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Just got my bioethics paper back with a 92% and my prof circled a line I wrote about 'designer babies'
I kept seeing people online talk about 'designer babies' like it's just picking eye color from a menu. My paper argued that the real ethical wall is about fixing diseases versus picking traits for social gain, and my professor wrote 'exactly' next to that part. I used the example of the 2018 Chinese CRISPR twins to show how the line got crossed. Has anyone else found that this one phrase makes the whole debate way too simple?
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robertcarr6mo ago
Totally get that. My poli-sci prof did the same thing when I wrote about "cancel culture" flattening the whole argument.
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drewr155mo ago
So where do you actually draw the line then? If stopping HIV is over the line, is fixing something like Tay-Sachs okay? What's the real difference, other than how soon the kid gets sick?
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faith_hart206mo ago
Yeah, that phrase just shuts down the conversation. It makes people picture a catalog for babies, which isn't real. The actual fight is over fixing a kid's deadly illness versus trying to make a "better" kid by picking height or intelligence. Once you open the door for one, how do you stop the other? That Chinese scientist didn't just fix a disease, he messed with genes to try and stop HIV, which crossed a huge line. The "designer babies" talk misses all that real worry.
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gavin3656mo ago
But that's why the phrase is useful, it makes the problem clear. If we say it's just about fixing illness, people nod along. But the second you allow picking genes to stop HIV, you're not fixing a sickness the baby has, you're picking a trait for a different kind of life. That's the slope. The catalog idea might be silly, but the real fear is moving from cure to choice. Once we agree on editing for one non-fatal thing, the argument for editing for intelligence gets way harder to fight.
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