If a couple chose to pick the embryo they expected to suffer the most in life, is it epilogenetics?
If someone asks me I would of course say no because I would like the term to encompass traits that we can reasonably expect the child in question to be glad we gave them.
But I would note that even if use of the term triggers discussion of the question you posed, I still think that is shifting the conversation in the right direction; away from “is embryo selection bad because it reminds me of this other thing I don’t like” and towards “should parents be allowed to select for traits that their children probably wouldn’t like?”
I think you are dismissing the criticism too lightly.
Historically, people who said they wanted to change the human gene pool to make it better, for the greater good, and of course without coercion, led to really, really gruesome places. People nowadays recognise that it did, and they fear it will repeat. And when they say “isn’t this eugenics?”, what they want to know is “how will this be certain to stay different, in the long run, from the other thing that started out sounding exactly like this, and ended up horribly?”
The scenario very nicely pinpoint a first problem. Either you allow the parents to do something to their child that seems horrible (actively bringing additional suffering onto their child), or you concede that you aren’t enabling free, voluntary changes to the human genome, it is only voluntary if they want the result you want.
The scenario very nicely pinpoint a first problem. Either you allow the parents to do something to their child that seems horrible (actively bringing additional suffering onto their child), or you concede that you aren’t enabling free, voluntary changes to the human genome, it is only voluntary if they want the result you want.
Does epilogenics significantly change this picture? It’s already the case that
There are things parents are allowed to do to their child, that seem horrible to some people.
There are things parents are not allowed to do to their child, because they seem horrible to some people.
Sometimes things move from one category to another.
People disagree on what is and isn’t horrible. But it’s rare, I think, for parents to choose things for their child on the basis of “this is what I think will cause them to suffer most”, even in cases where that would be legal.
There’s a difficult balancing act between “we as a society think this thing is bad and we’re going to forbid it” and “we as a society acknowledge that things are complicated and simply banning things that seem bad isn’t always a good idea, so we’re not going to ban this thing even though we think it’s bad”.
But I don’t think there’s a way to avoid this balancing act; if we try to avoid it by forbidding the technology, then that’s just coming down very hard on one side of it.
If someone asks me I would of course say no because I would like the term to encompass traits that we can reasonably expect the child in question to be glad we gave them.
But I would note that even if use of the term triggers discussion of the question you posed, I still think that is shifting the conversation in the right direction; away from “is embryo selection bad because it reminds me of this other thing I don’t like” and towards “should parents be allowed to select for traits that their children probably wouldn’t like?”
I think you are dismissing the criticism too lightly.
Historically, people who said they wanted to change the human gene pool to make it better, for the greater good, and of course without coercion, led to really, really gruesome places. People nowadays recognise that it did, and they fear it will repeat. And when they say “isn’t this eugenics?”, what they want to know is “how will this be certain to stay different, in the long run, from the other thing that started out sounding exactly like this, and ended up horribly?”
The scenario very nicely pinpoint a first problem. Either you allow the parents to do something to their child that seems horrible (actively bringing additional suffering onto their child), or you concede that you aren’t enabling free, voluntary changes to the human genome, it is only voluntary if they want the result you want.
Does epilogenics significantly change this picture? It’s already the case that
There are things parents are allowed to do to their child, that seem horrible to some people.
There are things parents are not allowed to do to their child, because they seem horrible to some people.
Sometimes things move from one category to another.
People disagree on what is and isn’t horrible. But it’s rare, I think, for parents to choose things for their child on the basis of “this is what I think will cause them to suffer most”, even in cases where that would be legal.
There’s a difficult balancing act between “we as a society think this thing is bad and we’re going to forbid it” and “we as a society acknowledge that things are complicated and simply banning things that seem bad isn’t always a good idea, so we’re not going to ban this thing even though we think it’s bad”.
But I don’t think there’s a way to avoid this balancing act; if we try to avoid it by forbidding the technology, then that’s just coming down very hard on one side of it.