Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to law your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: in this episode we're talking about designer jeans with a G,
Speaker 1: not with a J. Yeah, I know you wore your
Speaker 1: best I have my george As jeans on. You can
Speaker 1: still enjoy wearing them, but uh, but yeah, we're taking
Speaker 1: things to pigmentic level here. And this is based in
Speaker 1: large part on a World Science Festival panel that you
Speaker 1: attended in New York City. It's right Designer Jenes fashioning
Speaker 1: our Biological Future, which you can check out. Can just
Speaker 1: you can google w s F or excuse me, the
Speaker 1: World Science Festival, I should say, and designer jeans and
Speaker 1: look at a very spirited discussion about the future of
Speaker 1: reproduction and a couple of really great panelists on there.
Speaker 1: But we wanted to bring it to you guys as
Speaker 1: attention because some of the technology that's happening is fascinating
Speaker 1: and it brings up all sorts of ideas and problems
Speaker 1: and solutions. Maybe. Yeah, I mean, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: lot of controversy in this this general area of scientific
Speaker 1: investigation and discovery, and there has been for some time
Speaker 1: because we're you end up diving down into some of
Speaker 1: the central ideas about what it is to be human
Speaker 1: and how the how humans work as a species, how
Speaker 1: we evolve or how we don't evolve and uh, and
Speaker 1: people get a bit touchy about that. I mean, and
Speaker 1: to your point, they get a bit touchy about it
Speaker 1: in this panel you attended, and certainly that's what makes
Speaker 1: a great panel discussion. Yeah, in the premise of this panel,
Speaker 1: or a couple of questions thrown out there, like what
Speaker 1: if you could prevent disease through genetic engineering even before conception?
Speaker 1: All right, would you do it? The Goud answered the yes, right,
Speaker 1: you'd want to give your child a leg up in
Speaker 1: the biological world and and um, you know you have
Speaker 1: that child not have to experience, um, some serious disease.
Speaker 1: But the other question was what if you could tinker
Speaker 1: a little bit more with genetics and give that child,
Speaker 1: say a propensity for uh, you know, more robust intellectual
Speaker 1: skills or powers or even athletic prowess. You kind of
Speaker 1: get into this area of of science and genetic science
Speaker 1: as they is an honor system candy dish. Do you
Speaker 1: take the one piece of candy or do you or
Speaker 1: do you maybe you take out a one for later
Speaker 1: as well, or maybe you just reach it and get
Speaker 1: a whole handful. At what point do we self regulate?
Speaker 1: At which point do we stop? At what point do
Speaker 1: we need someone else saying don't get five candies, only
Speaker 1: get one? Yeah, And we do have a basis in
Speaker 1: reality to start judging these things by. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: get in the time machine and go back a little bit. First,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go back to the nineties seventies in which
Speaker 1: there was a firestorm in Cambridge because there was this
Speaker 1: idea of recombinant DNA happening at a very serious level.
Speaker 1: You have this moment once scientists in genetic engineering, we're
Speaker 1: trying to move forward with this, and they were trying
Speaker 1: to create guidelines with the National Institutes of Health, and
Speaker 1: we're doing that, and there were a couple of alarmist,
Speaker 1: couple of scientists who said, wait a second week, should
Speaker 1: sit back, because this is very important here. If you
Speaker 1: can take a bacteria and you can tinker with its genes,
Speaker 1: and you can do it in a way that this
Speaker 1: bacteria survives this and thrives. Does this mean that will
Speaker 1: be unlashing pathogens? Does this mean that this ability also
Speaker 1: allows us to start to create Frankenstein chang the F word,
Speaker 1: the scientific f word. Uh, Yeah, and which inevitably comes up.
