Monday, May 18, 2015

About designer babies

I see that Jason Soon is continuing his enthusiasm for the future enhancement of the human gene pool by direct genetic manipulation.   (I suspect all the clones under the masks in Star Wars look just like him.)

Skipping over, for a moment, the unforeseeable mistakes and unintended consequences that I would bet a testicle will be inherent in direct genetic manipulation, here's a thought pertaining to the supposed wisdom of people making such reproductive decisions:  given that there is one clear and obvious way in which the (illegal but enthusiastically used) market in baby selection has been already been given a good run in places like India, China and South Korea, namely gender selective abortion, why should anyone have grounds for optimism that the widespread selection for "good" qualities in future would be handled wisely and have any better result for society overall?

[The large disparity between male and female births in those countries is surely not a good thing, by anyone's reckoning.]


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You don't have testicles, stepford. You have a mangina.