agree. However, there's a fundamental error in making the sweeping statement "no line at all", because people can be excessively cruel in this world, and I'd hate to see what kind of in vitro selection criteria the Nazis would have devised....
Ah crap, sorry Goodwin's Law :(
Seems simple to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
This issue presented HERE is the ethics involved in picking and choosing which embryos to implant rather than choosing at random, which would most closely (as far as we know) mimic the random selection of an egg to release and a sperm to make it to the egg. Totally different issue, with totally different ramifications - like the evolutionary path of our species. (You could argue that legalizing abortion also affects our evolutionary path b/c certain populations are now less likely to give birth - but the fact is that abortions happen whether they're legal or not. Genetic engineering of this sort is likely to be extremely rare if illegal.)
Re:Go for it! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Right... so what happens if being born female happens to be treated like a genetic defect in your country?
Well, as China is discovering, what happens is that you learn it is a BIG MISTAKE to remove girls from the population through sex selection, as the creation of embryos using two sperm, along with male pregnancy, have not yet been made viable options. Females are pretty much required to keep your country populated and functioning. You can get by with fewer males, but removing a large number of females from the population is essentially suicide for a culture/country.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
The I didn't read anything showing that people with defects would not be allowed to contribute to society.
...aside from keeping them from being born?
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:1, Insightful)
Why does there need to be a limit? (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone has different ideals of the "perfect" human, so allowing arbitrary selection -- even if it were affordable to everyone, which it wouldn't be -- won't eliminate diversity.
What it will do is reverse the trend of propagating serious genetic defects throughout the gene pool. Thanks to social ethics and medical technology, people with major non-adaptive genetic mutations -- degenerative diseases, blindness, deafness, obesity, heart defects, and yes, even way-below-average intelligence (to the degree that's determined by genetics) -- are no longer selected out of the gene pool as they would be in a less organized or less ethical society.
We have an opportunity to pick up where we forced nature to stop in designing better-adapted humans. We may have to do some serious engineering on human genetics in order for us as a species to survive in different environments with toxic materials, not enough oxygen, too much radiation, or other uncorrectable environmental difficulties. That could mean another planet, or Earth in the far-future. Whining about parents genetically testing their zygotes is ridiculous.
Isn't the generally accepted philosophy of being human that what really matters is thoughts and personality? Thoughts cannot be genetically selected. Personality has some genetic basis due to biochemistry in the brain and genetically-determined brain structure, but even there the core of personality is dictated by the environment and experience.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
What I would have a problem with would be if society forced me to bear the burden of raising a disabled kid on the off chance that society might benefit from a Beethoven.
And there's a big gripe right there:
Everyone assumes that disability == useless.
Betcha Stephen Hawking might argue that... that is, if he was allowed to be born. What guarantee would we've had that his sisters would've brought us the same view of the cosmos? From the summary:
When embryos with those defects are identified, they can be avoided or destroyed.
That doesn't sound like fixing defects. It's discarding a potentially useful human and avoiding the defects.
I'm not arguing just *where* life begins and ends here. I'm just asking people to careful before they get rid of a diamond in the rough.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone not involved should mind their own business? I agree with that. Government religion you listening? Hey! Religion, get your ass back here! Don't you walk away!!
So, if a cop sees someone beating the shit out of you, should he mind his own business? Wait, before you answer, that cop is part of the government and is "not involved" in your ass getting kicked. Should he mind his own business. Of course not! Why? Because it's the governments job to protect its innocent citizens, and therefor not only has the right, but the DUTY to step in. That's a given. The unborn are also innocent. That's also a given. Now the question we need to be asking in this situation is not, "should the government do anything" but "when is human life human?"
Now, the GP stated that he couldn't give a shit about a clump a cells. Well, isn't he just a clump of cells? If his mother decided to have an abortion at this stage and started chasing him with a vacuum cleaner, should the police (or CPS) turn a blind eye? After all, he is just a clump of cells.
So, whether or not government should protect you is not a matter of religion. When is human life HUMAN is where religion steps in.
