Eugenics: Designer Babies

Eugenics Designer Babies Okpurukre Isoken (Medical Ethics) prof B allantyne august 5th, 2009 Eugenics Designer Babies Eugenics, in its broadest sense, is defined as the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the merciful species or of a hu globee population, especially by such means as reject reproduction by someones having transmissible defects or presumed to make up inheritable unenviable traits.The term captures a smorgasbord of vivacious im seasonry etched into the record of forgiving archives of ghostly memories about benignant atrocities anxiously beat lag to fade away at the twi motiveless moments of a modern age of overcrowded prison camps, in which the depths of travail and indolent sighs of countless defenseless victims, of bodies destroy by scars and which have become too weak to be renew in any shape or manner. Or of lives consigned to medical investigative exploration for the amelioration of human condition by what at depr ession sight appears to be insignifi dealt signatures of a clerk.Such lives were considered only sacrif sorbets plan by altruist motives of a beneficent governing authority. Questions if they could have been raised at all in retrospect could only be considered at some wholenesss discretionary time, and place of course. Trying to pick with the rubbles of the valets past mishaps and dist paleing their lessons for application to todays bulge outs is like wading and battling oneself through an ever- confusing maze mired with potholes, trenches and cul-de-sacs. Tolstoy, in his masterpiece War and pink of my John admonished his readers that all amour in history has he mirage of appearing to have been predestined, once history has occured. I believe that as potential medical talenteds honest and deprecative intellectual inquiry is only the beginning and the least of what we can do to prevent what future generations will ruefully deem as fateful consequences of our brilliant conco ctions. tally to Congressman Greenwoods opening statements at the interview of the COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS March 28, 2001 convened by medical researchers, bioethicists and members of congress, For most of its 80 years, the brave parvenuWorld could be seen as a disturbing work of erudition fiction. That is no yearlong the case. The possible re-create of human beings is straightway relegated to the world non relegated to the world of fiction. The question we must now ask is this what should we do with this science? Amidst the background of hefty political and level-headed debates over bioethics that took place in the 90s and proto(prenominal) 21st century as a result of Ian Wilmots sheep cloning experiements, laws had been enacted that helped to curb the schooling of fruitful technologies. It became crystal clear that the countd stimulate timer has now been set for he inevitable -the cloning of Homo sapiens. No one k nows what would happen after that. Notwithstanding, numerous independently funded clannish labs across the unify States and around the world wasted little time to find legal loopholes to evade the scrutiny of authorities and jumped into the hunt for the holy grail. For instance, On celestial latitude 5, 1997, Chicagoan physicist and fertility expert Richard Seed announced that he planned to clone a human being before any federal laws could be enacted to ban the process. Seeds plans were to apply the same technique utilise to clone Dolly.Seeds announcement went against President Clintons 1997 proposal for a voluntary private moratorium against human cloning. Several arguments whitethorn be suggested to explain this fervor. There were those who argued that reproductive freedom includes human cloning, perhaps as a means to shell out the problem of male infertility. Others advocated cloning as a means to copy a deceased loved one. For yet opposites, human cloning is reassert bec ause it may provide important advances in scientific knowledge. To be sure, science is entitled to have ethical standards set apart from all other norms of society.Perhaps a closer look at the accompanying evince will reveal that this is not so. According to Jeff S turn outker, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, dated August 4, 2009, sperm fixing has now become a global and open market consumers ar no longer throttle to the small strikeor pools at local mom-and-pop sperm banks. In token, Cryos, a Denmark based company has recently sparked media interest. Its company strategy is aimed at neat the McDonalds of sperm banks around the world. Packed in dry ice or liquid nitrogen sperms are shipped express to its buyers in more than than twelve countries around the world.Somehow, it is able to sidestep many legal regulations oblige by domestic and local regulations on local sperm bank enterprises. Notwithstanding, the profitability of the sperm bank business has not stemm ed the surge in the development of product lines catering to the whims and tastes of as clear uped consumer segments. Virginias Fairfax Cryobank has stepped into the competitive nip