From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Aug 11 1999 - 11:48:31 MDT
> Paul Hughes <paul@i2.to> wrote:
> As far as experimenting on children, I'm not sure people will have a problem
> with that either.. Most parents want their children to exceed themselves.
> Most often when parents have the money, they are all too willing to send
> them to the best private schools, music lessons, special tutors, etc.
> Not to mention, if I recall a Gallop poll showed that a surprising large
> percentage of parents would be willing to enhance the genome of their
> offspring, if the technology was available and reliable.
A few years ago I went to an ethics conference about gene therapy.
The comments there, Paul's comments and Greg Stock's & John Campbell's work
(presented by J. C. @ Extro4) regarding adding a Human Artificial Chromosome
(HAC) to embyros to allow "activation" and/or insertion of genes at later
life-points leads me to raise the following point.
Embryos, fetuses & children *cannot* give informed consent.
A fundamental principle of ethical medical practice (at this time, as
compared with former times) is that before you do anything, you have to
have informed consent. The more complex the procedure (and the more
potential for something to go wrong), the more detailed the explanations
must be by the physicians to the patient. Lawsuits abound when something
goes wrong and it turns out that the information or consent process was
faulty.
Now, in cases where an embryo or child is *unable* to make informed consent,
the parents, or perhaps the state, are allowed to provide that consent.
Presumably this is because they function as a proxy, acting in the interests
of the other [potential] individual when they are unable to do so for themselves.
In those rare cases where the parents are acting in the interests of their
"beliefs" rather than the interest of the health of the [potential] individual,
the state will sometimes override the parents' position. However, I think
that most would agree, that the boundary between the interests of the
child and the interests of the parent is a very fuzzy one. Many parents
certainly believe their children are their "property" and/or manipulate
children into doing things that the parent desires but the child at
that time (or at some future point) may view as highly undesirable.
The *sticky* point in my mind is we are entering the time when treatments
that are entirely "enhancements", rather than "necessities" are available.
If the Extropian principles are those which should encourage diversity,
minimize tyranny, manipulation/control by power bodies/majorities
(including parents or medical authorities), etc., then it would seem to
me that --
Extropians should be fundamentally opposed to all germline or
childhood gene therapies that are not essential for the survival
of the individual (to a time where they an give "informed consent").
Greg & John's work tries to balance on the edge of this by making
the enhancements "selectable" or "enable-able", but they are still
making a modification that the child would prefer not to have,
should they, for whatever reason, grow up to be a human "naturalist",
Thoughts?
Robert
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