Speaker 1: And I don't believe we've podcasted on Frankenstein before, not
Speaker 1: only as a fictional character, but just as an idea,
Speaker 1: as a symbol of science gone too far. Science Uh,
Speaker 1: interfering with with with with the human condition in in
Speaker 1: a meaningful way. Yeah, And this, of course is a
Speaker 1: discussion that has to happen. But out of this discussion
Speaker 1: comes again these guidelines for genetic engineering, many of which
Speaker 1: are still in place today. And if you want to
Speaker 1: look at why they had a problem with this in
Speaker 1: the first place, well you have to go even back
Speaker 1: further in history and look at the American eugenics movement,
Speaker 1: which happened in the late eighteen hundreds and early neteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and is fundamentally a misunderstanding of genes and how
Speaker 1: they work in our past. Down in people now be're
Speaker 1: familiar with the term eugenics, it probably carries a certain
Speaker 1: dark weight for you because it it has become synonymous
Speaker 1: with with with human breeding programs, essentially with force sterilization,
Speaker 1: and with the rise of of of the Nazi regime
Speaker 1: in Germany. Yeah, it's all bungled up in this. So
Speaker 1: if you look at the American eugenics movement, you see
Speaker 1: that there's this oversimplification of how genetics works. So you
Speaker 1: start to have scientists say, oh, well, we think that
Speaker 1: these traits are passed down and and here's this imbecile
Speaker 1: and really this is the this is the jargon that
Speaker 1: that you used in these papers. Um, here's this imbecile
Speaker 1: breeding another imbecile, and how could we stop this? Well,
Speaker 1: sterilization is one way that we could stop it. And
Speaker 1: they start to actually put this into practice because at
Speaker 1: the same time this is happening, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are being institutionalized when they should not
Speaker 1: have been. So maybe a person had um a bad
Speaker 1: case of alcoholism or some other thing that didn't line
Speaker 1: up to society in the society's best solution at that
Speaker 1: moment was, well, just put them in an institution. And
Speaker 1: then you have this problem with this eugenics coming online
Speaker 1: actually garnering um some credibility as a way to measure
Speaker 1: someone's uh not just i Q, but what their general
Speaker 1: traits were. Yeah, you see this push to to say, oh,
Speaker 1: well this person is I mean any in a sense,
Speaker 1: Eugenics at a very basic level has it's not setting
Speaker 1: out to do evil. A few few human endeavors really
Speaker 1: say all right, what can we do to just really
Speaker 1: make a dark name for ourselves? I mean, the the
Speaker 1: idea is essentially, can we improve humans? Can we ensure
Speaker 1: healthy babies? But you quickly get into this area we're saying, well,
Speaker 1: let's just sterilize the the imbeciles, let's sterilize the criminals,
Speaker 1: let's sterilize the homosexuals, and uh and and inevitably you
Speaker 1: get into this very dark in human territory. And if
Speaker 1: someone is institutionalized in a sense, many of their rights
Speaker 1: have been taken away, and there have been. There's actually
Speaker 1: a very famous case called Buck versus Bell that looks
Speaker 1: at whether or not someone has rights on this and
Speaker 1: it's still on the on the books, right, it's a law,
Speaker 1: and we won't go into it because, um, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty lengthy case. But basically someone was sterilize because the
Speaker 1: mom had been in an institution, and the line of
Speaker 1: reasoning was that she was genetically predis pose to be
Speaker 1: an imbecile like her mother. Therefore, let's sterilize her. So
Speaker 1: this is a problem, right, this this line of logic. Moreover,
Speaker 1: you've got a bit of xenophobia going on at this time.
Speaker 1: There's a large immigrant population, So there's this idea again that, um,
Speaker 1: you know that there's a sort of purretty that's being
Speaker 1: muddied with their muddy in our waters. What can we
Speaker 1: do to purify ours? Yeah? And who does this what
Speaker 1: sort of a line of reasoning does this appeal to? Uh?
Speaker 1: The old Hitler? Yeah, yeah, the old the old Hitler,
Speaker 1: as you say, the Nazi Party. And clearly yeah, you
Speaker 1: see uh, you look back in time. You see Hitler
Speaker 1: picking up on ideas of American American eugenics. You see
Speaker 1: mine comp referencing the language of the American eugenics movement.
Speaker 1: You see them sort of in a mutual admiration society,
Speaker 1: where the American eugenics movement individuals and that are saying, oh,
Speaker 1: look at the great work they're doing in Germany. They're
Speaker 1: doing there, there's so much more advanced than we are.