with its Fairfax Doctorate Donors since April 1999 the firm has purported, at a third more than the regular charges, sperm from medical, law, Ph. D. and other students and graduates.Cryos offers three grades of sperm, including an extra version that contains twice the second of highly motile sperm as its regular brand. An Ivy fusion womans egg could nowadays fetch upwards of $50,000. The atomic number 20 Cryobank, located in Los Angeles has launched a new feature to help prospective bollocks batter buyers pick a load. Its product lines features sperms and eggs of jadeors that are celebrity look-alikes. Adam Sandler, Andy Roddick, and Ben Affleck are scarcely a few noteworthy mentions. Apparently these parents are free to choose whom they want to have as their peasantren.The Oxford English di ctionary defines the term reason babies as a baby that the genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combine with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics. According to Ritter M (2008), news that scientists have for the first time genetically altered a human embryo is drawing ardour from some watchdog free radicals that say its a step toward creating designer babies. Yet, the ubiquity of different sperms and eggs on the market today seems to offer a more palatable alternative to genetic engineering.A different and perhaps more pressing issue centers around the ethics of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Here embryos are screened for gene faults before being transferred to a womans uterus. It has come under the spotlight recently in the UK, with high-profile cases such as that of the Leeds-based Hashmi family. The Hashmis have a child with a rare blood sickness, who urgently needs a bone marrow transplant. Through using PGD, the Hashmis may be able to have a child that is free from the disorder suffered by their existing child. The child yet to be born could in addition donate tissue to cure its sibling.The Hashmi case became the subject of months of legal scrap in the UK courts. (Lee, 2003) In April 2009, Panayiotis Zavos, a controversial fertility researcher attracted global media attention when he announced to the world that he had cloned 14 human embryos and transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women, at least one of whom was British. The operation failed however. According to his own words, the motivations for cloning was not to reproduce the Michael Jacksons and the Michael Jordans in this world, and also, we are wholly against designer babies.Therefore, we are not interested in manipulating the genetic information, the genome, but rather just allowing those mothers and fathers to be, to become biological fathers and mothers of those children, and , hopefully, those children will be rosy children and we are in all committed to that We are talking about the development of a technology that can give an infertile and childless equalise the dear to reproduce and have a child and above all complete its liveliness cycle. This is a human right and should not be taken away from people because someone or a group of people have doubts about its development.According to Lewis Wolpert, a professor of biology, the issue is an irrelevant one. Surprisingly enough, ethical issues with regards to designer babies are hard to see. In his own words, What possible argument from ethics could be used against antenatal diagnosis of an embryo obtained by IVF, if the diagnosis prevents the implantation of embryos with defective genes? I know that some people object, but there is no narrate that the early embryo is a person. This idea is a relatively recent one, with religious underpinning but with neither argument nor evidence.The Magisterium o f the Catholic Church demands that the embryo be respected from the first instance. But what has to be considered in every case is the child and its future wellbeing, and not to do so is totally lacking in respect. Who, for example, is being harmed in all the recent niggle about choosing an embryo with the right genes to help a sibling? some(prenominal) children will certainly be very well cared for. And it is care of the child that matters. (Wolpert, 2003). The views of religious segment of society stand in stark blood line to the notions entertained by Wolpert.In general, they raise three primary objections. get-go being that cloning humans could lead to a new eugenics proceeding where even if cloning begins with a benign purpose, it could devolve into a scientifcally generated set ranking of superior and inferior people. Being such, it would interferes with the natural order of creation, eliminating the holiness of God as a creator. And whats more, cloning could have semip ermanent effects that are unknown and harmful. People have a right to their own identity and their own genetic makeup which should not be replicated. Cardinal William Keeler, Archbishop of Baltimore sums it up more succinctly in humanistic cost Cloning is presented as a means for creating life, not destroying life. Yet it shows scorn toward human life and the very act of