IMHO, if a DNA test says its human, then it's human and religion has nothing to do with it. No one should be allowed to kill or experiment on him/her without his/her permission.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
The DNA of a cancer cell says it is human. Therefore, according to your own words, no one should be allowed to kill or experiment on cancer cells.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing could be FARTHER from the truth. I just don't believe anybody other than the parents should be involved in the selection. I don't believe that government or religion should play a role in this.
I have my own personal feelings regarding this. I am very Pro Life. I would always wish for the child to be born regardless of circumstances. Who knows what may happen? What that person could contribute?
However, I VOTE Pro CHOICE. I am able to separate my feelings and faith from government and laws that I want to exist.
So although you make some very strong arguments, nothing is stronger than the parents rights (especially the mother) to their own reproductive process.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say that instead of someone beating the shit out of me, they're coming at me with a knife -- except that they're a surgeon performing a medical procedure I opted into. Is it still the police officer's job to "protect" me from something I'm doing by choice?
Of course not. But then, embryos certainly don't opt into the euphemistic "medical procedure" being performed upon them.
So it should be illegal for me to get a tumor cut out of me -- because a DNA test would show that it's human?
A tumor is a piece of a human, not a complete one- cut yours out, you live on, the rest of your cells surviving the loss.
An embryo, on the other hand, is the entire entity. Kill it, and an individual dies.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:1, Insightful)
While I am not against a women's right to choose whether to have an unprotected sexual encounter...
Fixed it for you, there. Once another human being is consentually created, it's no longer anyone's choice.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say that instead of someone beating the shit out of me, they're coming at me with a knife -- except that they're a surgeon performing a medical procedure I opted into. Is it still the police officer's job to "protect" me from something I'm doing by choice?
The problem is that the cop is not "protecting you", but the human inside you.
So it should be illegal for me to get a tumor cut out of me -- because a DNA test would show that it's human?
Nope. The DNA test shows that it's a HUMAN TUMOR. A biologist clearly knows the difference between a differenced human cell, a stem cell, a cancerous cell, and a human embryo.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's another case: A woman who with a serious medical condition becomes pregnant. She cannot survive to bring the child to term, and the child will not survive. Can an abortion be performed then? Saving one life instead of killing both of them?
Also, keep in mind, especially in the second case, it is rarely a 100% certainty. There is always a small chance that both will live. Would you require that a woman with a 1% chance of surviving take that chance? Why is that your decision to make? Why is that anyone's choice but her own?
How about all of the embryos that for one reason or another are destroyed by the body itself? Should we be trying to protect those as well? Should we spend money on protecting the "unborn" instead of say, cancer research?
Those embryos are just as much "potential individuals" as all of the children that don't exist because not every fertile human is continually having sex.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind here we are talking about in vitro fertilization. In that process it is typical to create several fertilized eggs and implant one. The reset are disposed of. That being the case, why does it matter if genetic tests are used to determine which fertilized egg should be implanted? I don't see any moral dilemma here.
As an aside it is so absolutely ridiculous to give everything with human DNA the same rights as a full human that it isn't even worth discussing. If you can't see the folly of giving a lost tooth the same rights as a child you are beyond reason.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should we try to save human life anyway? I say we should protect people instead. If I were to go braindead because of some accident, I wouldn't mind if they 'pulled the plug', even though doing so would mean they killed a 'human life'. A body without a mind is just a bag of meat, regardless of what species it belongs to. Note that this does not apply to someone who is in a coma, since they might still wake up, so the mind is still 'in there'. Of course when there is reason to believe that a person in a coma is never going to wake up you should still consider killing that person.
Anyway since embryos haven't really got a mind yet I don't really see a problem in killing them. Sure, doing so prevents a potential person, but so do contraceptives.
> IMHO, if a DNA test says its human, then it's human and religion has nothing to do with it. No one should be allowed to kill or experiment on him/her without his/her permission.
