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Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

A new eugenics?

by Massimo Pigliucci
Eugenics was the idea, proposed initially by Francis Galton (Darwin’s cousin), that humanity should apply its ingenuity — and particularly the new science of heredity — to its evolutionary betterment. After all, we have put quite a bit of thought and effort into improving plants and animals, why not turn the same degree of attention to our own species?
Because we would be playing God, is a common objection. But arguably we have been playing god since we invented fire, and besides, there are no gods, so that argument isn’t going to fly. Still, it soon became apparent that eugenics was a horrible idea. Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th several states had passed eugenic-inspired laws in the United States, three of which were upheld by the Supreme Court, resulting in the forced sterilization of 60,000 people. In writing the US Supreme Court decision in 1927 (which passed with a stunning 8-1 vote), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. infamously said that “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” referring to the family tree of the plaintiff, Carrie Buck, who had been declared “feeble-minded” by the State of Virginia. The law allowing that state to enforce sterilization remained on the books until 1974.
And of course, we all know to what heights (so to speak) the Nazis brought the whole idea of eugenic betterment of the human race. Interestingly, and somewhat logically, even, some of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg actually cited the American laws on eugenics in their defense. It didn’t work.
There is much more to be said about the history of eugenics, of course, but this minimal background suffices to bring us to an interesting article I read recently, penned by Julian Savulescu for the Practical Ethics blog. Savulescu discusses an ongoing controversy in Germany about genetic testing of human embryos. The Leopoldina, Germany’s equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences, has recommended genetic testing of pre-implant embryos, to screen for serious and incurable defects. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has agreed to allow a parliamentary vote on this issue, but also said that she personally supports a ban on this type of testing. Her fear is that the testing would quickly lead to “designer babies,” i.e. to parents making choices about their unborn offspring based not on knowledge about serious disease, but simply because they happen to prefer a particular height or eye color.
Here is where Savulescu’s article becomes interesting. He infers from Merkel’s comments (and many similar others) that people tend to think of selecting traits like eye color as eugenics, while acting to avoid incurable disease is not considered eugenics. He argues that this is exactly wrong: eugenics, as he points out, means “well born,” so eugenicists have historically been concerned with eliminating traits that would harm society (Wendell Holmes’ “three generation of imbeciles”), not with simple aesthetic choices. As Savulescu puts it: “[eugenics] is selecting embryos which are better, in this context, have better lives. Being healthy rather than sick is ‘better.’ Having blond hair and blue eyes is not in any plausible sense ‘better,’ even if people mistakenly think so.”
He has a point, I think. And there is another, related aspect of discussions about eugenics that should be at the forefront of our consideration: what was particularly objectionable about American and Nazi early 20th century eugenics is that the state, not individuals, were to make decisions about who could reproduce and who couldn’t. Savulescu continues: “to grant procreative liberty is the only way to avoid the objectionable form of eugenics that the Nazis practiced.” In other words, it makes all the difference in the world if it is an individual couple who decides to have or not have a baby, or if it is the state that imposes a particular reproductive choice on its citizenry.
So far so good, but then Savulescu expands his argument to a point where I begin to feel somewhat uncomfortable. He says: “[procreative liberty] involves the freedom to choose a child with red hair or blond hair or no hair.” But wait a minute, Savulescu has suddenly sneaked into his argument for procreative liberty the assumption that all choices in this area are on the same level. But while it is hard to object to action aimed at avoiding devastating diseases, it is not quite so obvious to me what arguments favor the idea of designer babies. The first intervention can be justified, for instance, on consequentialist grounds because it reduces the pain and suffering of both the child and the parents. The second intervention is analogous to shopping for a new bag, or a new car, which means that it commodifies the act of conceiving a baby, thus degrading its importance. I’m not saying that that in itself is sufficient to make it illegal, but the ethics of it is different, and that difference cannot simply be swept under the broad rug of “procreative liberty.”
Let me make this clear: commodification isn’t the kind of thing that laws ought to regulate. If people want to buy more bags or cars, or prefer red to blue bags or cars, so be it, there is not much of an ethical issue involved, and certainly no legal one. But designing babies is to treat them as objects, not as human beings, and there are a couple of strong philosophical traditions in ethics that go squarely against that (I’m thinking, obviously, of Kant’s categorical imperative, as well as of virtue ethics; not sure what a consequentialist would say about this, probably she would remain neutral on the issue).
Commodification of human beings has historically produced all sorts of bad stuff, from slavery to exploitative prostitution, and arguably to war (after all, we are using our soldiers as means to gain access to power, resources, territory, etc.). Do we really want to expand commodification’s range to our next generation from the moment of conception?
And of course, there is the issue of access. Across-the-board “procreative liberty” of the type envisioned by Savulescu will cost money because it requires considerable resources. Genetic screening for major diseases is a good thing both for the individuals involved and for society at large, so it is easy to see how it should be paid for by public health care systems (not in the US, naturally, but certainly in Europe). But designing babies would obviously be entirely a matter of aesthetic choice, not supportable via public funding, and therefore accessible only to those parents who could afford it.
Now, imagine that these parents decide to purchase the ability to produce babies that have the type of characteristics that will make them more successful in society: taller, more handsome, blue eyed, blonde, more symmetrical, whatever. We have just created yet another way for the privileged to augment and pass their privileges to the next generation — in this case literally through their genes, not just as real estate or bank accounts. That would quickly lead to an even further divide between the haves and the have-nots, more inequality, more injustice, possibly, in the long run, even two different species (why not design your babies so that they can’t breed with certain types of undesirables, for instance?). Is that the sort of society that Savulescu is willing to envision in the name of his total procreative liberty? That begins to sounds like the libertarian version of the eugenic ideal, something potentially only slightly less nightmarish than the early 20th century original.

