Advanced IVF: Ethics?

[Venetia]

IVF, or, In-Vitro Fertilization, has been a science that's been around for a while. Every year it seems, scientists are making leaps and bounds in their abilities in creating viable, and even SUPERIOR, human zygotes.

If you are unfamiliar with the process: Ova (eggs) are removed from a donor woman's ovary. Sperm is collected from a donor male. (This is often done as, say, a married couple.) In a lab, the sperm is allowed to combine with the eggs, creating zygotes. In many cases, this process is done with multiple ova, and the zygote(s) used is the one deemed most viable. It is transplanted into a woman's uterus (whether the donor mother's or a surrogate's), and then develops naturally.

It is now possible to test a zygote's chromosomal makeup, to identify many factors. They can identify the zygote's predestined sex, their immunities/susceptibilities towards diseases and defects, and even things like the color of their hair or the most likely shape of their nose (if researched thoroughly enough).

While the science behind it is still in development, and they cannot predict everything, or create a possible image of a child's physical future, or predict normal cognitive ability, it's not outside reason to believe that such a thing could be possible sometime in the coming decades.

Many couples are seeking this more advanced IVF as a means of securing their child's health and well-being. There is a moral problem facing this, however: In taking away the natural selection of mostly random outcomes, are we possibly stepping into the territory of Eugenics?



I myself am unable to have children, so my only options are adoption and IVF in a surrogate. Were I do go the route of IVF, I really think I'd WANT to ask for my child to have certain traits, or discard certain traits. Most of this has to do with hereditary problems, but I also think I'd want to pick the sex. But I find myself asking, is that a bad thing to do?

If you found out that your mother CHOSE for you to be male or female, would you feel contempt at her making that sacred decision FOR YOU?

More than the GATTACA syndrome--is it ethically sound for any person to make the judgment on what ANYONE should look like for their entire lives? Who they should BE for their entire lives? Even before they're born?

 

[psiclone]

This is so funny you brought this up, cause I just saw something on late night TV a week ago, about people with "super powers." Some powers were people who could see and/or taste sounds, a guy born with no eyes who could paint just like he had them (although that one isn't that out of this world cause all it takes is to just touch things and you can 'see' them in your head, try it sometime. Close your eyes and touch something you've never felt; can you see it in your head?) Another one was a guy who was highly resistant to cold, he ran half of a marathon in his underwear in the arctic, I believe the temperature was -20 below when he finished. There were other ones, but I can only remember this other one: there was a guy who was trying to become immortal by eating a very specific diet, taking some meds and other shit. He did that because his parents died when they were 40+ cause of some hereditary thing, and he took all kinds of tests and shit and basically, his "internal clock" or what have you is that of a 23 year old when he himself is 50 I think.

Back to the topic, if you consider those things, then, maybe it's a good thing to mess with a zygote for, maybe, the resistance to cold. I don't see how tasting music would be good.. especially after those people said that some sounds tasted sour. I'm sure some sounds even taste like shit.. but they couldn't say that on the show, I guess.

If your family has a long history of cancer, maybe they can prevent you from getting it? Idk, it's a touchy subject, and no matter which way it goes there will be people who don't like <the decision>.

 

[Mirku]

I wouldn't mind if my parents discarded some negative traits like say being born colorblind and so on. I mean nobody really wants to be born like that, it just happens and people have to deal with it. But being able to chose gender is definitely a problem since if this process becomes affordable for even people with a low earning they would unbalance the natural selection since the odds of having male or female will change and whichever group has more will have more competition for love.

Changing appearances depends, I mean it's kinda rude but a lot of parents don't want an ugly baby/child. So if it turns out the baby will be born/grow up to be a very ugly child and might be made fun for that the parents will probably want to change that. Not for the child but mostly since they don't want their child to face these kinds of problems(other children making fun of him/her and so on). It's hard to say what's right or wrong in changing appearances, I believe the government will probably have to place some laws on this, pressured by religious groups and such.('God' probably doesn't like this in their opinion. For a fictional character he has quiet an influence.)

That's somewhat my opinion on the subject.

 

[Wolfgang]

That is an interesting concept, seeing that the chosen IVF would make a different child then what could have come about during normal inpregnation. I think that having the choice of what sex or certain traits your child should have would be as morally ethical as marrying your daughter off to a certain handsome healthy man to ensure a beautiful long living child. Of course, that was our practice of the past... and certain inbreeding occured, much like the soon to be loss of certain genes with the selective zygotes of the IVF. What I'm saying is that we have already been down this road, and we haven't ruined ourselves thus far. To say that parents cannot choose thier child because we lose the fated battle of survival of the fittest would be the same as saying that we should make it illegal for men to masterbate due to all the millions of 'fated' sperm that die needlessly, when they were 'fated' to make a certain child.