That is ridiculous. People drop cells all the time, and some of those cells will still be alive. Those cells should not have any rights (but the person still has rights, so you probably shouldn't DNA-test any cell you find without the owner's permission).
logical fallacies (Score:5, Insightful)
''What if you were aborted because you have a "defect"? That would have sucked huh?''
That question can't be answered because it rests on a logical fallacy.
If you were aborted, you would never have existed. If you never existed, you would never have been in a position to contemplate the question.
The question plays on emotions of those who are already alive, people who have lived some life already - be it geriatrics with full lives, middle-aged, the young, kids or even newborns / their family.
This is about IVF embryo selection. A selection is already made. As we cannot foretell the lives that any child will lead, any question of "well what if this embryo that is certain to die of young age is the next Einstein!?" becomes moot as you could ask the very same question of the embryo in the 'next tube over' determined to -not- have the same disorder.
Once you realize that, then making the choice between the two is easy. Making the choice to make that choice in the first place may remain the hard part, for some.
Of course, given the choice and not taking the choice, then 16 years down the road realizing that, yep, your kid's dead because indeed he was certain to die at young age, might make you ponder not having made that choice. Or you could just accept that that's how life goes and be thankful for the 16 years you did have with the kid.
Similarly, let's say the 'healthy' one was chosen and turns out it ends up stillborn. You might wonder about the choice you made there, then, as well.
That's the fun thing about all of this - they're highly personal decisions and everybody has to live with that decision either which way.
That's also where government regulation comes into play, imho. If everything becomes a choice then this puts undue stress on the (hopeful) parents-to-be. That's also in part why the Dutch government currently is going with a case-by-case scenario - so selecting by "blue eyes, blonde hair" as some proposed is right out. Life-threatening disorders, predispositions, etc. are the bits being looked at - on a case-by-case scenario. I say in part, because the other part is just plainly the conservative religious party going "zomg! playing god!!!" and threatening to let the government collapse over the issue if they didn't get their way. (They're a minority party but together with two bigger parties just barely make the ruling majority; so if they go, the entire thing goes.)
"human being ... created" (Score:3, Insightful)
hear, hear!
Now if only we could agree on that pesky "human being ... created" part.
Conception != created. The cells may not split. The cells may not settle. The embryo may be aborted by the body long before it enters anything like a zygote state. And so forth. And so on.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
> What if you were aborted because you have a "defect"? That would have sucked huh? I am sure your friends and loved ones would think so now, after you have bee a part of their life.
If I had never existed, my friends cannot possibly miss me. Maybe if I had been aborted my parents would have another child, and maybe that child would become a better person than I am now. Wouldn't that better person's friends and loved ones think it sucks that my parents didn't abort me? We'll never know.
A discussion about potential people is useless. If you are male, each day millions of your potential children die. If you are female, you lose at least one of your potential children per month, unless you decide to have babies non-stop from puberty till your meno-pause.
Re:Wrong answer. (Score:3, Insightful)
The point was that people who may have signs of physical inferiority can have other advantages/abilities that dont show up on the radar. We will never know what people's minds turn out to be, even if at some futuristic stage we can spot biological signs of higher-than-average intelligence. I'm pretty sure stephen hawkins would have been evaluated as a complete "abort-case", a virtual disaster, if he was put through the system. He is just an example. There are many others who may be susceptible to some disease, but they only contract it later in life, after they have lived wonderful times and after they have done amazing things.
As for the hitler e.g, that is completely unrelated to my point as you now can see. Also, it's like walking into the street and randomly shooting children in the hope that probability distributions allow one of them to be a mass murderer. The reliance on the possibility of removing a person who "turns out" (very little to do with genetics) to be evil, in order to feel ok about denying many others a rewarding life, is just not cool.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
An embryo is not a complete human, remove it like the tumor and it will die, just like the tumor.
Re:Go for it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but remember that this isn't a case of injecting artificial DNA or anything like that. The baby that will eventually be born was potentially going to be born anyway. So the choice is not "I'm picking a big unknown", the choice is "I'm choosing an unknown over something known to be harmful".
