From: Nick Bostrom (bostrom@ndirect.co.uk)
Date: Thu Feb 25 1999 - 14:48:56 MST
Billy Brown wrote:
> Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>> That we were able
> >to
> > finely control what type of individual came into existence is no
> > more
> against
> > extropy than in controlling what the genetic code of our
> > children will be.
>
> An interesting, and rather disturbing, point. I think I'll reserve
> judgment on that one for a bit. Does anyone else have an opinion
> about it?
I agree with Michael about that. I don't think leaving these
things to chance is morally required. In practice, of course, there
can be many complications; but in principle I don't think there is
anything wrong with choosing the traits of our offspring or the traits
of our machine decendants.
This is *not* to say that we would have the right to choose any
traits we want. For example, deliberately creating a being that would
suffer greatly with no chance of ending its life would typically be
totally unacceptable. I even tend to think that in some cases we have
an obligation to intervene to see to that such a being is not created.
This has present applications. I think a strong case could be made
that it is immoral or misguided to give birth to a baby that is known
to have Downs Syndrom. When we get the opportunity to correct this
defect on a fetus with genetic engineering, the obligation will become
even stronger. But do we want the law to require parents to make such
modifications? I think maybe we do (though this is an issue where we
might have to compromise). For neglecting to the genetic modifications
would amount to depriving the fetus of essential medical care -- like
refusing to take your kid to the docter when it is suffering from
meningitis.
But now we are getting into tricky issues! For transhumanists tend to
deny that there is an essential (and morally relevant) difference
between curing diseases and creating new functions. This would seem to
imply that genetic augmentations should be mandatory. And this would
seem to interfer with the autonomy of parents (and with religious
freedom for those who have religious objections to this). Also, there
is the difficulty of deciding what counts as augmentation, what is
harm, and what is just neutral modification.
To some extent, technology may come to our rescue. If we can make the
genetical changes such that they are fully reversible, then that
would seem to be a morally and practically preferable option. If the
kid gets bullied in school for her leopard spots, she can take a pill
that makes them go away. However, such reversibility would probably
not always be possible (until we have nanotechnology).
This is one area where we need to do more thinking. We
need to develop a transhumanist medical ethics.
Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
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