Showing posts with label eugenics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eugenics. Show all posts

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Once Science Fiction, Gene Editing Is Now a Looming Reality; The New York Times, July 22, 2020

Once Science Fiction, Gene Editing Is Now a Looming Reality

The prospect of erasing some disabilities and perceived deficiencies hovers at the margins of what people consider ethically acceptable.

"Professor Halley acknowledged the inherent tension between the huge benefits that gene-editing technology could bring in preventing serious diseases and disabilities for which there is no treatment, and what she calls the “potential risk of going down a road that feels uncomfortably close to eugenics.”

Less ethically freighted are therapies to cure serious diseases in people who are already living with them. “I think that there are opportunities to use gene-editing technologies to treat genetic diseases that don’t raise the societal implications of altering permanently patterns of human inheritance,” said Dr. Alex Marson, director of the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology in San Francisco."

Monday, August 7, 2017

Gene Editing for ‘Designer Babies’? Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say; New York Times, August 4, 2017

Pam Belluck, New York Times; Gene Editing for ‘Designer Babies’? Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say

"In the future, will there be nations that allow fertility clinics to promise babies with genetically engineered perfect pitch or .400 batting averages? It’s not impossible. Even now, some clinics in the United States and elsewhere offer unproven stem cell therapies, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

But R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, who co-led the national committee on human embryo editing, said historically ethical overreach with reproductive technology has been limited.

Procedures like I.V.F. are arduous and expensive, and many people want children to closely resemble themselves and their partners. They are likely to tinker with genes only if other alternatives are impractical or impossible.

“You hear people talking about how this will make us treat children as commodities and make people more intolerant of people with disabilities and lead to eugenics and all that,” she said.

“While I appreciate the fear, I think we need to realize that with every technology we have had these fears, and they haven’t been realized.”"

Friday, August 4, 2017

Human Gene Editing Is Leaving Ethics Dangerously Far Behind; Huff Post, August 3, 2017

Craig Calhoun, HuffPost; Human Gene Editing Is Leaving Ethics Dangerously Far Behind

"What does this mean for the notion that all human beings are members of a single species and thus members of a common “community of fate”? This idea is basic to the notion of human rights. It is basic to the way citizenship is understood in most countries. Is it possible that genetic engineering could create such marked differences about human beings that they couldn’t all be considered citizens even if they all descended from people who are citizens today?

Gene editing is one of the most promising medical technologies in years. But unless there is much more attention to the ethical and social choices before us, we risk seeing that promise mired in controversy — or turned into a disaster."  

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Stanford's Final Exams Pose Question About the ethics of Genetic Engineering; Futurism, July 9, 2017

Tom Ward, Futurism; Stanford's Final Exams Pose Question About the ethics of Genetic Engineering

"When bioengineering students sit down to take their final exams for Stanford University, they are faced with a moral dilemma, as well as a series of grueling technical questions that are designed to sort the intellectual wheat from the less competent chaff:
If you and your future partner are planning to have kids, would you start saving money for college tuition, or for printing the genome of your offspring?
The question is a follow up to “At what point will the cost of printing DNA to create a human equal the cost of teaching a student in Stanford?” Both questions refer to the very real possibility that it may soon be in the realm of affordability to print off whatever stretch of DNA you so desire, using genetic sequencing and a machine capable of synthesizing the four building blocks of DNA — A, C, G, and T — into whatever order you desire...
It is vital to discuss the ethics of gene editing in order to ensure that the technology is not abused in the future. Stanford’s question is praiseworthy because it makes today’s students, who will most likely be spearheading the technology’s developments, think about the consequences of their work."