Speaker 1: And then likewise you have people on the German side saying, oh,
Speaker 1: the American eugenics movement. They have it figured out. We
Speaker 1: we should be doing uh more of what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and both sides are kind of headed for for a
Speaker 1: very real disaster. Right. In fact, some of the ideas
Speaker 1: and writings of the American eugenics movement shows up in
Speaker 1: linkom right like this is to the this is the
Speaker 1: extent to which they are in bed with each other. However,
Speaker 1: there's a backing off by the American eugenic society because
Speaker 1: eventually what we see are these ideas manifesting themselves in
Speaker 1: very real ways leading up to World War Two. So thankfully,
Speaker 1: this movement in America loses a lot of its momentum
Speaker 1: and people back away from it, and they begin to
Speaker 1: understand that this is we're going into a territory here
Speaker 1: that we don't necessarily want to go into. We don't
Speaker 1: want to sterilize people. At this point, I do want
Speaker 1: to point out that thirty states had adopted sterilization policies
Speaker 1: for those institutions or jails, So it really did make
Speaker 1: somewhat of a mainstream play here. Yeah, and you look
Speaker 1: back through it some notable cases. I mean, for instance,
Speaker 1: you have Alan Turing central figure and computer science and
Speaker 1: AI prosecuted for homosexuality in nineteen fifty two when such
Speaker 1: acts were still criminalized in the UK, and he accepted
Speaker 1: treatment with the estrogen injections also known as chemical castration
Speaker 1: as an alternative to prison. Um. This little sad, yeah,
Speaker 1: tragic story. Um. Another interesting case that I ran across,
Speaker 1: and this surprised me. Uh Sweden. Sweden has a reputation
Speaker 1: for being a very friendly to LGBT interest for the
Speaker 1: most part. Right, but up until two thousand thirteen, if
Speaker 1: a Swedish transgender person wanted to legally update their gender
Speaker 1: on official I D BIT I D papers Uh in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, law required them to both get divorced
Speaker 1: and sterilized. First. Yeah, that came off the books in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, so it's no longer reality. But two.
Speaker 1: So all of this gives I think everybody a good
Speaker 1: idea of the basis that scientists are working off in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy when all of a sudden, genetic engineering becomes
Speaker 1: a very real thing, and they look back to the
Speaker 1: past and how this how technology or science or ideas
Speaker 1: were used, and they go forward and we're still in
Speaker 1: the shadow of eugenics. Yeah, it's a very long shadow,
Speaker 1: and it's casting its shadow over some technologies. Now they're
Speaker 1: actually very helpful. But again there's a bit of a
Speaker 1: firestorm about that. So let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we get back, we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: the three person I v at all. Right, we're back,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about a little something called
Speaker 1: mitochondrial transfer or how might have we have heard of
Speaker 1: this in the media? Okay, it has been picked up
Speaker 1: as babies with three parents, also called three person in
Speaker 1: vitro fertilization and and not used yet. It would be
Speaker 1: uh manajatifah, I think we can coin that one. You know,
Speaker 1: we could probably do that and there would be some
Speaker 1: there would be one person on the panel that it
Speaker 1: would be pretty annoyed with that, and for good reason, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because it is a this is a situation
Speaker 1: where if you're talking about this in terms of three person,
Speaker 1: three parents, babies, etcetera, you are focusing on one little
Speaker 1: detail of the situation and kind of blowing it out
Speaker 1: of proportion. But how can you not when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a three genetics influencing the birth of a child
Speaker 1: instead of just two or one in the case of cloning.
Speaker 1: I just think it's funny that that sort of baggage
Speaker 1: comes to the table, that this idea that's like managua
Speaker 1: genetic material coming together, because it's not really that um
Speaker 1: and yet that's that's probably the sexiest way that the
Speaker 1: media or anybody else can kind of describe it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't sound as sexy because well, let
Speaker 1: me just to explain really quickly what mitochondrial transfer is.
Speaker 1: This is when doctors inject the cytoplasm from another woman's
Speaker 1: egg into the egg of a patient with mitochondrial disease.
Speaker 1: And the aim here is to eliminate mitochondrial disease from
Speaker 1: the resulting offspring. But the offspring in question essentially technically
Speaker 1: those three genetic parents. Yeah, we'll get more into that
Speaker 1: to the actual statistics, but but that yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: just the the the endpoint of that, I mean, the
Speaker 1: important part is you're trying to help a woman who
Speaker 1: severs ther minochondrial disease have healthy offspring that does not
Speaker 1: suffer from it. That's the aim here. It's not let's
Speaker 1: get all Frankenstegni and make make three parent genetic families no, no.