50 comments:

  1. ll and all reasonable points but if I dont disagree theres nothing for me to post here so let me just do that

    You are saying that he is implying that "all choices in this area are on the same level" and also that "it is not quite so obvious to me what arguments favor the idea of designer babies"

    But according to all this, do we need arguments for DB ? What Savulescu is saying is that choices that dont affect a child's well being dont have moral implications so they dont need to be justified. Or are you saying that blue eyes and blond hair are superior to brown? Your post could certainly be read that way since you re saying that DB's would only be accessible to the rich ,as opposed to genetic screening, so only rich people would get to have blond kids (who would be more successful in society)and that would enlarge the social gap by providing a way for rich people to have superior (read:blond)children. If indeed blond people arent superior to non blonds then that shouldn't be an issue but you are implying that this isn't the case.

    That said, i agree there is some moral gray area. Some characteristics do make some people superior to others (and by superior i mean people who have a higher a priori chance of succeeding in life, like you do) As an example i could site height or physical attractiveness. These choices would indeed increase the well being of these individuals but they would do so at the expense of others (the non-DB's who would compete with these people for mates etc and probably lose.) so there is an argument to be made here. But would it really hold? Rich people already have better choices when it comes to their babies. Taller and richer men can choose between more attractive and physically fit women and attractive women can choose between more physically fit and rich men. So it is reasonable to conclude that on average rich and attractive people already have more options when it comes to their offspring. Moreover no one is questioning their right to do so and this is based on a respect for a basic instinct which we all have and which is exactly why these people would choose to have a DB. Is it fair for someone to be tall because his daddy was rich and married a supermodel but not because his daddy was rich and had his DNA resequenced? Is it former good because its natural and the latter bad because its not? This isn't at all obvious to me.
    Not to mention that rich people can provide better health care, education and nutrition to their children and again no one is questioning their right to do so. Wouldn't a couple of inches be pretty negligible compared to getting into a good school? Aren't we applying double standards by objecting to this issue alone? Do we really live in a society that values equal opportunities? People (may) be equal before the law but they are not equal to each other and each one of us is tacitly accepting that fact when we acknowledge the social hierarchy (in other words, every time we interact with someone who is our superior). I am not crazy about this fact but that's just how people are and this has to be taken into account when discussing this.

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  2. You are also saying that accepting DB's would "commodify" children and would be analogous to shopping for a new bag and that similar reasoning led to slavery. I don't think these analogies hold any water because when shopping for a bag, one is looking for properties that please him and everybody realizes that the bag itself has no interests. In the case of DB's the parents would realize that the child has its own interests and look for properties that serve the child (and by association themselves). The same can be said for slaves. Finally the whole argument is based on a slippery slope logic that isn't justified. Is it so obvious that caring how your children look like means you are treating them like a commodity? I think not.

    Finally what people find so distasteful about libertarianism is how its wearing its selfishness on its slave (my opinion) but selfishness when it comes to your own children compared to other's is completely socially acceptable.

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  3. Kostas, glad you found a way to disagree even when we agree ;-)

    > What Savulescu is saying is that choices that dont affect a child's well being dont have moral implications so they dont need to be justified. Or are you saying that blue eyes and blond hair are superior to brown? <

    Actually, characteristics like eye color and heights do make a difference on the earning potential of the future adult, so yes, they are "better" in that particular sense, but my major objection is about commodification.

    > Wouldn't a couple of inches be pretty negligible compared to getting into a good school? <

    Actually, the difference isn't negligible:

    http://papers.nber.org/papers/w12466

    > You are also saying that accepting DB's would "commodify" children and would be analogous to shopping for a new bag and that similar reasoning led to slavery. I don't think these analogies hold any water because when shopping for a bag, one is looking for properties that please him and everybody realizes that the bag itself has no interests. <

    It's an analogy, and therefore not perfect. But I think you, like many, actually overestimate how selfless parents are about their children. But that's a whole different discussion.

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  4. I am glad you re glad. Its what I do best. Deep down i am just a troll.

    So in the same (more or less) spirit:

    So basically we agree. I just used the example of hair and eye color as separate from height because i havent heard of any evidence that it affects income or societal status. Do you have a paper on that maybe?

    I am 1.68m tall so you dont have to tell me what thats like. But still reading the abstract was a little bit depressing... 2 inches was a figure of speech though. I dont know if the paper quantifies it and compares it to what i said but my point still stands tall (pun intended...for me :P)

    If the analogy isnt between comparing "purchasing" children and bags for the same underlying reason: that we dont have any moral consideration towards either, then what is it about? I really dont get it. Parents maybe selfish but in general the success of their children is also their own and so their choices would be made with that in mind

    Overall i dont think you addressed any of my points (zing!)

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  5. Children are already commodified. The undesired are aborted, the survivors are put through government schooling. Only the wealthy-connected escape commodification.

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  6. Btw by slave i meant sleeve ,obviously, but somehow this mistake seems deliberate...

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  7. The original eugenics movement was fraught with ignorance and error, and was carried to further nightmarish depths by the Nazis (plus forced sterilization and other measures, such as banning inter-racial marriages, in many now "respectable" countries such as Sweden, Australia or the US).

    Now, some homespun sort of eugenics has always been applied by ordinary humans "in the wild" through mate selection, just as other animals do. In more recent times, selective abortion of malformed or otherwise defective fetuses, including those with Down Syndrome, has also been practiced by many mothers (and doctors).