 

[___]

I don't consider it an ethical problem so much as a bad idea. It contributes to the homogenization of the human species, and that is never good. We already have a relatively narrow genetic pool, and the narrower it gets the more susceptible we are to things like pandemics and drastic environmental changes which could drive us to extinction or extreme depopulation. It's especially stupid  where it's used simply to effect fashionable physical attributes. Remember, today's undesirable trait may be tomorrow's best hope for the survival of the species. Take for example the relationship between sickle-cell anemia and malaria.  Going around haphazardly narrowing the human genome could have unanticipated and disastrous side effects. There's also the problem that two or more traits that are arbitrarily labeled undesirable may have unanticipated beneficial effects when brought together, contributing to the further evolution of the species.

On a small scale, meddling isn't such a big deal but I find the idea of broadly applied genetic tinkering a little intimidating. It may be that in the near future our grasp of genetics becomes so perfect and absolute that these are no longer concerns; we may begin to intentionally re-engineer our species and have little fear for these consequences because it may be in our grasp to simply circulate new genes or engineer new symbiotes to deal with new problems as they arise. In a transhuman scenario though ethics gets superseded by existential questions.

For me the ethical question really comes in when you consider whether, if a person can have a made-to-order child, it somehow impacts his idea of ownership or attachment to the child? If it comes out flawed, are the parents more liable to be disappointed or fail to form familial bonds with the child? I'm worried that it supports the idea of a child as an object or possession.

Ultimately though we're not going to get a chance to decide what we should do about it - now that the technology exists, it is impossible to stop. The safer and more reliable it becomes the more its popularity is likely to grow, and banning it would only result in a black market, putting the child and parents' fate in the hands of people more likely to have ulterior motives or questionable practices. The question we have to ask is really "now that we have it, what will we do with it?" not "should we or should we not use it?" and only time is going to produce an answer.

 

[Xaixis]

This is so funny you brought this up, cause I just saw something on late night TV a week ago, about people with "super powers." Some powers were people who could see and/or taste sounds, a guy born with no eyes who could paint just like he had them...

That is extrondinary people. Not really super powers.

About the IVF thing... hmm I'm not sure what too make out of it. I think that it would be good to have only to prevent any kind of hereditary diseases and such. I think that should be the limit. People are not pets, their not something you choose at the store and pick out which kind you want. It's a human life.

Hell if everyone decided to use IVF freely then what would the world look like? Boring, bland, everything the same. Imagine a world when everyone is a protege (sp?), an amazing student... etc, etc etc.

I think it should be used to prevent any kind of disease, but hat be the limit. But even with that, if it becomes the norm to preform IVF to prevent child illness then eventually we will create something even worse maybe. I'm not sure about the last part, but anyways, that's my two cents.

 

[___]

X: they presented the show in a sort of super-hero format, which was vaguely amusing. I don't find synesthesia to be a superpower, personally, but being born without eyes and yet able to understand things like color harmony and perspective is pretty amazing. These things are outside the realm of a blind person's experience entirely. Oh also, the dude who can consciously regulate his body temperature is definitely incredible. That's a trait that, if we could isolate it, would be extremely useful in engineering special breeds of humans for things like colonizing other planets. A tolerance for extreme cold and the ability to stave off hypothermia would be incredibly advantageous for Mars colonists for example.

 

[Wolfgang]

I don't consider it an ethical problem so much as a bad idea. It contributes to the homogenization of the human species, and that is never good. We already have a relatively narrow genetic pool, and the narrower it gets the more susceptible we are to things like pandemics and drastic environmental changes which could drive us to extinction or extreme depopulation. It's especially stupid  where it's used simply to effect fashionable physical attributes. Remember, today's undesirable trait may be tomorrow's best hope for the survival of the species.

Nphyx :: Take into consideration that we may be able to eliminate all genetic disease by picking and choosing zygotes that have not received their parent's troubled genetic past. Within two generations of selective breeding via IVF, there would be no further need of the science; save for impregnation problems. (Weak sperm and the like). We would still evolve after eliminating the current genetic disease, and with one problem out of the way... mankind would prosper.

 

[___]

Right but consider the rest of my post as well. Sometimes a trait that causes dysfunction on its own, when mixed with other traits or put in the right context turns out to be beneficial. It's for the best for an individual to not suffer from a genetic defect, but for mankind as a whole we may be losing something we're not even aware we had at the time that could be important later. There's also the fact that many genetic diseases are not linked to a single gene, but rather a group of normally good genes interacting poorly. In those situations of course it's easy to just pick a combination from the parents' genes that has no ill effect and you're good to go. It's really not even as simple as all that, either, but I guess in this hypothetical situation we assume the science is mature and they have the deeper complexities figured out already.

 

[Wolfgang]

Nphyx :: I suppose you have a good point... we cannot assume that science would have such a strong grasp of human genes. Any medling with the code could cause serious malfunction. Should be fun.

 

[Necro_100000]

I for one hate the idea! I means bad traits are one thing but think about it! The most important people in our era (of man sorry ladies HUMAN kind) have been malformants.

