Alleyne, Richard Genetically Engineering 'Ethical' Babies Is a Moral Obligation, Says

Alleyne, Richard Genetically Engineering 'Ethical' Babies Is a Moral Obligation, Says

Alleyne, Richard “Genetically engineering 'ethical' babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor”. London Telegraph.August 16, 2012.

Genetically screening our offspring to make them better people is just 'responsible parenting', claims an eminent Oxford academic. Professor Julian Savulescu of Oxford University said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a "moral obligation" as it makes them grow up into "ethically better children".

The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to "harm themselves and others".

The academic, who is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader's Digest.He explained that we are now in the middle of a genetic revolution and that although screening, for all but a few conditions, remained illegal it should be welcomed.

He said that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality – with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics.By screening in and screening out certain genes in the embryos, it should be possible to influence how a child turns out.In the end, he said that "rational design" would help lead to a better, more intelligent and less violent society in the future.

"Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?" wrote Prof Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor in practical ethics."So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice. To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality. Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children. They are, after all, less likely to harm themselves and others."

"If we have the power to intervene in the nature of our offspring — rather than consigning them to the natural lottery — then we should."

He said that we already routinely screen embryos and fetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes.Rational design is just a natural extension of this, he said.

He said that unlike the eugenics movements, which fell out of favor when it was adopted by the Nazis, the system would be voluntary and allow parents to choose the characteristics of their children.

"We’re routinely screening embryos and fetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome, and there’s little public outcry," he said."What’s more, few people protested at the decisions in the mid- 2000s to allow couples to test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes, and this pushes us a lot close to creating designer humans."

"Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance.”

Adams, Stephen “Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say” London Telegraph, Feb. 12, 2010.

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued. The article, published in theJournal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”

As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.

The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.

They also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing.

Once such children were born there was “no choice for the parents but to keep the child”, they wrote.

“To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.

They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.

Both Minerva and Giubilini know Prof Savulescu through Oxford. Minerva was a research associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics until last June, when she moved to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Melbourne University.

Giubilini, a former visiting student at Cambridge University, gave a talk in January at the Oxford Martin School – where Prof Savulescu is also a director – titled 'What is the problem with euthanasia?'He too has gone on to Melbourne, although to the city’s Monash University. Prof Savulescu worked at both univerisities before moving to Oxford in 2002.

Defending the decision to publishin aBritish Medical Journalblog, Prof Savulescu, said that arguments in favour of killing newborns were “largely not new”.What Minerva and Giubilini did was apply these arguments “in consideration of maternal and family interests”.

While accepting that many people would disagree with their arguments, he wrote: “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.”

Speaking toThe Daily Telegraph, he added: “This “debate” has been an example of “witch ethics” - a group of people know who the witch is and seek to burn her. It is one of the most dangerous human tendencies we have. It leads to lynching and genocide. Rather than argue and engage, there is a drive is to silence and, in the extreme, kill, based on their own moral certainty. That is not the sort of society we should live in.”

He said the journal would consider publishing an article positing that, if there was no moral difference between abortion and killing newborns, then abortion too should be illegal.

Dr Trevor Stammers, director of medical ethics at St Mary's University College, said: "If a mother does smother her child with a blanket, we say 'it's doesn't matter, she can get another one,' is that what we want to happen?

"What these young colleagues are spelling out is what we would be the inevitable end point of a road that ethical philosophers in the States and Australia have all been treading for a long time and there is certainly nothing new."

Referring to the term "after-birth abortion", Dr Stammers added: "This is just verbal manipulation that is not philosophy. I might refer to abortion henceforth as antenatal infanticide."

Stanley, Tim “Belgium and the Netherlands consider permitting euthanasia for children – including to relieve 'suffering for the parents’” World, June 19, 2013.

Of all the social/moral questions facing us, euthanasia is one of the toughest to draw a conclusion on. On the one hand, nobody likes to think of a patient being left to suffer. As individuals we have a right to control our own way of living and, by that logic, our own way of dying. On the other hand, there’s a worry that legalising euthanasia encourages a culture of death. Sadly, the news coming out of Belgium and the Netherlands confirms the critics' worst fears.

Belgium adopted euthanasia in 2002, one year after the Netherlands, and its laws were designed to help adults riddled with “unbearable physical or mental suffering”. Today, roughly one per cent of all deaths in Belgium are due to euthanasia – and the grounds on which it is carried out are becoming looser and looser.As the Telegraph recently reported, two deaf brothers opted to die after they started to go blind. They were young and their condition wasn’t terminal. They couldn’t bear the thought of living alone and in darkness, which is entirely understandable – but the case bends the spirit of the original law.

Now Belgium is weighing up some changes. One would allow patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and other diseases leading to dementia to sign an agreement permitting a doctor to allow them to die when the condition enters an advanced stage – even if they appear perfectly happy and physically stable. Another reform is to allow Belgians under 18 to choose euthanasia, too. This means that children who can’t drive, marry, vote or drink alcohol will be regarded as competent enough to decide whether or not they can die.

There’s an even more troubling development in the Netherlands. Since 2005, the Dutch have permitted doctors to euthanise minors so long as they act in accordance with a set of tight medical guidelines – 22 babies with spina bifida have been given lethal injections. But now the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) is advising that a new test be established for euthanising the newborn: if their suffering distresses the parents. In a recent policy document, the KNMG states that a lethal injection might be appropriate if “the period of gasping and dying persists and the inevitable death is prolonged, in spite of good preparation,and it causes severe suffering for the parents.”

The proposal might sound reasonable to some; after all the infant is their child and is already dying. But it’s surely troubling to establish as the grounds for euthanasia the emotional state of a third party. This is killing justified not by relieving the suffering of the patient but by relieving the suffering of those around them. It is another step down that slippery slope towards making euthanasia far more common and easier to obtain than even many of its supporters would wish it to be.

This is why societies have to take a stand – in law and culture – against euthanasia. Without that stand, without a commitment to always act in defence of life, we open a space within which the potential for abuse is possible and the extension of exceptions to otherwise golden rules is potentially endless. In Belgium and the Netherlands, everything the critics warned about is starting to come true.