    In the light of this, selecting among various embryos, looking for the healthier and for the absence of hereditary disease does not look particularly different. In fact, in such situations it is almost always the case that some embryos are discarded, and science could help enlighten the choice by revealing any genetic problem in the embryos. All this does not mean that you or anybody must proceed in that way. Here I'm not concerned with ethical principles as such: just recording what is actually practiced, and what is commonly considered as ethical.
    According to common ethical principles applied nowadays, choosing to abort is up to the individual mother, and a fortiori choosing which embryo gets implanted should also be (in fact, aborting seems an ethically more committed decision than choosing among a set of embryos). The choice made by individual women should be informed by the best available science (e.g. identifying the "best" embryos).
    On the whole I do not see a problem. Regarding ethics, the matter is too new to have been absorbed into commonly held ethical principles: one should wait and see how this thing evolves over time as knowledge improves and procedures are more common. This, by the way, is an attempt to avoid a deductive sort of ethics (deduced from first principles): ethics is IMHO something people make up, just as they make up factories, religions or the habit of having birthday parties, and (like everything else) is conditioned by their actual conditions of life.

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  8. Kostas, I'm not sure which argument of yours I haven't addressed. The analogy with bags holds within the limits I intended it (like all analogies, they are partial, not completely isomorphic). Deigning babies implies a form of commodification, and I think that commodification debases humanity. Plenty of people agree with that if the problem is presented in other terms (e.g., should people be able to sell their children to highest bidder?), so the argument hinges not on whether human commodification is bad, but on whether one agrees that designer babies are an example of it. I think they are.

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  9. I understand what you mean but i still dont see how this analogy works. Anyway maybe i am missing something obvious. My most general point was that all of these behaviors are acceptable when they are not framed in terms of eugenics but in terms of natural procedures or good old fashioned human interactions but not when they involve tampering with one's DNA. This is a double standard and leads me to believe this is just a knee jerk emotional reaction based on feelings like those expressed by the people who say stuff like "we shouldnt play god" and not reason.

    Do you think we should ban sperm banks from providing donor profiles ?

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  10. Ah, I see your point. Yes, I think that sperm banks should not provide donors' profiles, they should simply make sure the donors are healthy. But I wouldn't legislate this sort of things, I'm just saying that if I were running a donor bank that's the policy I would implement.

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  11. Massimo,
    what is "being healthy"?
    Currently having some infection (say cavities in the teeth, some flu, or malaria) should count, but is besides the point. Such donors should wait till they are back in health before they donate their sperm.
    So you must be meaning something that can be transmitted to the future child through his sperm. And this is something he carries in his genes, even if he is not currently afflicted by the disease.
    Now, a hereditary propensity for some disease, in the cases in which it can be measured, is normally not a certainty but a probability; genetics can rarely tell you that any offspring is 100% certain to inherit the genes in question and furthermore, certain to develop the disease. By having such a donor parent, the child will only have an increased propensity for such disease (which in practice means that he would belong to a group of people within which the observed frequency of the disease is p*, larger than the probability p in other groups, and such that 0<p<p*<1.
    If science is able to tell the sperm bank all this, are you saying that if you were running the sperm bank then those facts should be kept hidden and secret, so the recipient mother does not learn them, thus making it possible that she may accept this donor instead of another donor in the ignorance of that elevated probability?

    I do not see the logic of that choice of yours: it may a be a totally respectable (private) choice of yours, if you happen to be the recipient or her spouse, just as your preference for one religion or none, or your preference for or your choice of having vs not having a baby, or for flavored over natural yoghurt, but I do not know whether it would be likely to be accepted in the regulatory code for sperm banks. In America, for one thing, it would be probably deemed unconstitutional by the courts (you should reveal the truth about the donor's genes, just analogous to the requirement of Truth in Advertising: hiding that information from prospective parents is tantamount to cheating or lying to your customers).

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  12. But you do realize you d be out of business the next day, right ?

    Anyway i hope i contributed something to this discussion because for some reason i ve completely lost focus

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  13. Kostas, I'm a philosopher, I'm not concerned with staying in business ;-)

    Hector, I'm not sure I explained myself correctly. The sperm bank would screen for known genetic diseases, and not accept donors affected by them. What I am objecting to is prospective mothers selecting sperms for trivial or non-health related traits, thus commodifying their babies, as if they were choosing a car from a catalog.

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  14. It seems to me that the right to produce a "designer baby" follows from the same right that the right to abort one's pregnancy follows from: the right to unconditionally control one's body. If a woman possesses the right to kill her fetus, then surely she has the right to tinker with it cosmetically. I support the right to control one's body as such, hence I believe these derivative rights are legitimate.

    If designer babies became a possibility, then I think purposefully engineering your child with a prohibitive defect would encourage withering ostracism, so I believe that such a practice would be strongly disincentivized. Far more people would take the opportunity to enhance their babies.

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  15. Massimo,

    If the human commodification denotes, among other things, "slavery to exploitative prostitution, and arguably to war (after all, we are using our soldiers as means to gain access to power, resources, territory, etc.)" then it appears that perhaps any endeavor that treats human labour as a means qualifies as human commodification. But, if this is the case, then perhaps some distinctions should be made. Slavery is coercive per se. Prostitution is not, though because of its illegal status it tends to encourage those who have no qualms about coercing others. Waging war with conscripted soldiers is a form of slavery, hence it is coercive. Waging war with volunteers is not a form of slavery or aggression (assuming this war is one of self-defense).

    I just think that the denotation of human commodification as offered above is too broad to make it worthy of wholesale condemnation.

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  16. One more thing: If a woman wants to have a child but instead of going to the sperm bank choses some random guy because he is tall and handsome. Would you say shes "commodifying" her baby then?

