IVF is expensive and difficult and all easily identified genetic diseases are rare, so until one of those conditions changes (cost reduction and better techniques, or so many diseases being discovered that the odds that you will be saving your kid from one become significant), it will not be used for this purpose but rather as something extra to do when IVF is required for other reasons.
You’re not curing cystic fibrosis, or any other genetic disease, are you? You’re just stopping disabled people from being born because you’ve decided their lives have no intrinsic value.
This can be said to a wide swath of people. Down syndrome people, bipolar people, blue people, people with physical deformities.
Why do you get to choose? Have you ever asked one of these people if they find their lives to be meaningless? How about their parents?
I can think of few hells more dull than a world of smart ass public radio listeners providing unrequested comments lathered in snark and cynicism.
> Why do you get to choose? Have you ever asked one of these people if they find their lives to be meaningless? How about their parents?
My hope with this technology is that we can give prospective parents the kind of tools that allow them to make reproductive choices that best reflect their desires and hopes and dreams for their children. The question of course is what are they going to do with these tools? Will they eagerly use them or throw them away in disgust?
And then what do we do as a society in response to that?
Is it legal to feed your new born child alcohol? Is it legal for pregnant women to drink alcohol? Is it legal for two cystic fibrosis gene carriers to knowingly produce a child who will suffer from cystic fibrosis? Is it legal for someone to modify their embryo so that it turn into a child that will be a cystic fibrosis carrier? Is it legal for someone to modify their embryo so that it turn into a child that will suffer from cystic fibrosis?
Which of these things should be legal and which shouldn't? How do we enforce them?
Presumably this "you" is the parent. They get to decide when (or if) they have kids and they can now decide what kind of kids they have. Just like folks can (and should) already screen for certain heritable disabilities.
> Have you ever asked one of these people if they find their lives to be meaningless?
They'll either be depressed or they won't feel this way. By definition, the ones that are well-functioning parts of society won't feel this way. I don't see why it should matter.
> I can think of few hells more dull than a world of smart ass public radio listeners providing unrequested comments lathered in snark and cynicism.
For someone who finds that dull, there is a lot of snark and cynicism in this comment. It's really not necessary, we're all here to engage with each others' view points.
No. I explicitly stated that I was using “you” as the impersonal pronoun, which English otherwise lacks (although “one” is often used instead)
I have a couple of disabilities and genetic diseases. They utterly, inarguably, and completely suck.
Disregarding the personal attack (I am well aware of downsides, but it's called having a discussion), higher median IQ is not really the point, it's about giving the same chances to everyone.
We could use this to eradicate a wealth of issues that we do understand, there's no good reason to have babies born with Cystic Fibrosis, we know what genes are causing it.