So instead of picking one of the candidates without any known defects, you are picking one at random, potentially the one that you would have selected anyway. How are you better off?
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm atheistic.
I do think that government SHOULD interfere. A lot.
This has a LOT of negative long-term effects on society as a whole and ANY government would be betraying it's basic duty - to protect the people - if this kind of a thing wasn't controlled.
Because if you allow genetic selection based on any preference, you're heading very fast into a dead, inbred society.
Genetic diversity is one flippin' big reason to restrict this ONLY to disorders that'd ruin the person's life.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
By that logic, newborns can be left in dumpsters too.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is, stuff only happens that way in sensationalist hollywood movies your culture spoon-feeds you from birth.
One aspect of a field of science gets blown the fuck out of proportion, applied to an entire global society (all previous traces of the people who were there before is wiped clean), with the assumption that nobody in that global society was smart enough to call for
[a] Rationalization
[b] Considerations of consequences, dangers, pros, cons and a learned debate on whether said overblown scientific discovery/field/whatever should proceed unrestricted, be carefully regulated (never happens in movies, nearly the only way it happens in The Real World(tm)), or, heaven forbit, not happen at all.
[c] People are way too stupid to so much as forsee the problem, less so propose solutions to it.
In reality, people DO think about this. Scientists, thinkers, corporations, governments DO pay smart people to voice opinions about these things. Yes, every so often one first-world country will ignore thought-through process in a specific field, but that'd be one country, in one field. If the enire government goes to hell - then it is no longer a first-world country. Other countries will take its place. By large, it's transient issues. Most issues get handled in a reasonably smart manner, even in the US.
These thinkers also communicate with each other, publish and voice these concerns. The interweb thingie.. you may have heard about it.
Global population is big enough to allow the law of large numbers largely take care of major oversights.
In reality, if a gene is lost, then it will be lost. Big whoop. You've lost quite a few since you formed a close endosymbiotic relationship with mitochondria. By the time it happens, more than likely we'll be able to put it back too.
More to the point, if you're envisioning a world where ALL the humans come from a single genetic selection, where natural procreation does not happen in a single country in the world anymore, where EVERY ONE of the current 6+ billion person offspring comes from one centrally-selected vial and all human biodiversity has automagically been somehow eliminated, you're not contributing to the debate at hand, just to the general vibe of ignorant sensationalist idiocy coming out of Hollywood.
Re:Can you think beyond your own self interest? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which I will now debunk. When will you realize that...
1. You were once a sperm too. Or do you think you didn't exist until mr sperm met mrs ova?
2. A sperm is not a plaything to be spat all over your keyboard. It is a living organism that happens to be the beginning stages of a human being, who would have grown up to have a family, friends, a real personality, who would experience love and life.
If you think it is OK to masturbate, I suggest you do some deep soul searching. If you believe in God, you better switch to catholicism, because otherwise you're just being a pansy and going for the religion that doesn't ask you not to masturbate.
I guess I got suckered into this... but I have strong opinions too. Obviously those aren't them... the real opinions follow
Aside from such formatting jokes, it really concerns me that you are thinking so narrowly. It's like all you care about is human life, and haven't considered the quality thereof. How many children do you suppose you'll have? 2, maybe 3? If your condom breaks and you impregnate your wife just as your last child is turning 18, what will you do? Have another child? Give it up for adoption? My point is that there is a certain number of children people want to have, and they're not likely to have more or less than that.
In fact it's really important that people don't have too many or too few kids, as the world has plenty of problems with population density already. Given that a person only wants two children, shouldn't they pick the healthiest, most likely to succeed embryos?
Finally since I'm feeling charitable, let me blur the lines for you a little more: how is a human life more valuable than, say, that of a cow? Or an ant? Or even a virus? It's not. In fact it's less valuable than a cow, when it's an embryo.