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  17. @Kostas and Massimo. Ok, I'm going to steal from a conversation I just had with Allen Larson, and tie it to the analogies used in the above arguments. The point was also partially brought up by Hector M.

    By relating one choosing a child's traits based on desired characteristics, and buying a new bag, I think a major point of the analogy is missed. When shopping for a new bag (i.e. selecting traits for your child), you first decide which stores to shop from (or you choose who to mate with). It was previously mentioned that the wealthy have more options, which is entirely true. The wealthy can shop in the most expensive stores, or the cheapest stores. Similarly, wealthy people can mate with those with the most culturally desired traits, or those who have less desired traits. We all shop in stores that carry things we desire, then select the exact item we want to have. If a store doesn't even carry the item we want, we would never shop there. So if you want a blue-eyed baby (and you have brown eyes) you would mate with a brown-eyed person. Similarly, if you wanted a "Gucci" bag, you would shop at a Gucci store. You would never shop at wal-mart for a Gucci bag. A good question is, do we find anything wrong with selecting a bag at wal-mart that looks exactly like a Gucci bag, and just hope that it fools people?

    I wish I had more time to write more comments. Very fascinating topic!

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  18. Massimo wrote, "Let me make this clear: commodification isn’t the kind of thing that laws ought to regulate. If people want to buy more bags or cars, or prefer red to blue bags or cars, so be it, there is not much of an ethical issue involved, and certainly no legal one."

    Where does our trash end up Massimo? Why isn't it an ethical problem we buy what we don't need and throw away what's not broken? You take issue with the commodification of our biological products but not any of our other ones, nor what that leads to.

    Americans suffer intellectually because of our technocratic lust. But the "third" world suffers environmentally, culturally and physically because of it, and that is an ethical issue which should be brought under law.

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  19. Massimo,
    the sperm bank should, then, not accept donors "affected" by known diseases. But in fact this means "having genes that increase the odds of developing the disease".
    Now those marker genes need not be the actual genes "for" the disease, but probably genes for other characteristics that usually accompany the said disease (for instance, being black increases the probability of having genes "for" sickle-cell anemia). Should these indirect indicators or proxies be allowed too? Why yes, or why not?
    Then about "trivial" pursuits: the very definition of "trivial" is quite subjective. There is, I suspect, a continuum from severe and almost certainly inherited diseases, through less severe conditions with only an elevated propensity, to increased odds of less lethal conditions that could affect the future health of the child, or perhaps not exactly his health but his social and economic success in life. Say, to make the point starker, suppose a gene strongly associated with aggressiveness or attention deficit or impaired mathematical ability is identified in the sperm. Should the sperm bank reject such donors (who may not suffer the condition themselves)? If a woman meets a man with those genes (once the knowledge is available) she is likely not to want him to be the father of her children. So why should she be kept in the dark when receiving sperm from a stranger having the same genetic material?

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  20. Hector:

    > probably genes for other characteristics that usually accompany the said disease (for instance, being black increases the probability of having genes "for" sickle-cell anemia). Should these indirect indicators or proxies be allowed too? <

    No. Genomics is advanced enough to distinguish between a gene that actually causes a disease (sickle cell allele) and one that doesn't (genes for melanin production that make one black).

    Harry:

    > Where does our trash end up Massimo? Why isn't it an ethical problem we buy what we don't need and throw away what's not broken? <

    When did I say that other problems created by commodification are not ethical problems too? But there still is a difference between what is ethical/unethical and the additional step of making something illegal. We can and do regulate certain types of commodification, but we need separate justification for every piece of legislation, and this post is about designer babies, not trash.

    Kostas:

    > If a woman wants to have a child but instead of going to the sperm bank choses some random guy because he is tall and handsome. Would you say shes "commodifying" her baby then? <

    No, or at the least not in the same way. I think most people don't pick their mates as a result of calculations about how their offspring will come out (not conscious calculations, I mean). We fall in love or lust for people because of emotional / hormonal reactions.

    Michael:

    > I just think that the denotation of human commodification as offered above is too broad to make it worthy of wholesale condemnation. <

    Yes, I agree with the distinctions you make.

    Also:

    > It seems to me that the right to produce a "designer baby" follows from the same right that the right to abort one's pregnancy follows from: the right to unconditionally control one's body <

    Well, I actually favor certain limits to abortion. Let's say that a woman discovers that her baby is perfectly healthy, but will have brown eyes instead of blue ones. I would think that for her to abort the fetus would certainly be unethical, and it should probably be illegal. I support abortion rights, but they are a serious matter, not to be treated as, well, shopping for a new bag...

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  21. Massimo, wouldn't the sperm bank represent a commodification of the sperm donor rather than of the baby? The choice here really is traits of the father. There's no guarantee such traits would all carry over to the baby. That seems different from Designer Babies, where you can guarantee specific traits.

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  22. "That begins to sounds like the libertarian version of the eugenic ideal, something potentially only slightly less nightmarish than the early 20th century original."

    As Kostas summarized so eloquently some are already living in that nightmare. You haven't seen it because the window in your tower doesn't face that way. Ask the people who are ugly, poor and sick just how their lives are. Look at the faces and forms of the people on the magazine covers in the grocery store and then look at the faces and forms of those walking by them. Look at the faces and forms of the people on the movie screens and the faces and forms of the people in the audience. You will not fail to notice the gap. Eugenics is a fact of life and your objection to it is simply that it is now practiced with more precision rather than crudely as it has been. People have value according to their physical, mental and social traits. That is the way it is. Equality is a pernicious myth. And Massimo's Sperm bank is right there to enforce the division of the species by screening for genetic diseases thus dividing people into the diseased and non, which seems on the face of it to be a tad hypocritical of you or at the very least take the wind out of your 'Eugenics will divide humanity' sails since by your own example you are ready to do exactly that. The only way you'd get equality would be if everyone picked their mates by lottery. Try to enforce that if you'd care to.

