James Hughes on Designer Babies in WIRED Wednesday, Mar 11 2009
transhumanism 10:35 am
Dr. J scored a WIRED interview a couple days ago.
I can’t believe the Fertility Institutes caved and canceled their preimplantation genetic prediction program for eye and hair color. They issued the following statement on 3/2/2009:
“In response to feedback received related to our plans to introduce preimplantation genetic prediction of eye pigmentation, an internal, self regulatory decision has been made to proceed no further with this project. Though well intended, we remain sensitive to public perception and feel that any benefit the diagnostic studies may offer are far outweighed by the apparent negative societal impacts involved. For those patients with albinism or other ocular pigmentation disorders, we continue to offer preimplantation genetic diagnosis in general but will not be investigating the genetics of pigmentation of any body structures.”
So, wait, they offered the studies before, and only now (after feedback) realize that “any benefit [...] are far outweighed by the apparent negative societal impacts involved”. What did they learn about the societal impacts from the feedback? Or is this just a reaction to the negative feedback itself, rather than any change in their model of the societal impact? Seems like the latter.
In his interview, Hughes comes out as an advocate of procreative autonomy. As one of the earliest and most visible transhumanist philosophers on the national scene, tens if not hundreds of thousands of intellectuals and laypeople across the country are beginning to associate the name “James Hughes” with transhumanism and consider his opinions to be representative of transhumanism in general. In general, I don’t have a problem with this — I agree with most of James’ positions.
Transhumanism is a movement, and like any movement, 90% of its communication with the public will derive from a 0.5% class of representatives.
In reference to your above post, Thank God.
I would never have used this anyway. First of all, I do believe that an embryo is Human and my child, and I would hate myself if I discarded my children just because they weren’t exactly what I wanted.If I did ever need in vitro fertilization, I wouldn’t create any surplus embryos for this reason.
Designer babies scare me Michael. Can Gattaca be far behind? Granted, hair and eye colour is fairly trivial, and personally I think it’s a waste of money since the kid will probably eventually dye her hair anyway, but it does set a precedent. In the article you cite, Hughes admits that technology that could double a child’s IQ should be banned due to the social disparity it would create. He says “There should be no law restricting the kind of kids people have, unless there’s gross evidence that they’re going to harm that kid, or harm society.” I firmly believe that designer babies, especially those that have been gentically modified, would be harmful to society. It would create a Gattaca like rift between the rich and the poor, and could affect the way in which we view our children. It would obviously have an adverse psychological affect on a child if their parents had paid for them to be perfect, and felt obliged to live up to that expectation.
Here’s a scenario for you. What if someone had their embryos screened for gay genes, and only implanted the straight ones? Now, you may think that evangelicals aren’t too likely to use this technology, but one doesn’t have to be homophobic in order to want a straight kid. If you were paying for a perfect kid, would your perfect kid be gay? This is the insideosness of designer babies. People who are perfect would all be the same. Would we take pride in our children being a standardized product like in Brave New World? This would greatly lessen the genetic diversity of our species.
I don’t believe that anyone has any right to alter someone else’s genome, even their own child’s, even when they’re just an embryo. There are men who feel violated about being circumcised for God’s sake, even though the parents believed they were acting in his best interests. How much more violated would a designer baby feel? Reproductive technology needs to be much more regulated in order to prevent such abuses. I know that genetically engineered designer babies will eventually arrive, but I hope that when they grow up they will protest against the technology, and let the world know how violated they feel.
Hopefully the technology will be restricted before it does any irreputable damage.I predict that more effective birth control will reduce the demand for abortion, which will make it more politically correct to believe that a woman’s reproductive rights do not entitle her to harm her child.I think that the Octo-mom is proof that putting a person’s (male or female) reproductive rights ahead of the children’s welfare is irresponisble. If an adult wants to receive genetic modifications, fine, that’s their choice and the consequences will be their fault. I admit, when that gene they’ve used in mice that let’s them overeat without becoming obese is commercially available for Humans, I’m getting it. I don’t expect this in the near future and I hope to have my children before this becomes an issue, so I’m not going to address the ethics of germline engineering in this post. But, I would never gentically modify my own children because I don’t believe I have that right. Their automony over their genes trumps my reproductive rights as far as I’m concerned.