Sure, the embryo has the possibility of human life, and what could be more valuable than that? But if you're not willing to consider a cow as equally valuable to a human, how can you say that the embryo which dies after 27 years of pain is more valuable than the one that dies after 90 years of happiness?? Just because it came first? That makes no sense. Or perhaps it's because God's plan was for that baby to be born? Keep in mind, you can never change or go against God's plan, by definition.
Make no mistake: the number of kids I'm having isn't going to change. I'll have an abortion or a divorce if she wants more children than I can afford. (I think it's her body and her choice... so won't force an abortion... but my life is also my choice, and I reserve the right to leave. thank god i'm not christian...) So if you think I won't murder as many children as necessary to find the best ones, you're wrong. I'll kill 'em when they're six years old if they're going to be living a life of pain. There's simply no justification great enough to bring a disabled child who is going to live in pain into this world when you could have made a healthy one who can enjoy it in its stead.
Okay, if you're still with me, take a deep breath, because this next one is a doozy, and I'm probably going to lose you.
You say you feel sick because of something someone said here... so I have to tell you, it is because of cognitive dissonance - their ideas do not match with your ideology. You don't have the same basic assumptions they do (IE, most of us can't make reach so far as to think of an embryo the same way as a developed human... sorry... it's just too different.) And so you say you're sick... but actually, what you are is afraid. Yes, that feeling is fear... fear for your way of life, because you see so many people who think a different way.
There is an
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:2, Insightful)
In no way does the pro-life point of view require religion.
But feel free to name call and assign motive.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
How about all of the embryos that for one reason or another are destroyed by the body itself?
There's a big difference between natural and unnatural death. What you're saying is like comparing death by murder and death by old age because they both have the same end result.
Those embryos are just as much "potential individuals" as all of the children that don't exist because not every fertile human is continually having sex.
So not creating is the equivalent of destroying? Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
You are comparing 128 cells to a black man? Are you fucking kidding me?
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:2, Insightful)
It's hard to get a more technical definition of "human" than that.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
So does that cockroach I just fed to my cat. What's your point?
If it were as easy as saying that entities with a heartbeat and brain activity are human and deserving of protection, this whole debate wouldn't even happen.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever you start splitting hairs over what is and isn't human, you begin toeing a very fine line.
Today, it is considered obvious that race has no bearing on one's "human-ness". Back in the day however, it was used by many as criteria, as it was convenient to their purposes i.e. justifying slavery.
Is there any obvious reason why we shouldn't just consider all homo sapiens human? How are qualifiers justified?
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I give a monkey's about this entire discussion, but:
There's a big difference between natural and unnatural death. What you're saying is like comparing death by murder and death by old age because they both have the same end result.
The word 'natural' is frequently used to imply acceptability, like there's some kind of ethical magic involved in leaving stuff in its default states. Here's one for you: a guy with untreated diabetes dies; another gets an infected scratch, gets septicemia, dies. Are these deaths natural? Yes. But acceptable, given that each could probably have been fixed or handled? What if a doctor saw them, couldn't be bothered to treat them, and let the illness progress?
Why does anyone believe that prefixing anything with the word 'natural' changes anything at all? Nature, red in tooth and claw? We human beings, we're all about defeating nature - not getting inconveniently eaten by predators, for example - and frankly that's pretty much exactly what I like about humanity. Letting 'nature' do its thing is not a very human or humane characteristic. Old age is not your friend just because it is 'natural', either.
Andymadigan's points/examples are interesting, and are not solved by chucking around the idea that that which is untreated is 'natural'. And yes, not creating is often the equivalent of destroying, which is why involuntary manslaughter/criminally negligent homicide is a crime; where there is any duty of care, to stand back and say "hey, Nature did it [and I could've stopped it, but hey, I was busy]" is not a defence.
If the aging process could be halted, say with Larry Niven's non-existent but convenient boosterspice, there would be some difficult questions regarding the legality of failing to make the fix available - especially in countries with a nationalised health service, like the UK, where people are already using the legal system to challenge non-availability of certain cancer/alzheimers treatments, etc. Whilst I don't seriously imagine anyone will be inventing the cure any time soon, old age is a slow, debilitating and invariably terminal illness. It is not necessarily a nice or dignified way to die, and if you think that the idea that it is 'natural' makes it easy for the patient, then you are probably wrong.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Being unable to survive without de minimis shelter and being unable to survive without feeding off an unwilling third party's bloodstream are entirely different things.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem? From whose perspective?