    More choices = more freedom, and if people can't handle that freedom then more's the pity but will you then take a moral stand against freedom and progress? You can't really argue that their choices are affecting you. What difference would it make in your life if you saw more blond haired blue eyed children around?

    Take heart though. Screening is just the first step. Having everyone sequenced will be next and then the genetic manipulation will begin and the inclusion of any gene from any species as well as some we might create will be fair game. Welcome indeed to the Planet of Doctor Moreau. Just think of the athletes you might make with the addition of some animal genes. There would be some sports I might actually watch.

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  23. Hi Massimo,

    Excellent article. You raise a number of interesting and valid concerns about the consequences of eugenics.

    I anticipate that legislators would have their hands full regardless of whether they permit genetic treatments that go beyond curing diseases. Do you think this could become yet another partisan issue (i.e., one party supporting public access for treatment and another supporting the rights of those who can afford more)?

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  24. Eric:

    > wouldn't the sperm bank represent a commodification of the sperm donor rather than of the baby? <

    Yes, of course, to some extent. But for one thing the sperm donor, unlike the baby, is an adult human being capable of making his own ethical decisions. Besides, commodification comes in degrees, some of which are more acceptable than others, I think.

    Mark,

    > Do you think this could become yet another partisan issue? <

    Darn good question! I don't see why it should, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Wanna bet which way the two parties are going to go?

    Thameron,

    > Here is something you don't see every day. A fellow schooled in evolutionary biology who makes a statement implying (at least on the face of it) that human beings are somehow not animals and their thoughts are separate from nature. <

    You know, your sarcasm is beginning to get on my nerves, and it's not helping, because otherwise you make good points. In this case, though, Sherlock, of course I know that human beings are animals, I did take Biology 101. But my statement stands: human beings are moral agents because they are capable of reflecting on what they do. (Most) other animals aren't. Are you suggesting that ants are self-conscious and therefore morally responsible?

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  25. Massimo,

    Is there a principled difference between a couple selecting traits like eye/skin/hair color and perhaps non-superficial traits like basic personality (if that's possible) via genetic engineering and a couple choosing which child to adopt from the orphanage based on similar criteria?

    Obviously with the former there is a higher degree of control, but presumably in the early stages of the technology the options would be limited by technical capabilities in a way sufficiently similar to the choice limitations of an adopting couple given all the potential children to adopt. Given that the former is a commodification of child-rearing, I wonder how you might deny that the latter is.

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  26. SJK,

    good question. No, I can't see any principled difference there, which means I would consider a selection from an orphanage a type of commodification. (Again, however, as in the case of the sperm bank, the orphanage should let prospective parents know of any serious problem with the child, in terms of either physical or mental health).

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  27. "Are you suggesting that ants are self-conscious and therefore morally responsible?"
    To those such as E.O. Wilson who study the comparative behaviors of ants versus people, it would seem that on the level that ant cultures occupy there is a form of moral responsibility imposed on ants as individuals. Morality is a cultural phenomenon, and arguably all species that communicate in some fashion have cultural bonds.

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  28. Very informative write-up. In my opinion, another argument against designer babies is that one should not unnecessarily interfere with the course of nature. Like you mentioned that curing certain genetic diseases adds to the overall wellbeing hence it is necessary. But interfering with normal biological processes just for the sake of choosing aesthetically preferred offspring is undesirable from a naturalists point of view. If something goes wrong in the case of necessary interference then one can argue that it was a dictate of necessity. But if the human agency makes an error in the latter case then such an agency is to be blamed for its failing.

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  29. I am a bit uncomfortable with the appeal to nature as a form of argument here. Zest's comment above is an example of the naturalistic fallacy, and is a logical fallacy. In fact some of Massimo's arguments are awfully close. For example, choosing a mate's characteristics for reproduction is OK, but it is not OK to choose characteristics oustide of sexual selection? Perhaps, but the "why" has not been answered here sufficiently. If the argument is that people don't really choose mates that way... that is an assumption that should not go unchallenged. I'm not sure that the same people who would choose to pick their child's eye or skin color would not also pick their mates using the same thinking. It seems to me that the only difference is the degree of certainty that those characteristics will be past on and the mechanism of this selection. The latter is close to the naturalistic fallacy, and is not a great "argument."

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  30. cc, where did you get the idea that I said that it is not okay to choose characteristics outside of sexual selection? Genetic markers for disease are a perfectly acceptable reason for selecting against a mate, and they wouldn't necessarily be available without modern genetics. I simply objected to superficial choices, like eye color, on the ground that they commodity, and hence demean, human dignity.

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  31. Baron P,

    How do you justify the application of culture to ants? Culture is learned (not instinctive), shared, and symbolic. I'm not entirely sure that ants fit the definition. Communication is not indicative of culture; language, however, is.

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  32. My apologies Massimo. I will attempt to filter out the sarcasm and leave the salient points intact. I just have a strong reaction to the kind of language that tries to separate humans from the other animals because it is very often used by the religious. i.e. human beings have souls and animals do not. Just because humans are at one end of the spectrum doesn't mean we aren't on the spectrum.

    So as I understand it humans are moral agents because their brains are capable of constructing models of reality with predictive power of the results of their actions and most animals cannot do that is that correct?

    I think that view just leads to a raft of unanswerable questions. Questions like who gets to decide what is moral and what isn't? Clearly such standards will not be derived from supernatural sources and there will be no final arbiter to appeal to for resolution.

