Children to order
Do designer kids scare you?
Dmitry Tselikov, CompulentaDesigner kids – smart, healthy, athletic – are about to knock on our doors.
Are we ready for them? Thomas Murray, a bioethicist from the non-profit Hastings Research Center (USA), is trying to answer this question in the journal Science: Thomas H. Murray, Stirring the Simmering “Designer Baby" Pot.
What is the use of such offspring? What restrictions should be imposed on parents and doctors? The topic is not taken from the ceiling: in February, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) met to consider conducting clinical trials of genetic manipulation methods that prevent mitochondrial diseases.
The layman has been scared of designer children since the 1990s, when talk began about human cloning and the creation of people endowed with superpowers. At that time, the methods proposed were mostly purely speculative, but now genetic selection has gone so far that such rumors no longer seem fantastic.
For example, parents can already order preimplantation genetic diagnostics, that is, checking embryos created with IVF for the presence of predisposition to diseases, as well as gender. Such a diagnosis is possible even after an ordinary conception, because fragments of fetal DNA circulate in the bloodstream of a pregnant woman. In addition, it has recently become known about the successful extraction of defective mitochondria from an egg with replacement with healthy ones from a donor.
It is not yet possible to test future children for genes that determine the development of intelligence, hair color or athletic abilities, but, according to some, this is temporary. 23andMe has recently filed a patent application related to such tests. However, it is not very clear how she is going to implement this idea, because intelligence or, say, growth is determined by the complex interaction of dozens of genes, as well as the environment. Screening of the entire fetal genome for predisposition to diseases in the long term - to Alzheimer's disease or diabetes, for example, seems more likely.
Medical organizations have different attitudes to these prospects. Thus, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine considers the wishes of clients regarding the sex of the unborn child, while the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists prohibits the choice of gender in order to avoid gender discrimination. The FDA only cares about the safety and effectiveness of the proposed methods, leaving ethical issues aside.
But it is to them that Mr. Murray dedicates his material. Is it good or not to be a designer child? The thinker suggests proceeding from this question. If parents get the opportunity to determine the features of their future child, will they get into the habit of guiding their child in everything, depriving him of the right to choose? And what will they say when it turns out that manipulating genes did not lead to the birth of the person they wanted? "You can order an individual with the characteristics of Michael Jordan, who will hate basketball and become an accountant," writes Mr. Murray.
But not everyone agrees that the issue of designer children raises new and important ethical issues. For example, the philosopher Bonnie Steinbock from the University of Albany (USA) sees nothing fundamentally new here compared to traditional methods of parental influence on a child through sports sections, music lessons and the most ordinary upbringing. "If it seems wrong to us that parents want to raise an intelligent and kind person, then let's refuse to be parents at all and leave the children to themselves, throwing them out on the street," she says.
John Robertson, professor of law and bioethics at the University of Texas at Austin (USA), also does not consider it necessary to introduce any special rules. If, for example, musicality is highly valued in some family, then there is no reason to forbid parents to choose an embryo with the genes of absolute hearing. If a child wants to play football, and they force him to master the trombone, it may not be very good from a certain point of view, but at the state level such things are not regulated yet, and thank God.
Prepared based on the materials of LiveScience – Children to Order: The Ethics of 'Designer Babies'.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru17.03.2014