[ExI] Morphological freedom and its limits

[Tara Maya]

I think you could say, under existing law, many things  would not be permissible. 

Taking away an ability that a child would otherwise have is a form of harm and shouldn’t be allowed. For instance, if two deaf parents wanted to ensure that they had a deaf child, that would not be fair to the child. However, if they had nothing but a “deaf gene” and wanted a hearing child, I don’t see how it could be illegal for them to ensure their child had a “hearing gene” on any ethical grounds. (I’m not claiming there are single genes that control hearing/deafness, it’s just an example). By the same token, if parents wanted to ensure that their child had better than average hearing, I don’t see how that could be wrong on ethical grounds.

There are many people who claim to make “ethical” arguments against making one’s children’s smarter, or healthier or more athletic or more artistic, but these ethical arguments are always about wrong done to “society” or to those OTHER than the ones receiving the enhancement. I.e. it’s not “fair” to everyone else if a child is given a gene for greater intelligence or for faster running speed. But this is a dangerous argument, since, if taken seriously, any child born above average in any area ought not to be allowed to exist either. It makes no sense that how one acquires one’s enhancements should be an issue. In fact, this “fair society” argument actually assumes that a child with genetic engineering will definitely benefit—which makes it unethical to deny parents the option of choosing to do this for their offspring. 

The only grounds for outlawing enhancements to a zygote/child would be if the technology itself were in doubt, in which case, experimenting on a child could cause harm. For that reason, I can see that any kind of genetic or other non-reversible enhancements on anyone under the age of consent would have to proceed slowly. Most parents would be cautious about doing anything that would harm their children, much more cautious than anyone else, so the law would only be there for the few whack-jobs that don’t care about their own children.

And of course, it should be obvious that neither a government nor a corporation nor a non-familial guardian would have the right to make genetic changes to a child and rear that child for a purpose other than for the child’s own wellbeing; that would be slavery, and is illegal and unethical, regardless of whether enhancements are involved.

There are a large number of potential enhancements that might be neither better nor worse in any obvious way, and I can’t see any argument for forbidding them, except, as I said that they ought to be proven neutral before they are inflicted on children (who can’t give consent). If consenting adults could change their morphology to give themselves antlers or fins or laser-shooting eyes, I don’t see any ethical reason that should be forbidden.


Tara Maya
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> On Nov 16, 2015, at 2:40 PM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:
> 
> On 2015-11-16 16:15, Tara Maya wrote:
>> Unfortunately, if one makes laws based on a “guilty until proven innocent” basis like that, no freedoms will remain.
>> 
>> I propose the opposite. Assume our laws are already sufficient and change them only when there is an actual case of evident harm.
> Fine. But suppose you were setting up rules for enhancement. What kinds of evident harm would be evident to you?
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dr Anders Sandberg
> Future of Humanity Institute
> Oxford Martin School
> Oxford University
> 
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