    It is much more concrete to see things not in terms of morality but rather in terms of strategies and success. A strategy is either successful or it is not (or possibly partially) and by success I mean things like leaving more descendants and gaining a greater control over matter and energy. Obviously such strategies will need to take into account the inherent characteristics (desires and fears) of the participants. At least there there would be something you could measure.

    I think your stance on this particular eugenics issue is unnecessarily alarmist. Human beings are already a commodity to an extent. We are already assigned a value according to physical and mental characteristics we did not choose.

    If I recall correctly there is also good data to substantiate the fact that attractive children receive more attention from their parents so we could reasonably expect that if parents can make their children more attractive then they will give them more attention and I think most would agree that would be beneficial.

    I don't think the fear of marginal additional human commodification outweigh the parents freedom to choose.

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  33. Massimo,

    >Yes, of course, to some extent. But for one thing the sperm donor, unlike the baby, is an adult human being capable of making his own ethical decisions. Besides, commodification comes in degrees, some of which are more acceptable than others, I think.<

    Yes, of course. I agree. However, to me that is quite different from the idea of dictating traits for a baby. When a woman (or couple) choose from various sperm donors, even if they wish to choose based on trivial traits, we can already assume that the donor has consented. However, there's no guarantee that this choice will have any desired effect on the child.

    So I don't see any reason to consider choosing traits of sperm donors as being unethical or undesirable. Especially since a parent could do the same thing without a sperm bank, by just finding a willing person in the flesh. Granted, that's not how most people choose their mates, but even if it was, I wouldn't presume it to be necessarily wrong.

    There seems to be a distinction between simply selecting for initial conditions (choosing a mate) and manipulating a process already in motion (genetic modification of existing embryos). This might explain why some people have problems with GM foods, but regular selectively bred crops are fine. I don't know.

    Still, my point is that I have to disagree with the notion that a blind choice sperm bank would be more ethical or moral than one that allowed donor selection.

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  34. Will said,
    "Culture is learned (not instinctive), shared, and symbolic."
    I agree, especially that it's not instinctive. Organisms could not learn from experience if all anticipated problems to arise in anticipated changes in environments were pre-solved strategically by the pre-acquisition of instinctive strategies that didn't require any tinkering or upgrading - or that were expected to be tinkered with successfully by lucky accident.

    But since all that's presumably impossible, an organism, let alone one of the societal variety, would likely not have found existence except in a purely static environment. So as Massimo might say, it just happens that organisms supplement their instincts by a trial and error process of learning. And all organisms communicate in one form or another which seems to facilitate the learning and the application of those lessons strategically. Lessons which include rules and regulations by the way. (And some of which by my reckoning do in time become instinctive.)
    And then there's the problem of replicating that learning when they double and redouble their cellular structures for survival purposes (or for the survival that "just happens" if they do that). As even I can understand that memories that have not been encoded somehow in their genes stay and die with them.
    But unless all such organisms die at once, shared memories of experience will persist in the surviving bodies to be communicated by example to their progeny. There's a lot of stuff in the literature as to how this is accomplished, and see Bonnie Bassler's work in particular for some credible examples.
    But then you say, "Communication is not indicative of culture; language, however, is."
    And of course if that's true, ants as well as most other animals have no culture.

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  35. Baron P:

    Behaviors exhibited by ants may or may not be learned and shared, but they are not symbolic, which means that their learned and shared behavior is not cultural, but social.

    According to the way culture is used in anthropology, only humans have fully-developed culture, although there is some debate about whether or not some animals (mostly non-human primates) have a rudimentary form of culture.

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  36. I thought this was very interesting. I think that in the future this will inevitably happen. Our population is reaching 7 billion (Carl Sagan accent applied) people. Those post-apocalyptic books and movies come to mind when considering this step. It seems to me our society, especially others around the world are becoming more willing to push the "ethical" envelope and challenge the value we place on humans, etc. Personally, I think designer babies is disgusting, but that does not mean it is wrong or disgusting. The reason why people are not keen on eugenics is due to a genetic fallacy, as mentioned in the man post. I truly believe it is all relative despite our emotionally-laden values expressed when debating topics such as eugenics. Give it time. It will happen.

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  37. Thameron, no problem. But surely you didn't think I was making a religious-type exceptionalist argument for humans? I simply think that some quantitative biological differences are great enough that for all effective purposes they set a qualitative boundary.

    And I don't think my position leads to a raft of unanswerable questions. We, the collective humanity, gets to make moral decisions, because we are the only on the planet capable of doing so. And we do it precisely by engaging each other in discussions like these, where we provide reasons for our positions.

    athenmccombs, I never understood why so many people think that certain paths of action are inevitable. Human beings can make decisions, including the decision to steer away from certain paths of action because we deemed them unethical.

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  38. "cc, where did you get the idea that I said that it is not okay to choose characteristics outside of sexual selection?"

    I was referring to these "superficial traits" that you reference. Do you view mate selection for these superficial traits in the same way? Perhaps most people do not choose their mates like this, but I gather that most people will also not have designer babies. I think that the same people who look for very specific traits in a mate like: a blonde hair blue eyed wealthy male over 6 feet tall, may also be the same people who choose a blond haired blue eyed baby who is likely to be tall. Why is one any worse than the other?

    Also demeaning human dignity is not well defined. Whose dignity is demeaned? Is it the child who is chosen, or will dignity be demeaned for those who are not customized to their parent's specifications? If I chose my child's eye color (which I would never do), would I value that child any less? I can not imagine that to be true.

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  39. cc, I don't actually think a lot of people choose their mates with eugenics standards in mind. If they do, they are a bit on the cuckoo side, and yes, potentially demeaning their partners and their children.

