“Whether we like it or not, the future of humanity is in our hands now. Rather than fearing genetics, we should embrace it. We can do better than chance.”
—

Genetically engineering ‘ethical’ babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor [Telegraph]

He said that we already routinely screen embryos and foetuses for conditions such as cystic fibrosis and Down’s syndrome and couples can test embryos for inherited bowel and breast cancer genes.

Rational design is just a natural extension of this, he said.

He said that unlike the eugenics movements, which fell out of favour when it was adopted by the Nazis, the system would be voluntary and allow parents to choose the characteristics of their children.

One of the many problem with this piece is that the ethicist has some serious misconceptions about the science (or so it seems from these soundbites.) Human genetics has made some incredible leaps and bounds over the last two decades but it’s still largely working on the problems of the those decades. Also how do you decide what qualifies as rational design? When it comes to human genetics, there are simply too many variables that you need to account for and you often learn that a single gene only accounts for a fraction of the activity that it’s associated with. 

I should probably read some of his work but so far, I’m not about this at all. 

Aug. 17 2012
Via telegraph.co.uk
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Notes

  1. lettersiarrange reblogged this from bare-life
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  3. thenoobyorker reblogged this from bare-life and added:
    le-kif-kif, Precisely, there’s a lot more that can be said.
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