Speaker 1: Mutations in mitochondrial DNA can cause rare but really serious
Speaker 1: illnesses and defects, including heart failure, dementia, and blindness. And
Speaker 1: many of these conditions are fatal and diseases like diabetes, stroke,
Speaker 1: cardiac deffects, epilepsy, or muscle weak this may originate from
Speaker 1: mitochondrial defects. Okay, so there's a lot going on here,
Speaker 1: there's a preventative measure um, and let's just kind of
Speaker 1: back up a little bit up and go back to
Speaker 1: mitochondria because I know, I feel like everybody's probably in there,
Speaker 1: like fifth grade or sixth grade class right now. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the powerhouse of the cell um. But it's
Speaker 1: more than that. It has its own DNA and it's
Speaker 1: a separate DNA UH in the nucleus, and mitochondrial DNA
Speaker 1: is inherited via the maternal line from mother to child.
Speaker 1: That's why this is a problem, right, It's passed down.
Speaker 1: So when you do this, when when you make this
Speaker 1: transfer from a donor egg, the resulting egg, which has
Speaker 1: the nucleus from the intending mother, has nine nine percent
Speaker 1: of its coding DNA from the intended mother. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about it just an infantesmal amount of genetic material
Speaker 1: from the donor egg. You cannot say this is like
Speaker 1: a three person embryo, but technically you can, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: um yeah. And so of course people end up focusing
Speaker 1: on that. I can't I mean, I can fault them,
Speaker 1: but I can't fault people for for finding that idea
Speaker 1: kind of exciting because it again, it changes the way
Speaker 1: you sort of think about what. It changes the way
Speaker 1: you think about just two person parentage or one person parentage. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it takes me back to when we talked
Speaker 1: about chimeras. Right, this is that case in which there
Speaker 1: was a person who had not absorbed her twin like intentionally,
Speaker 1: but you know, she survived and she, um, she did
Speaker 1: absorb her twins, so she had the genetic material from
Speaker 1: her twin. But this is a single birth. Right. Later on,
Speaker 1: she would have children of her own, and she had
Speaker 1: a very serious illness and so that what it is
Speaker 1: that touched the children to see if they could, um,
Speaker 1: I believe give her Maybe it was a kidney or
Speaker 1: something like this, But they found that the at least
Speaker 1: two of her three children were not genetic matches. They
Speaker 1: matched the absorbed twins. So The idea here again is
Speaker 1: that this kind of thing happens in nature. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: not so crazy, it's not so frank Instinian, but then
Speaker 1: we end up we end up calling the cameras, which
Speaker 1: is of course the name of a monster as well.
Speaker 1: So you kind of can't help but fall into that
Speaker 1: trap with with language and our understanding of of these
Speaker 1: these scientific principles. Well, the problem with minochondrial transfer, at
Speaker 1: least right now is twofold, and one is that there
Speaker 1: are objections that the embryo would contain genetic material from
Speaker 1: three different people, and they don't know how this would work,
Speaker 1: how this would interplay. In other words, would the embryo
Speaker 1: maybe reject some of that genetic material, would it cause
Speaker 1: problems with that child later on? Um. The other part
Speaker 1: of this is there's a question about whether or not
Speaker 1: any of those mitochondrial genes from the mother may still
Speaker 1: be present. In the words, you can get all of
Speaker 1: them out, and that remains to be answered whether or
Speaker 1: not there there'd be a tiny colony um from the
Speaker 1: mom with the mutations that might eventually take over the
Speaker 1: other mitochondrial DNA colony from the donor egg. So it's
Speaker 1: something we would need to proceed with with small scale
Speaker 1: scale studies on really but but then it involves embryos,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a hot button issue. How do you
Speaker 1: get the go ahead to actually research this even though
Speaker 1: it can be a tremendous aid to the individual suffering
Speaker 1: from these mitochondrial diseases that they want to have children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's the problem right here, like how do