    As for whose dignity gets affected, the child as well as the parents. And yes, people can diminish their dignity because of their own choices.

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  40. Will, all communication, if you accept that it occurs at all, is symbolic.
    And now you say "only humans have fully-developed culture" as compared to the "rudimentary form" of culture of primates. Which assumes that our culture has no further room for development I suppose - but if you didn't assume that, then you might consider that all cultures are at a certain stage of development, and the first stage was the one where social lives originated.

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  41. And Will, as to what you argue is not language, because it's not symbolic, here's a quote from a TED talk by Bonnie Bassler:

    "What I hope you think, is that bacteria can talk to each other, they use chemicals as their words, they have an incredibly complicated chemical lexicon, that we're just now starting to learn about. Of course what that allows bacteria to do is to be multicellular. So in the spirit of TED they're doing things together because it makes a difference. What happens is that bacteria have these collective behaviors, and they can carry out tasks that they could never accomplish if they simply acted as individuals."

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  42. Baron P,

    Communication may or may not be symbolic, but it's not always learned. (I don't agree that communication is always symbolic. For example, a child pointing to a toy is a non-symbolic gesture that communicates the child's want.) The example you provided from the TED talk is not learned, it is inherited, which makes it explicitly not cultural. Language is always learned, never inherited.

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  43. Will, you keep moving the goal posts here and it's an avoidance tactic which benefits neither of us in the end.
    Communication is at some point learned, and at some later point may become instinctive (and instincts later augmented by learning and so forth). Newer findings about babies and their instinctive grasp of language rules means to me that at least some of our own instinctive language processes have evolved from learned experiences.
    And in any case your very argument that communication is "not always" learned was obviously based on the premise that it's "sometimes" learned. Because we both know that to say communication is never learned is ridiculous.

    And in the context of whether use of language connotes use of the culture that necessitates its learning, your argument is pointless. You cannot successfully determine that language at some point has not come from learning, and that learning has not come from culture.
    So you end by saying: "Language is always learned, never inherited." Wrong when it comes to humans, so that offers proof of nothing when it comes to bacteria or other social species of life, or comes down to distinguishing communication from language.

    And why was that kid pointing to the toy in any case? If it was a meaningless gesture, then it was not communication. If it had meaning, then the toy was symbolic of that meaning. If, as I suppose, the toy was wanted for itself, all toys of course are symbols of the thing that makes you want them.
    There are also arguments out there as to why all gestures are based on symbolic patterns shared by the particular species that must understand the gestures, but I'm only willing at this juncture to point that out and not explain it further.

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  44. Baron P,

    I apologize if my posts are unclear. Let me try to clear things up a bit.

    There are three basic criteria that must be met in order to call something culture: It must be learned, shared, and symbolic (or, culture cannot be inherited, individual, and non-symbolic). One out of three or two out of three is not good enough.

    Some communication is learned; some communication is not learned. I agree, to say communication is never learned is ridiculous, but to say that communication is always learned is equally ridiculous. So, communication cannot be a factor in deciding whether or not something is culture, as it can be learned or inherited. And even if I were to grant you that all communication is symbolic, it is still sometimes inherited and, so, cannot be a determining factor as to whether something is culture.

    Now, you say that I am wrong when I say that language is never inherited. I challenge you to find a child that begins speaking fluently in a language without learning it. Yes, we inherit the capacity for language, but we do not inherit language itself.

    You are conflating symbolic with meaning. Something can have meaning and not be symbolic. The child pointing at the toy is a communication of a desire. The point does not represent something abstract, like a letter in the alphabet or the country of the United States. Nonsymbolic communication is more concrete than language and is limited to the immediate environment. Symbolic communication and language don't have those limitations.

    Granted, there are many debates about communication versus language; however, at least within anthropology, they are separated. (We often refer to Charles Hockett's design features of language to draw distinctions between the two.)

    My original point was that language is indicative of culture, but communication is not because communication is more broad and not always symbolic, while culture is a learned, shared, symbolic process of meaning-making.

    I'll finish by asking you this: you originally proposed that ants have culture. What do you mean by that? How are you defining culture? How can you tell that they have it?

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  45. Will writes as quoted and I respond,
    "There are three basic criteria that must be met in order to call something culture: It must be learned, shared, and symbolic (or, culture cannot be inherited, individual, and non-symbolic). One out of three or two out of three is not good enough."
    OK so far, which does not rule out (yet) that ants cannot have a culture.
    (And lets not restrict our understanding to the traditional views of cultural anthropology when dealing with evolutionary biology for example.)


    "Some communication is learned; some communication is not learned. I agree, to say communication is never learned is ridiculous, but to say that communication is always learned is equally ridiculous."

    Not OK, because at some point in the evolution of a social species the processing of information as meaningful and instructive was learned and communicative functions evolved accordingly, and have not ceased to evolve.

    "So, communication cannot be a factor in deciding whether or not something is culture, as it can be learned or inherited."

    Not OK, not only because this stems from the false premise that instincts can bypass the learning process, but because whether or not they could or did is irrelevant to the functional objectives and benefits of culture.

    "And even if I were to grant you that all communication is symbolic, it is still sometimes inherited and, so, cannot be a determining factor as to whether something is culture."

    Not OK, because again the heritability of some aspect of communication is irrelevant to the use of culture as a repository for the type of information to be learned that would not otherwise be heritable. Learning is continuous and the above would include what the social group has learned in the ongoing process of adapting to an ever changing environment, for example.

    
"Now, you say that I am wrong when I say that language is never inherited. I challenge you to find a child that begins speaking fluently in a language without learning it. Yes, we inherit the capacity for language, but we do not inherit language itself."

