Designer babies are here.

[PLATO]

All you need to do to object to this is look at popular trends in interior design from 1960 to now. You look at that and then tell me it's a good idea to let the same sort of people design human beings.

I read through the rest of the thread and have found this to be a most compelling argument!

[FrostyBoy]

Are we talking about creating perfectly balanced people? Because if we are, then that is a boring thing.

Deaf people see better than people who aren't deaf.
Blind people hear better than people who aren't blind.
etc.

If however people are considering enhancing the norm by large factors, then we are talking about superbeings, and i'm all for that.

[Barnabas]

Eugenics were a mainstream and respected well into the XXth century. Only the outcome of WW2 managed to bury racist physical anthropology and eugenic ideas which were very accepted and respected.

In the XIX century being racist was being a progressive and educated person, believing that all humans were equal was an old religious idea.

Now that so many decades have passed since the horrors of ww2, we will slowly slip back to the old mistakes of the post darwin XIX century and first half of the XX century.

[FrostyBoy]

You superist bastard!

[Agathon]

Example: congenital scoliosis. I don't see a moral problem with fixing that before it develops. That's not eugenics (which I agree is a legit thing to fear). That strikes me as proper medicine. If a procedure had been available in 1976 that would've granted me a normal spine, man, I'd have wanted my parents to have it done.

That is medicine, and such procedures are governed by science and rigorous codes of medical ethics. In most countries you cannot simply "buy" that kind of surgery. However in some limited cases you can, as Michael Jackson's face shows (whoever operated on him last should have had their license taken away).

The problem arises when people start wanting to operate for reasons that aren't medical problems. Aborting kids because they've got the "ghey" gene (if such a thing exists), for example.

Wholesale genetic modification by the rich in areas such as beauty and intelligence are an interesting case, because such things would only have value insofar as others could not get them. You could be sure that the same people advocating them would be attempting to prevent the state from giving them to other people. Large scale activity like this would remove any pretence to meritocracy our society has left and turn it into a society of de facto masters and slaves. I can think of a few people (some posters on this forum) who don't have a problem with such ideas.

There's absolutely no way such a thing should be left to private individuals. The state has proven itself pretty awful at dealing with such things, so it may well prove to be best left as a forbidden fruit.

[rah]

The issue is where the line is drawn.
Blonde hair and blue eyes does not constitute a master race. Especially since I'm sure that not all people would choose blond hair and blue eyes. And as stated earlier, most consider rich kids to already have a natural advantage due to nutrition, education and other resources. I don't see any problem with selections towards smarter or stronger children. To fully utilize these traits additional effort is required.

I saw families that kept having kids until they finally had a girl. They ended up with 9 boys before. This world is already over populated. I know that's the exception but a lot of families ended up larger on a smaller scale due to keep trying till they got the proper sex. Just because they want a girl or boy doesn't make them a Nazi.

Kids are a precious resource and a considerable expense. Why should we go about it willy nilly when maybe we can substitute quality for quantity on an already over crowded world.

And as we've seen, no matter how many gifts you've been given, you still have to put effort into using them.
Most kids that have problems these days are due to not having a stable family or lacking resources. That is what is turning our society into de facto masters and slaves. (regardless of eye or hair color) But even there, it's possible to succeed with the proper effort.

And on top of everything else, they've stated that there are no guarentees. You might choose and eye color but not necessarily get it.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST. Think about the outcome of being able to choose SKIN COLOR. If skin color is a choice, over the long haul, people won't be discriminated against because of skin color. It will be a fashion statement.

I do however have to agree that the best arguement I've read against it is the 1960's arguement

[Guynemer]

Deaf people see better than people who aren't deaf.
Blind people hear better than people who aren't blind.
etc.

That's actually a myth.

[Patroklos]

Uma Thurman

[Sprayber]

Would children be able to sue their parents if when they got older they didn't like the way they looked?

[Lorizael]

No, because we'll have bred out all the lawyers.

[DinoDoc]

Kids are a precious resource and a considerable expense. Why should we go about it willy nilly when maybe we can substitute quality for quantity on an already over crowded world.

Eugenics! You sound like a supporter of Margaret Sanger and of the programs instituted in 1930's Germany.

[Elok]

Well, this is grotesque. But I like how people assume there's an "intelligence gene," with no drawbacks. TANSTAAFL, people. If higher intellect, or any other trait people are talking about optimizing, were a purely quantitative and invariably good thing, we'd all (or nearly all) have been optimized already by evolution. But I doubt very much whether it is, since the world doesn't work that way. You want a tank with more armor, you slow it down. You want to make it faster, the engine takes more space and guzzles more gas. Design is a game of give and take.

We've already made considerable compromises to get as smart as we are. The brain takes up a ridiculous amount of energy and getting our big-head babies born is like pulling a coconut out of one's nostrils. Plus it takes a human child forever to mature. And that's without counting questions of brain structure, which I don't know enough to comment much on. But I don't think it's coincidence that so many social retards like me have savant abilities. I imagine you can only have so many neurons wired so efficiently, and beyond that it's a matter of having more of them dedicated and coordinated to a specific set of tasks. IIRC something like three-quarters of a rat's brain is dedicated to analyzing smells...

[Theben]

That is a good point. Who decides what constitutes intelligence? Obviously the parents ultimately, but they'll be under social pressures, if not "sound medical advice", to pick certain traits. Raw intellect will probably be high on the list, but will it be at the expense of artist talent? Mechanical aptitude? etc...

[Lorizael]

The most important type of intelligence is the kind that allows you to figure out which type of intelligence is most important.

[Theben]

AFAIK no human has ever had that.