Consider the traditional means of addressing a gender imbalance; send the males to war. Such a war can be conducted with human-wave attacks. After the war, the Chinese population will be 50/50 again. And what of those troops who - being angry and frustrated young men without anyone waiting for them back home - had nothing to lose before the war? Well, as soon as the first shot's fired, those troops will be viscerally aware that if they survive, they'll have the privilege of occupying territory in which the ratio will be something like 60% female, 40% male, and all of a sudden, a hundred million men with nothing to lose, suddenly have everything to gain.
From the perspective of a Chinese general, the skewing of gender ratios isn't a problem, it's an opportunity.
Effects on the family (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, not every handicapped child is the same, but I believe that my son is having a happy life dispite his handicaps. And in a sense, he also is a joy to us.
But his life did have a dramatic effect on our family life. My wife devoutes all her energy in taking care for him. As a result of this, her relationship with my now 13 year old daughter [iwriteiam.nl] has been very poor. My wife also has been suffering from a burn-out and depressions. For many years my daughter has not been able to invite friends over to our house, because my wife could not handle the additional stress of an extra child in the house, while having to care for our son. It is my daughter who has been suffering far more than my son. For me too it has not been very easy. For many years our lives have been centered around caring for our son.
Re:Scientists. (Score:2, Insightful)
>How many Stephen Hawkins are people going to kill in the quest for perfection?
so your argument is that HawkinG's intelligence is genetic rather than environmental, but the genes for intelligence only activate when combined with the genes for a terrible disease?
do you have ANYTHING to base that assumption on?
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately for your argument, the 'junk' status of extra embryos is forced upon us by the imperfections (to put it mildly) in the IVF procedure. IVF has such a low rate of success, for it to actually work probably >75% of all embryos created in these procedures do not successfully implant, are destroyed, or are put on ice indefinitely (effective destruction after a few years).
IVF helps many couples conceive who have difficulty doing so otherwise; this fact is not in contention. However, IVF usually results in many fertilized embryos of which only a few are implanted. The procedure is massively unsuccessful in numerical terms; it is getting better but nowhere near 100% of the implanted embryos even implant in the uterus. Sometimes multiple implantation procedures fail, each of which consisted of 2 to 6+ embryos.
Things are not any better if the first implantation is successful, as the couple must decide what is to be done with the other fertilized eggs. Most of the time they are put on ice 'indefinitely,' but the chance of viability after thawing reduces over time to practically zero.
Are IVF clinics then committing worse mass murder than abortion clinics? If you define these embryos to be humans, then yes. IVF kills many, many newly formed lives for each success while abortion usually deals with one or possibly two. By the numbers, with a strict definition of humanity, IVF is far, FAR more barbaric. But you don't see the public outrage, people mobbing IVF clinics, and general controversial argument over IVF; it is accepted by the public. Why?
The distinction is apparently in the results: IVF enables new life where it was otherwise not possible, while abortion terminates life that (in theory) could have come to term. But behind these results are radically different realities if you give fertilized eggs full human being status. This must be considered if we ever think about creating legislation defining 'humanity' as 'fertilized egg.'
Personally, I agree with the original poster: men (implicitly including all worldwide governments) should not have opinions on abortion one way or another. A body of predominately men dictating what the opposite gender must do with their bodies is as bad as a body of predominately whites dictating the living conditions for blacks. Yes, I am saying that any actual legislation on abortion is as bad as slavery and, I believe were it to be signed into law, history would tell a similar tale about how backward we were at the start of the 21st century. Until or unless we form a separate female legislative body, the abortion issue should not be considered by congress one way or the other.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Then separate it from its unwilling host -- let it be truly an individual -- and let it live, or not, on its own.