    But here you are really making my point, not yours, because to say never seems to be saying that no part of language is inherited. And my objection was and is that the function by which we construct language has become instinctive and heritable, and yet the needed function of our culture is pass on the more immediate developments of how we've learned to use that function effectively.

    "You are conflating symbolic with meaning."

    Yes, as symbols are meant to stand for something else. They are metaphorical, just as words are.

    "Something can have meaning and not be symbolic."

    No, it can't, unless your sensory apparatus is infallible and capable of interpreting the reality of nature to a certainty.

    (It seems I need to continue with part 2 here.)

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  46. Part 2:
    "The child pointing at the toy is a communication of a desire. The point does not represent something abstract, like a letter in the alphabet or the country of the United States. Nonsymbolic communication is more concrete than language and is limited to the immediate environment. Symbolic communication and language don't have those limitations."

    Making a line that differentiates the symbolic from the non-symbolic as a way to separate out the meaningful is in my view to create a false dichotomy. When it comes to the very fluid nature of meaning, one is not the alternative to the other.
    You are of course attempting to sort out language as opposed to communication, which again has no relevance to the use or non-use of culture as a repository of meaningful information.
    And to represent desire by pointing to its object is the using of that object as a symbol that is meant to draw an abstract inference.

    "Granted, there are many debates about communication versus language; however, at least within anthropology, they are separated. (We often refer to Charles Hockett's design features of language to draw distinctions between the two.)"

    Fine, keep it within anthropology, but we're not just talking about humankind here, which as I recall was an original objection of mine.



    "My original point was that language is indicative of culture, but communication is not because communication is more broad and not always symbolic, while culture is a learned, shared, symbolic process of meaning-making."

    And I believe I have shown why I think you are wrong there and where. You can't eliminate meaning from communication on the basis that it is somehow not as advanced as language, and therefor cannot have contributed to the evolutionary development of culture.

    "I'll finish by asking you this: you originally proposed that ants have culture. What do you mean by that? How are you defining culture? How can you tell that they have it?"

    Because they are surviving as a society with almost incomparable efficiency.

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  47. Baron P,

    "Not OK, because at some point in the evolution of a social species the processing of information as meaningful and instructive was learned and communicative functions evolved accordingly, and have not ceased to evolve."

    I'm not sure I accept that premise. Some communicative functions are inherited and not learned--they are present from birth. I don't know how you can prove that all communicative function was learned at some point and that none of it arose biologically. How, exactly, are you defining communication?

    "Not OK, not only because this stems from the false premise that instincts can bypass the learning process, but because whether or not they could or did is irrelevant to the functional objectives and benefits of culture."

    I'm not sure how you are using "culture" anymore as you refuse to define it. "Culture" has no functional objectives (it's a process, not a thing), so I'm a little confused by what you mean.

    "But here you are really making my point, not yours, because to say never seems to be saying that no part of language is inherited."

    That's exactly what I'm saying. No part of language is inherited. The capacity for language, however, is.

    "And my objection was and is that the function by which we construct language has become instinctive and heritable"

    Capacity for language ≠ language.

    "No, it can't, unless your sensory apparatus is infallible and capable of interpreting the reality of nature to a certainty."

    If I shine a light at you, I am communicating my presence. There is no symbolism inherent in that communication. You may attribute symbolic or metaphorical meaning to it, but it can be a meaningful communication without symbolism. Symbolism ≠ meaning.

    "And to represent desire by pointing to its object is the using of that object as a symbol that is meant to draw an abstract inference."

    What is the abstract inference? Pointing is a gesture, it is non-symbolic. The object being seen by you as a symbol is due to factors other than the actual gesture. In other words, the gesture itself is not symbolic, even if you assign symbolic meaning to the object that is being pointed to.

    "Fine, keep it within anthropology, but we're not just talking about humankind here, which as I recall was an original objection of mine.

"

    And I originally challenged your view that non-human animals (particularly ants) have culture, which is a particularly human trait that so far has not been found in other species (though, as I said, there is some debate that crude forms of culture exist among non-human primates).

    "And I believe I have shown why I think you are wrong there and where. You can't eliminate meaning from communication on the basis that it is somehow not as advanced as language, and therefor cannot have contributed to the evolutionary development of culture."

    Again, I'm not eliminating meaning from communication, I'm saying that not all communication is symbolic, and not all communication is learned, which means that communication cannot be used to indicate culture as it is defined in the social sciences, particularly anthropology. I never said communication hasn't contributed to the development of culture, by the way. I said it is not indicative of culture.

    Obviously we are just operating with very different ideas of what constitutes meaning, symbolism, language, communication, and culture. I doubt we will come to an agreement on these issues.

    Finally, you have completely avoided answering my question. I really am interested in your view that ants have culture. You have not defined what you mean by culture and what the criteria are in your view. It seems to me that you are conflating social with cultural (society and culture), but they are not the same thing. Are you using them to mean the same thing?

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  48. But designing babies is to treat them as objects, not as human beings, and there are a couple of strong philosophical traditions in ethics that go squarely against that

    Not to mention the societal cost of the sort of eugenics already practiced in China and India -- the selective abortion of female embryos

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  49. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  50. How can anyone think we have not been practicing eugenics since birth control became an option for women. When was the last time you saw a fundie at the Harvard wedding chapel? Or a Harvard grad at a Southern Baptist wedding. The only thing wrong with the cartoon is she is has already picked out the suitor for which she will kill the contraceptive. Usually after a long courtship in which she examined how he would fit into her tribe and provide for the children he sired. I will trust the picky female over the white coat any day to make the right choice.

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