Speaker 1: you start human clinical trials with these concerns and with
Speaker 1: some scientists still on the fence of, hey, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: go down this road because it's a slippery slope. You
Speaker 1: start doing mitochondrial transfers now, and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you'll be creating super babies with all sorts of traits.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's part and partial the problem with
Speaker 1: this right now, the reason why some doctors cannot get
Speaker 1: into human trials even though they've had successful creation of
Speaker 1: healthy human's eyegoats in animals. One of the individuals on
Speaker 1: that panel, uh it was a man by the name
Speaker 1: of a Sheldon Krimsky, Professor of Urban and Environmental policy
Speaker 1: and Planning at Tufts University, and he he was kind
Speaker 1: of the antagonist on the study. But like One of
Speaker 1: the things he was bringing up is, well, there's this
Speaker 1: so called m ao a warrior gene and human that
Speaker 1: is all about human aggression. And so then what parents
Speaker 1: wouldn't eliminate that to make their child less war Like,
Speaker 1: I guess if you really want a kid to succeed
Speaker 1: it at sports, you'd say give them two of those
Speaker 1: if you can. But um, you know, it's that kind
Speaker 1: of argument people want up making. You know, if you
Speaker 1: if you can take one one candy from the jar,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you take to why wouldn't you take three? Well,
Speaker 1: so what some of the other panelists said is we're
Speaker 1: not at that point yet anyway, and so it's not
Speaker 1: as simple as that. You can't really just go in
Speaker 1: and say, oh, well that's the aggression, Jane, take it
Speaker 1: out now, we're good to go. Exactly. So Nita for honey,
Speaker 1: she's a genome science is in policy, the lawyer, UM,
Speaker 1: and actually the Obama administration UH was saying that we
Speaker 1: shouldn't really over worry this at this point because the
Speaker 1: technology is not a ready for us to select at
Speaker 1: that level, and be on some level we are already
Speaker 1: selecting for traits. So if you are a woman who
Speaker 1: is looking for a sperm donor. You're going through a
Speaker 1: book and you might be selecting for blonde hair, you
Speaker 1: might be selecting for brown eyes, you might be selecting
Speaker 1: for their athletic prowess or intellectual abilities. This is kind
Speaker 1: of already being done at a very basic level. So
Speaker 1: what she's saying is this, it's time now to look
Speaker 1: at the past, look at eugenics. You look at the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and some of the guidelines that were created then,
Speaker 1: and move the goal post a little bit and then
Speaker 1: reassess later, and just so that something like monochondrial transfer
Speaker 1: can be a reality for parents who are trying to
Speaker 1: have children who are free of these This is at
Speaker 1: lease diseases. Yeah, I mean you could. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could certainly argue that looking through a portfolio of ptital
Speaker 1: sperm donors. So that's more like, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: difference between um choosing something off a menu and going
Speaker 1: back into the kitchen and telling them what to put
Speaker 1: in the soup. Right, But on the other hand, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's very limiting to sort of shackle yourself to
Speaker 1: this idea that we cannot proceed because we will mess
Speaker 1: things up too much. I mean, we would we ever
Speaker 1: get anything done scientifically if we went forward with that idea. Though,
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, it seems like we're really great at advancing
Speaker 1: science if we say we're doing this so we can
Speaker 1: kill people better and then in which case all the
Speaker 1: funding you need. Well exactly, but no, it might harm
Speaker 1: somebody even though we're trying to help people. We might
Speaker 1: use it to there might be some sort of moral
Speaker 1: concern with it. Therefore, no no procession at all. So
Speaker 1: what's interesting about this is that some of the same
Speaker 1: arguments were presented when IVF first came um into public awareness.