Fair enough, just give it a few more months. Besides, temporary condition of life has no relation to status as human. And this might sound harsh, you're not an 'unwilling host if you knowingly take an action that practically invites the baby into you. If you invited someone into your house and killed them because they were trespassing and didn't leave fast enough, that would be murder. Pregnancy is no different. And please don't tout the minority of rape cases as the strawman defense.
An "individual" not only has a beating heart and brain activity, but is able to survive without feeding off the bloodstream of another.
Yes, lets keep changing the definition of human until your argument holds water.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, not convinced.
Besides, if you were reading my post, you'll see I wasn't comparing slavery to abortion. I was pointing out that the same justifications were used in both situations. That doesn't mean that the situations were the same, or even that the justification is wrong in this case. What it does demonstrate is that, historically, atrocities have been committed using that justification. So tread carefully when you claim its authority now.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah! Or the mammary duct [breastfeeding.com]!! [/sarcasm type="dark, dark"]
Honestly, haven't we been through this already, does anyone really buy that argument? Have you ever even seen a child?
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
The point was brought up earlier that if you destroy fingernail your fingernail clippings, you continue to live on. However, if you destroy an embryo, you destroy someone's entire DNA. (or something, depending on how you see it.)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:4, Insightful)
I get really sick of your types trying to confuse the ethics in the debate. You know perfectly well that questions where illness, injury, and severe but natural birth defects like the twinning you mentioned are envolved pose a different set of ethical questions. Its not needed or even rational to try and address those in the same fasion we do healthy mothers with healy embros/fetuses.
Try these ethics questions out to get my point:
1. Your are resuce worker you see a person who has slipped an fallen. They are unconscience and not breathing, they won't survive unless you help them, and might not survie if you do. You are trainned in CPR. Should attempt to help this person?
--->Of course you would, there is no delima here.
2. Your are resuce worker you see a person who has slipped an fallen while trying to escape a buring building. They are unconscience and not breathing, they won't survive unless you help them, and might not survie if you do. You are trainned in CPR. You also recongize the situation is still very dangerous and entering would put you at risk. Should attempt to help this person?
--->Much more complication here, Before we answer we need to look at some things not unlike your mom might not survive carring the child question, and your birth defects question.
How dangerous is it really for you?
How likely is that you could save the person?
The right thing as to wether or not you attempt a rescue is going to revolve around those questions. Its a different problem then the first.
Some people have more cells than others (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people have more cells than others. I don't think it's fair to try to define how human someone is by the number of cells they have.
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Government should not be involved at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Are your powers of rationality really that convoluted? A man is in a horrible accident, his head is severed. But medical break through has been made that can keep his body functioning indefinately. Would we consider him a "human being". Would it be murder to not provide this treatement?
The fact, yes the fact, these cells have no powers of reason, no emotion, no rationality, no ability to physically feel. There is absolutely nothing about them that could be remotely considered sentient.
"Ohh, Ohhh, but what if it becomes Beethoven! Think of the potential!". If this were our measure of immorality then every man should be thrown in prison when he wastes he does not attempt to produce children with it. And every woman should be held accountable for not popping out a kid every year from the age of puberty until she is infertile. Think of the millions of potential Beethovens that were never born! Oh My!
In the vast majority of cases, these shallow, empty, completely illogical propositions are made to cover up the real incentive for these beliefs: Santa Claus told them that it has a soul.
The problem with religion is, it's a belief not founded on any rationale. Beliefs differ. If you feel this way due to some religious roots, then just admit it. Of course, this means that you'll have no more right to impose that belief on people then you do to impose any of the other completely arbitrary and none nonsensical beliefs that are part of your religion.
And just to toss this in, the almighty infallible Christian Bible never considered the destroying of a fetus "murder" either.
Re:Spontaneous abortion (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say that the right to life is more fundamental than the right to be irresponsible (if you aren't alive all of your other rights are meaningless). You can always chose adoption. I know it might be inconvenient, but I don't think that's a good reason kill someone.