Thursday, June 15, 2006

Potentiel?

So I was reading the newpaper today and came across this article about choosing the gender of babies. Apparently rich people who come from countries where its banned (like China and Canada) are coming here, where theres no regulation, so they can choose to have either a girl or a boy. The process has something to do with only using embryos that will develop into the desired sex, and probably involves destroying the others (I dont really know, look it up).

I'm not opposed to the idea at all, except on the "slippery slope" argument that it will eventualy lead to a geneticly engineered, superior, and ultimately seperate rich class (its the capitilist way, after all). But all those christian bioethics groups are opposing it because they think its wrong to deny life to the embryo of the undesired sex. there was a quote in the article about what people who do this porcedure were saying, it was something along the lines of 'we'd rather you not exist than be in our family as the wrong sex' (they're talking to the doomed embryos i guess). Apparently these groups see newly fertilized embryos as potentiel human beings who deserve all kinds of rights (see the prolife arguments against abortion). but that a slipperly slope too, because when does the potentiel start? isnt each sperm a potentiel human being? we waste those all the time and dont think about it, after all they're just mindless cells. I think, from a biological standpoint, fertilization doesnt change that too much, since the cells still cant think or feel.

sorry about getting so political today, but genetic engineering (and similar stuff like this) and the future of humanity are a passion of mine.

1 comment:

OSK said...

I'm not going to address the religion issue because that's been argued absolutely to death on the issue of abortion as you said, but my personal belief is that things like this and stem cell research are unethical because they take humanity further away from being a product of nature and more towards a product of desire.

Feel free to shoot me down.