New technologies may eventually lead parents to abandon natural procreation in the search for the right kind of child – and one who can compete with its engineered peers.
The abortion industry has already given people the ability to screen out unwanted kinds of children:
- Britain’s materialistic culture has screened out disabled babies. Britain’s abortion laws give a disabled foetus a second class status.
- Girls are aborted in cultures that place a distorted value on having a son. Disproportionate abortion (or infanticide) of girls is evident whenever the ratio of boys born to girls exceeds 106:100. There is clear evidence of this in Hong Kong, where the ratio is 109.7:100, in South Korea (110); in Pakistan (110.9); in Delhi, India (117); and in one-child policy China (117). Abortion – the feminists’ most fiercely defended right – has become the deadliest of weapons against women.
The elimination of ‘defective’ children or children of the ‘wrong’ gender shows that parents are willing to end life for the sake of securing the ‘right’ kind of child (or because they feel it is their duty-to-abort). Until now, technology has given parents the ‘negative’ choice of ‘screening out’ unwanted babies. New technologies, however, will open up a Pandora’s box of nightmare possibilities. Parents will have the ‘brave new world’ option of ‘screening in’ particular kinds of baby.
Engineering the ‘right specification child’
Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) can detect the existence or absence of certain genetic qualities in an early embryo. PGD is becoming more and sophisticated. In the not-too-distant future it may be possible to identify whether an early embryo has genetic markers for intelligence or obesity, for musicality or colour-blindness. Such markers do not mean a child will be very clever or fat – only that, in the right environment, they have a better chance of becoming so.
5% of Europeans currently use Assisted Reproduction Technologies to overcome infertility problems. The combination of ARTs with evolving PGD services could give parents enormous opportunities to choose from amongst a menu of differently-endowed embryos. The US Commission on Bioethics (upon whose ‘Beyond Therapy’ report much of this definition is based) asked:
“What if, as a result of widespread genetic screening of adults and improvement in diagnostic screening of embryos, the practice of IVF with PGD came to be seen as superior to natural procreation in offering a greater probability of obtaining a healthy child? If the procedures became sufficiently routine and inexpensive (to the point, say, where they are covered by ordinary health insurance), prospective parents interested in healthier (or otherwise better) children might increasingly be tempted to consider IVF with PGD.”
The creation of minimum specification children is but one more example of the creation of a posthuman species.
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