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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Why? What difference does it make? I'd have no problem with that. In fact I'd think that's pretty cool. Would you freak out if you found out you were delivered via cesarian section? I'm not really seeing how this is much different.
I would love to see us do that and in fact I think that's the direction we need to go if we're going to survive as a species. The big thing we need to watch out for is that we don't start developing into a monoculture. We need to maintain a certain amount of diversity or else we open ourselves up to being wiped out by a single pathogen or disaster.
Ultimately our medical knowledge is getting too good. Genetic disorders that would have been death sentences 200 years ago are just mild inconveniences now and so those genetic defects are starting to proliferate. We need to utilize genetic tech to fix those obvious problems, while also not going overboard and classifying unusual variations as defects to be fixed which would ultimately result in the monoculture problem I discussed previously.
If those genetic defects are no longer a problem, why do we need to "fix" them? You're getting dangereously close to eugenics here, buddy.
Because we're not fixing the problems, only treating the symptoms. Those genetic defects becoming more widespread means that the extreme cases become more popular as well, which will, while they are still manageable, be inherited to the next generation. Eventually defects will reach a point where they are just bad enough to be treatable for most people but still crippling to a good portion. Take bad eyesight for example, if no gene manipulation takes place, eventually most people will need glasses or surgery to fix the inconvenience. Unfortunately at hat point some people will have eyesight so bad that neither glasses nor surgery can fix the, at that level, crippling defect. The issue here is that an average increase in mild incenvience means also an increase in extreme cases of the inconveniences. And I don't think it's in the best interest of anyone to work towards more crippled people. Not because cripples are somehow subhuman but because being crippled means a life filled with needless suffering. Being able to bypass deaths due to these minor issues saves lifes, unfortunately it can also mean that more people will die/suffer far worse effects than if we never had invented remedies for these problems.
I think long term, despite ethical issues, meddling with our DNA to get rid of known defects is better than letting nature run its course.
Basically what Neshura said, but here's some more context. Survivable is not the same thing as no longer a problem. I'm diabetic, it is 100% survivable, but it has also had a profound impact on my life. One of the things I have to consider when trying to decide if I have a child is if I want to risk passing this disease on to them. It's not 100% guaranteed my child would have diabetes because my wife doesn't, but it's a pretty good chance. If I had the option to get genetic editing done to guarantee my child wouldn't get diabetes I absolutely would do so because nobody should have to live with this.
That's just one disease, one single example. There are hundreds of genetic disorders that range from mild to severe impact on peoples health and life. Things that modern medicine can treat the symptoms of, and allow people to survive at least long enough to reproduce. Many of these diseases are still ultimately fatal, but not till much later in life. This is to say nothing of diseases like Parkinson's that are normally not symptomatic or fatal until later in life.
I am aware that this is dangerous territory, but the need out weighs those risks, and if you notice I was very specific to point out that there is risk and we need to be very careful with how this tech is used. A perfect example of where we need to walk carefully is autism. Is that something that should be treated? Maybe, but probably not. Except in the most extreme cases it's not really something that's dibilitating, and there are also advantages to being autistic. That's one example where we should probably just let things be. But there are plenty of others where I'm sure everyone can agree stepping in is the right thing to do.
The biggest risk, the thing we must absolutely avoid, is the allure of a "designer baby". It's very tempting to give people the ability to do things like pick their childs eye color or tweak their height or do dozens of other things that ultimately are not medically necessary. That is the really dangerous path and the risks there absolutely outweigh the advantages.
Have you forgotten how much school children torment other kids over not having both parents and a 'normal' family? Now imagine going to school and everyone tormenting you over being a test-tube/bag baby?
Do you really think that kid is gonna grow up without losing his/her shit somewhere along the way?
Who the hell is getting bullied for being a test-tube baby?
We had all this shit in the 70s before the first IVF baby, and to the best of my knowledge, bullying over it has simply never been a thing.
Have you never heard of the very common meme, "Daddy went to get a pack of smokes and never came back"
Yeah, image that meme on steroids, "You don't even have a mother?"
... Have you honestly, genuinely never heard of test tube babies? Do you not realise we've had them since the 70s?
Think about that, then realise we had all this shit about "but the poor children" back then, for that, and none of it ever materialised because nobody gives a shit or ever knows the difference or cares at all.
It's no different than giving birth by c-section, or indeed vaginally. There is no difference.
How would anybody find out? The kid would only ever really need to know at a young age (where they might out themselves without Knowing the social risks) if they had ongoing medical needs from complications resulting from it. Plus, it's an artificial womb, not cloning; the kid would still have two genetic parents who would be their actual legal guardians, unless life happened and the kid lost one or both of them, which would just mean the bullying would focus on that instead.
Sounds to me the process could eventually be used with frozen eggs and sperm from 50+ years ago. You're not making me any more comfortable about the future of an already overpopulated planet.
If they're viable samples, it would be probably be possible as soon as it's people can have their contemporary eggs and sperm used in a fully artificial gestation process.
I wasn't talking at all about overpopulation because it wasn't directly related to your comment about bullying. I don't think we have an overpopulation problem so much as a resource distribution problem and lack of political will among those with power to actually change our systems into something less cruel to ourselves and the planet. We produce far more than we need to in our current system for the population we have, but our resource distribution system is directed by the whims of market forces and profit instead of community need.
Plus, I tend to automatically reject the assumption we're overpopulated because bringing it up gives off an implication that it needs to be intentionally resolved, and that gets into really horrific territory really quickly.
On top of that, nobody even knows what the human carrying capacity of the planet even is; there's zero scientific consensus on total human capacity or how to even measure it. It's a non-starter for me, and I just do not think it's an issue worth worrying about, but I am deeply concerned with how quick people are to blame everything on overpopulation as the cause of shortages when we haven't really tried a different approach.
Edit: I fixed the last sentence to make sense.