[ExI] Morphological freedom and its limits

Tue Nov 17 00:48:31 UTC 2015

Tara wrote:  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.
-----------------
The problem here is that one could maybe make a good case for implied
consent, the type that is used in emergency rooms when no one is available
to consent to the procedures and the patient is unconscious.

The nub is that it may be arguable as to what constitutes 'good'.  When the
potential parents want to make some change they consider good but most of
society considers bad, the parents can argue that the ensuing child would
agree to the genetic manipulation if he could, perhaps to be like his
parents.

So all of this boils down to the question:  who has the ultimate right to
say what is good?  A medical committee made up of bioethicists?  Just the
parents?  A judge?

If some medical treatment is not allowed in the USA but is available in
Mexico, for example, people go there and take their chances with it.  This
will happen in the gengineering situation as well.  Probably unstoppable.

bill w

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 6:30 PM, Tara Maya <tara at taramayastales.com> wrote:

> 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
> Blog  |  Twitter  |  Facebook  |  Amazon  |  Goodreads
>
>
>
> > 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
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > extropy-chat mailing list
> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20151116/56593fe7/attachment.html>