I for one would have been discarded in this porcess. I have a jumble of genes and I, for one, seem to be doing just fine if not better then some people in our society.

I'm Left handed, I have 4 rings of colors (Blue, Green, yellow and slight brown *Yellow and green are the dominant), 3 different colors of hair, (Black *Thin fine*, Gray *Medium sightly thick*, and Brown/Blond? *Thikest*) I have an I.Q. of something like 115, I use both sides of my brain almost equally (actually learned when I got an CAT scan for a completely different reason) and about a complete mix up of both my parents personalities.

Now I don't sound like the normal kid in the gene department and I totally would have been the odd one out... And if my mom used this I would be, well for one most likely dead or a women, and extremely pissed!

I say give your future kids a chance!!! >.<

-Matt (Necro)

BTW my parents though I was autistic till I was 3...  :dead: Stupid parents.

 

[Wolfgang]

Necro_100000 :: I don't think having a jumble of genes would have made you a canidate for being tossed aside, if you were being concieved in a future when they could choose like that. Unless you had something seriously wrong with you, they would have probably kept you for having so many of thier rarer genes anyway. Listen before you make it seem like this is out to get you. Cheer up emo kid.

EDIT :: (Sorry for pointing out that Necro was finding an excuse to feel sad for his hypothetical self in a hypothetical situation that really wouldn't come down the way he exspected it to. I won't do it again.)

 

[psiclone]

This is so funny you brought this up, cause I just saw something on late night TV a week ago, about people with "super powers." Some powers were people who could see and/or taste sounds, a guy born with no eyes who could paint just like he had them...

That is extrondinary people. Not really super powers.

Yes, but the show was called something about super powers, hence the quotes.

 

[Dissonance]

Cheer up emo kid.

Hi this was totally uncalled for, let's not do it again

Also genetic fuckery is awesome, i want to make an army of superdisses (i'm already genetically perfect anyway, why not just make more of me? :3 )

 

[Wolfgang]

An army of super disses would be pointless. None of you would be abel to follow the orders of the original because you would all start arguing and such... now an army of super-but controlable-disses would be pretty sweet.

More on topic, it seems if me and my girlfriend would ever have kids, we would most likely have to use the IVF. We've disscussed this, and we would like to be able to see what bad genes (down syndrom and such) our kids might have and choose only to have the child who was healthy. Beyond that, we don't care about gender or looks. We're morally against that, because wouldn't that make us like the jew killing hitler?

 

[Surmuck]

Isn't taking the bad genes out of your kid about just as bad?

The point is children are born with what they've got, and we were never meant to be part of that selection process. Call me old fashioned, but I like to let the pieces fall where they will - and not take it upon myself to prearrange them for my own and possibly their benefit.

 

[mawk]

the thing is, though, that the human race has pretty much beaten natural selection except in the most extreme cases anyway -- predators are no longer a significant pressure on the human race, and medicine has made it to the point where most genetic defects and averse mutations won't eliminate the carrier, although in many cases the carrier would still be left out of the gene pool. I don't see anything ethically wrong with this sort of thing (I'd have to kick myself if I thought of the body as sacred in any way, and if God really didn't want us to do something, it stands to reason that we'd never do it anyway,) but careful consideration would definitely need to be taken to understand all the possible repercussions of this sort of thing and maintain genetic diversity (although realistically, this sort of treatment seems like it would be very expensive and varied in use -- it's hardly as if every child on earth would be treated and would be lacking the same crucial genetic immunity to some new pressure on the species.)

my long and rambling point being that letting the pieces fall where they may serves no practical purpose anymore, and I'm sure that if God disapproved of someone picking up the slack He'll poke His head in and let us know. we'd need to be very careful we didn't mess this kind of thing up, but aside from that I don't see anything inherently wrong with the process.

I mean sure there's something that makes me kind of shy away from the idea of constructed genetics, but I can't think of a rational reason for it. probably mental conditioning from too many movies where this sort of thing is big.

it's not like a baby has any choice in its features before it's born anyway. this sort of thing would give it someone to blame for any shortcomings, but it all amounts to the same thing in the end.

besides, I don't think we're taking an entire race of beautiful statuesque people just yet. even if they've identified the sorts of strands they'd need to tweak to make the end product easier on the eye, that'd be a pretty trivial application of the science and it probably wouldn't get a lot of traffic except among people with a lot of disposable income.

 

[Dissonance]

Isn't taking the bad genes out of your kid about just as bad?

The point is children are born with what they've got, and we were never meant to be part of that selection process. Call me old fashioned, but I like to let the pieces fall where they will - and not take it upon myself to prearrange them for my own and possibly their benefit.

Fuck that I don't want no ugly ass babies

 

[Venetia]

The point is more about ensuring the health/viability of the child. Beauty and finer details would be more of an extreme luxury in the distant future. Though that is not to say that the practice of advanced IVF wouldn't eventually bring about a gradual tolerance towards a more eugenic approach to child conceptions.