P.S. I’m going to comment on the above post anyway.If you must, delete this post-script, but don’t delete my whole post. I agree that religious radicals are pushing religious moderates away from religion, but this won’t last forever. Eventually Moderate religion, which I believe is good for both individuals and society, will rise back up. I will cherry pick whatever I want from World Religions no matter what you think. Atheism is a lack of belief, and Nature abhors a vaccuum Michael. Something has to rush in there to fill the void, and you may not like that anymore than Christianity.
I think Gattaca had a pretty awesome system to be honest. Didn’t alter any genes, you just got to pick your favourite creation. How awesome would that feel? Your parents hand picked you.
I think that once the understanding of what is doing what in DNA is better, then designer people (and designer anything that has DNA) is a certainty.
I think it’s a stupid idea myself, because humans think of themselves first, and evolutionary concerns last (if at all). We would happily extinguish IQ in favour of beauty, etc. In short, we make bad choices.
None of that is going to stop this happening, and we cannot reach a consensus on sensible use of the technology without people using it recklessly. You step over the line to find the line. So if we do intend to use this technology, then we’ll need to make mistakes to learn how to use it properly. Costly mistakes.
So, given that it is inevitable, I would suggest a genetic seed bank. Keep the DNA safe for when we have to fix the mess we make. Which we will.
@ Dom.
The line in Gattaca where the doctor protecting the protagonist from discovery says about his son: “He’s not all they promised he’d be” is the best line in the movie. He shows compassion because his son isn’t some Übermensch – if he had been perfect the Doctor would have been as much a ruthless eugenicist as everyone else.
People rarely become better people by virtue of privileges awarded from birth. People don’t learn anything from success, failure is what makes you.
It was really disappointing to see that they had essentially folded up the tent on this one. This will come back, and soon, though it may appear on a gray market long before it is done in the open.
I was glad to see that they found Hughes to defend the basic concept. On the whole, I agree with most of his positions, too.
I just wish he didn’t add non-transhumanist type arguments into the mix so much when talking about transhumanism. I agree with most of the things he says about transhumanism, but don’t share many other of his political views. Transhumanism isn’t exclusively (or even predominantly) Left.
This isn’t his fault, of course. Nobody compartmentalizes their political views, but I think it serves the cause poorly that its most prominent public mouthpiece advocates such an idiosyncratic version of transhumanism. I’m guessing it puts many people off. Not that I would be any better: my transhumanism is fairly deeply entangled with my libertarianism.
Ron Bailey is a fairly prominent writer/speaker who represents the libertarian side of transhumanism. I think that he and James balance each other pretty well.
True, but James is a lot more prominent and more explicitly takes on the ‘transhumanist’ label. I think you’re right when you say many people strongly associate James Hughes and transhumanism.
Bailey just marginalizes himself by not taking on the label more openly.
I like how the “transhumanism” label creates a selection effect whereby those who are too skittish to take it on doom themselves to relative marginalization.
Offering this service was mostly a publicity stunt in the first place. While choosing traits might be technically possible, anyone familiar with the reality of IVF knows that it is so wildly impractical that the odds of ever delivering your “designer baby” are extremely low. In IVF the goal is making it to the finish line with one or two healthy embryos to transfer; setting “designer” criteria that may occur in only 1 of 8 or 1 in 100 embryos is not going to make a successful IVF cycle possible.
@6. Brad Taylor:
My libertarian views are very much entwined with my views on medical self-determination and so on. It puzzles me when the term “technoprogressivism” is used in a way that elides tech advocacy and traditional progressivism, not because these are incompatible, but because they do not seem logically (nor in my opinion, ethically) dependent.
@11. Shawn:
Yep. “Technoprogressivism” is particularly problematic because of the classical eugenic connotations of an active government using technology to improve a passive citizenry.
RE:4. Stuart
Good genes =/= good decisions; the Übermensch is just as liable to make mistakes. It’s much more likely that good genes will just just mean greater potential – good and bad.
Still selection like this already exists today within IVF. It’s seen as more morally acceptable though because they are only screening out negatives rather than screening for positives. Personally I see little difference.
@5.Shawn
In regards to the grey market it is likely things like this will be legal in some countries and illegal in others. I suspect countries like South Korea (already offer cloned pets) and China will offer things like this when it’s available.