generating it. Cloning completely divorces human reproduction from the context of a loving union between man and woman, producing children with no parents in the ordinary sense. Here, human life does not abstract from an act of love, but is manufactured to predetermined specifications. A developing human being is treated as an object, not as n separate with his or her own identity and rights. A slightly different linear perspective as espoused by Congressman Rush, would be a perspective on how diversity relates to medical research. In his words, As an African-American, Im keenly aware of racist prejudices and biases. The expansion of science can never be an end unto itself. The expansion of science must be viewed in the light of the agenda of those who espouse it and the impact it has on our public, on our way of life and on our God As noted, science and the biotech field has brought us colossal successes. We must not take action which will mpede the legitimate and just use of biotechnologyI would argue that we must act with reprove to ensure that future scientific successes which will make this world better and more productive while tightly regulating and indeed forbiddance those practices which pose a clear threat to the health, the safety, and the moral condition of our citizens. cleverness we never know how society and human clones will come to get the picture one another? Perhaps not. Doron Blake is a 23 year sr. young man who came from the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank, for which eugenic-minded California inventor Robert whole meal flour recruited various scientific geniuses to o nate sperm. When asked to talk about his experience as a sperm-bank child, Doron said, It was a screwed-up idea, making genius people. The fact that I have a huge IQ does not make me a person who is trustworthy or happy. People come expecting me to have all these achievements under my belt, and I dont. I have not done anything that special. I dont think being intelligent is what makes a person. What makes a person is being raised in a loving family with loving parents who dont pressure them. If I was born with an IQ of 100 and not 180, I could do just as much in my life. The thing I like best bout myself is not that Im smart but that I care about people and try to make other peoples lives better. I dont think you can breed for good people. According to Agar (n. d) human beings are motivated equally by both therapy and enhancement. Yet correspond to the examples provided above, there seems to exist an ethical divide between treating or preventing disease and enhancing traits. The privacy of persons and families being weighed against lifes existence is a rhetorical discussion that has not witnessed any proper resolution, perhaps because they are viewed as ends in themselves.This point may help in some sort or fashion Reinhold Niebuhrs view of social conflicts The human person, in Niebuhrs account, is self-interested in the extreme. While the individual moral man can check his natural selfishness through conscience, self-discipline, and love, social groupstribes, movements, nationslook out for their own and strive to dominate other groups. Everybodys motives are always mixed. lodge in society is achieved through the threat of force, so society is in perpetual state of war. Such intransigence in viewpoints could be the ill that lies at the heart human atrocities.The level of anti-abortion violence, seen in the US of the last three decades, which includes arson and bombing are only symptoms of a great ill that has been galvanizing it. There is little justif iable rationale in the paradoxical actions of engaging in bloodshed and murder if life not death is its goal. This would be the tragic consequence which C. S. Lewis talked about when he spy that mans conquest of nature would result in the abolishment of man. COMHH References Agar N. (n. d). Designer Babies Ethical Considerations.Retrieved on June 16th, 2009 from http//www. actionbioscience. org/biotech/agar. html Connor S. (2009). Fertility expert I can clone a human being Retrieved on August 4, 2009 from http//www. zavos. org/fertility-expert-i-can-clone-a-human-being-1672095. html Lee E (2003). Debating Designer Babies. Retrieved on June 15, 2009 from http//www. prochoiceforum. org. uk/ocrreliss7. php Macrae F. (2008). Couple to have Britains first baby genetically modified to be free of dope cancer gene. Retrieved on June 15, 2009 from http//www. dailymail. co. k/health/article-1098034/Couple-Britains-baby-genetically-modified-free-breast-cancer-gene. html Malcolm R (2008). g enetically Modified HumanBaby? Retrieved on June 14, 2009 from http//healthandsurvival. com/2008/05/12/genetically-modified-human-baby/ Subcommittee on concern and investigations (2001, March 28). Issues raised by human cloning research. Retrieved from http//republicans. energycommerce. house. gov/107/action/107-5. pdf doubting Thomas V (2007) Children Have Rights Say No to Repro Tech from http//childrenhaverights-saynotoreprotech. blogspot. com/2007/02/doron-blake-genius-designer-baby. html