Thursday, June 28, 2012

These Children Really Have Two Mothers, AND a Father?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-43767/Worlds-GM-babies-born.html#ixzz1z7a4wUpK

Apparently a new protocol has been successfully tested, wherein additional genes from a female donor are injected into the mother's eggs to allow a successful conception.  (Apparently the injection in this case was of mitochondrial DNA).

People will go to terrific lengths to have children when they really want them.  Regardless of any feelings of mine or anyone else's on the moral status of such procedures, it is folly to presume that such technology can in any way be stopped, short of the center failing to hold and things falling apart.  From a purely political standpoint, if the children in these cases grow up to be cute and apparently at least normal, mounting political opposition is probably a non-starter anyway.  The same was the case in IVF with the original 'test tube babies', and there's no reason to believe that it would be different this time.

Readers probably ought to slightly update their priors as to the likely timing of significant amounts of human genetic enhancement being employed.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I plan to have a genetically enhanced child myself. To do otherwise will be considered child abuse within a generation.

Anonymous said...

I fear for the generation born just before genetic enhancement, who will have to compete with the enhanced generation.

Jehu said...

Anonymous,
Lots of people presently compete with others who are as relatively 'enhanced' compared to them as any naturals are likely to be compared to the enhanced in the next few generations. It's all really just a question of who...whom.

bdoran said...

Maybe it's my Celtic superstition and religious upbringing, but I can see the enhancements exploding in the concerned's faces.

The record of R&D does not of course encourage optimism. It may be the enhanced turn freakish and the naturals have the advantage.

Anonymous said...

Yes, and it sucks just as much to be at a natural disadvantage as an unnatural one.