Strollerderby

Brave New World - here we come!

I see nothing wrong with it.  We already select traits we want our offspring to have when we select a mate.  It is freedom of choice to do with our bodies what we see fit.  But I would not prefer a child that was more prone to cataracts and skin cancer.

Selecting for a specific look seems ludicrous when you consider how many other serious issues there are to worry about.  That said, my mom is disappointed that my blue-eyed husband and me (green-eyed) are very unlikely to have babies with her dark, nearly black eye color.  If one likes blue so much - buy a new blouse, not a new baby.

Part of the joy of having a child biologically is waiting to see what they look like. If you already have the need to mold your child into your personal idea of physical perfection in utero perhaps better to hold off on becoming a parent. The level of shallowness that this type of science allows people to achieve is frightening. So I am with  Jennifer when it comes to comparing the situation here with Brave New World. Very Creepy.

These stories always overlook the fact that IVF, to put it in a word, SUCKS.  It starts with drugs to shut down your reproductive system, and ends with progesterone suppositories and/or injections of progesterone suspended in oil, and in between, the fun is even greater.  How many people are going to sign up for this regime, if the standard reproductive options are still available?  (In fact, how many would choose IVF before trying drugs plus insemination?  IUIs have a higher risk for multiple conceptions, but they're also far less invasive.)

The folks pursuing IVF may take advantage of these types of procedures -- in for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose.  That would, presumably, include lesbian couples who forego insemination procedures and all the gay couples who choose gestational surrogates.  But what percentage of the population is that, really?

I just don't see the possibility of trait-selection pushing the masses, or even the elites, into an unnecessary, emotionally and pysiologically brutal procedure, when other options still exist.  Maybe I'm naive, but I doubt it.  I have yet to read a single IVF blog in which the patient(s) would choose that procedure in the absence of dire need.

This is a fascinating topic. I agree with Jody that I can't see this having a large impact on the overall population, as most people would never choose IVF. For those who do use IVF, most probably wouldn't want the added cost, unless it was to weed out a disease. Then again, I could be wrong.

I also find interesting what you say about donor gamete market. The few women I have known who have used donor eggs (after many rounds of unsuccessful IVF) have tried to get donors that look like them. The secondary factor was high IQ/education level, although as you say that is quite murky from a genetic standpoint.

However, as much as I hate to say this, I think most people, given the choice, would want the best set up for their child in life. Unfortunately, "beautiful" (in the standard sense) people tend to have an easier time becoming financially successful. How many short CEO's have you seen? In fact, for women, I have never seen someone at the executive level who was not at least somewhat "attractive", again in the common sense. The problem is more with what our society expects, even in positions where looks should not matter. The fact that this technology exists is more of a side effect of the main problem.

hmmm....thought provoking

I agree that with the cost and hassle of IVF it's hard to imagine why someone would go through it if it wasn't necessary to achieve a healthy pregnancy (or avoid a genetic disorder)

Personally, in choosing an egg donor i care little about eye color, but if given a choice, intelligence will be a consideration.

as was mentioned above - we choose a mate based on charactristics we value.  when we are put in the position where we have to use a donor egg - why wouldn't we try to give our child the best chance we can - both by health, intelligence, and even looks?  that said - it's hard to imagine that just choosing green eyes would make my baby mroe attractive.

What amazes me is that this Dr. could claim an 80% success rate for selecting a particular trait.  My Dr. can only offer a 70% chance of ANY pregnancy occuring even with healthy young donor eggs.  

I see nothing wrong with this technology. I honestly don't believe that everyone would select for the same traits, like people said, the effect on actual world expressed characteristics would be negligible. Besides, this is PGD, it's choosing from within the couple's gene pool, what makes it so different from having sexy times? The final embryo implanted will be a combo of both parents' genes, so this embryo could have resulted just by chance during love-making, thereby erasing the whole natural-unnatural argument. Finally, people already choose hair and eye color when they marry, and this procedure isn't even 100% sure, maybe some parents want to give their kids genes that they themselves couldn't get (red hair, blue eyes, whatever) because it's recessive. And if the children did look different from the parents, like two brown-haired parents with a blonde child, so what, same as transracial adoption where the kids look different from parents. Anyways, I see nothing harmful about this technology. What hurts a kid more than hair or eye color is being born into poverty. This often results in malnutrition which causes brain damage in children. And we never outlawed extremely poor parents from procreating, so what justification is there for not being able to choose hair or eye color - a trait that shouldn't even affect the kid's chances in life??

You know as well as I do that the funds that are spent developing this kind of technology are not available to be appropriated for anti-poverty measures. alas. Saying that we should spend our society's resources elsewhere is about as reasonable an argument as saying that we should ban designer handbags and give the money that people would otherwise spend on them to Doctors without Borders. The investors expect that their investment in R & D will be recouped in profits from the sale of the technology, which is why they choose to spend their money that way. That doesn't work for nutritional support for the poor, alas.

Lots of people do IVF (over 1% of children born in the US these days are products of IVF), but how many of them have embryos to spare? To the best of my knowledge, most couples driven to IVF by infertility end up with nothing in the freezer, which means that every decent embryo was transferred, so no picking and choosing could be done without radically reducing their chances for success. And couples that are using PGD to select against heritable diseases have bigger fish to fry than hair or eye color. There ARE some infertile couples that do produce large numbers of embryos, and perhaps some of them also have the funds and inclination to use this technology, but I have a lot of trouble getting worked up about that. I agree that the underlying assumptions are deeply problematic, and that they become perhaps more so when donor gametes are involved. Still, the actual impact on society is likely to be negligible, other than parting some fools from their dollars.

I agree with you about this:

"I think public health care should cover everyone, should include reasonable and safe fertility treatment that includes IVF"

I understand what you're saying, Shannon, but the key point I made is that it's a freedom of choice, because first of all- hair and eye color should give no advantages or disadvantages to a child unless you're implying that certain hair colors are superior to others, which I don't agree with. Also, these are the parents own genes. It is not modification. It is screening. So unless you're saying that the state owns people's DNA, in effect that the state owns people themselves, then why shouldn't they have the right to pick out of their own genes?? Lastly, the point about Nadya Suleman is completely different. Her octuplets are being paid for by taxpayers' money, and it might be a form of child abuse if 14 kids are being raised by one possibly psychotic woman. But for PGD selection, the parents aren't imposing any costs on anybody else, not even the KIDS (because cosmetic traits are superficial, and do not affect intelligence or physical ability), and they didn't do anything to harm anyone. They are the ones who are going to be spending time and resources raising these children; why should anyone else have the right to tell them what they can or can't screen for in their own genes? So you're making either one of two arguments. You believe that "blonde, blue-eyed" as you title your post, will give the child an advantage and thus will create inequality, which implicitly means you believe blondes are superior. Or, like me, you find hair and eye color negligible for a child's success in school and work, and thus could care less if some other parents might want to select a gene that's been muted down the line (aka give recessive genes a fighting chance). I believe in our society today, most people tend to think the second way, that hair or eye color don't imply any superiority, unless you're one of those people who believe race determines intelligence (which I find ludicrous!). Hmm..also, in closing, your point about how the wealthy can or can't spend their money does not sound like democracy to me.