Speaker 1: So in mutual fertilization, and obviously IVF could not have
Speaker 1: moved forward unless they did it in human trials and
Speaker 1: found it to be safe for both the mother and
Speaker 1: the baby, and lo and behold, they found out that
Speaker 1: that is the case, and that is actually a path
Speaker 1: for a lot of parents these days that they go
Speaker 1: down IVF. And it's so it's so sort of wrote
Speaker 1: now that it's hard to believe that this was in
Speaker 1: that same category as minochondrial transfer twenty years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was mentioned in Future Shock, and we
Speaker 1: we've talked about in our future shock episode and if
Speaker 1: you go back, I mean I certainly remember those uh
Speaker 1: editions of like Time magazine or Newsweek and the sort
Speaker 1: of the scary idea of the test two baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which today I mean nobody, nobody cares. We're past that
Speaker 1: that that fear. Yeah. So in the same way, minochondrial
Speaker 1: transfer really needs to have those human trials in order
Speaker 1: to find out yes, this is safe for the child,
Speaker 1: is this say for the mother and um and to
Speaker 1: see what if any risks are associated with it. It's
Speaker 1: just interesting because again it brings up that can of
Speaker 1: worms of well, okay, we do this, and as uh
Speaker 1: Sheldon Crunsky on the the panel said, you do that,
Speaker 1: and there's this concern that we once we start, we
Speaker 1: won't be able to stop. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I kind of to a limited extent. Think
Speaker 1: of it in terms of taking the tyler to the playground. Yes,
Speaker 1: the toddler is going to injure himself, he's gonna fall
Speaker 1: off of something, he's gonna get in a tussle with
Speaker 1: another tydler. But what do you do. Do you not
Speaker 1: go to the playground at all? Do you just stay
Speaker 1: in the house on a beautiful day. No, you gotta
Speaker 1: get out there, right out there. I mean, we're humans.
Speaker 1: We're going to mess things up. We're going to create
Speaker 1: all sorts of problems for ourselves. But science has been
Speaker 1: a tool that has allowed us, yes to to cause
Speaker 1: great harm in the world, but also do great good.
Speaker 1: I mean, science is really the thing that we do
Speaker 1: the best. I mean, that is the discipline that we've
Speaker 1: created that is greater than ourselves. Yeah, and there may
Speaker 1: be some other technologies coming online that actually know all
Speaker 1: these arguments. And so I'm thinking about George Church. He
Speaker 1: is a geneticist and involved in in the Human Genome
Speaker 1: Mapping project, and he says that genetic diseases can be
Speaker 1: traced simply by examining sperm and then seeing if it
Speaker 1: maps against genetic diseases that a female may possess. So
Speaker 1: he has this whole system where they're like five hundred
Speaker 1: different genetic diseases that they can test for in sperm
Speaker 1: before it is actually um transferred into fertilize an egg.
Speaker 1: The problem with this, of course, is that you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a couple who they're trying to do this,
Speaker 1: and they know that the mom has some mitochondrial DNA
Speaker 1: diseases that she carries, and they find out that the
Speaker 1: dad does too, well, then that kind of it doesn't
Speaker 1: really help them. But if you have a female who
Speaker 1: is seeking u orm donor, that certainly helps. And then
Speaker 1: then other technology that maybe around the corner is embryonic
Speaker 1: genome mapping, and that is taking the embryo itself and
Speaker 1: testing it for possible genetic diseases before it's even transferred
Speaker 1: back into the mother. Interesting. Yeah, so there are these
Speaker 1: things that are happening, um that, yes, they're getting us
Speaker 1: closer to this idea of these designer babies, and yet
Speaker 1: at the same time you're so very far away from
Speaker 1: that idea from from that actually happening. I ran across
Speaker 1: an interesting quote on this, uh this topic. This is
Speaker 1: from Ross Douthitt uh two thousand twelve opinion piece in
Speaker 1: New York Times entitled Eugenics Past and Future. He asked,
Speaker 1: is this sort of liberal eugenics in which the agents
Speaker 1: of reproductive selection are parents rather than the state entirely
Speaker 1: different from the eugenics of Fisher's area, which forced sterilization
Speaker 1: on unwilling women and men. Alright, So it's an interesting question,
Speaker 1: and I feel like Nina Harani, who is on the panel,
Speaker 1: would say, this is not at all the same thing.
Speaker 1: These are parents who want to make sure that their
Speaker 1: child is as disease free and illness free as he
Speaker 1: or she could be in their lifetime and are trying
Speaker 1: to you know, sort a family This. This is not
Speaker 1: some sort of um like government industrial complex on trying
Speaker 1: to create these designer babies. This is these are very
Speaker 1: individual personal choices versus sort of the state mandate of
Speaker 1: of how we're going to go forward with genetics. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's easy I find with myself when I
Speaker 1: when I think about this, it's easy to sort of
Speaker 1: think of it in terms of, all, right, well, they
Speaker 1: are going to be the people that are going to
Speaker 1: be conceivably making a designer baby. I tend to think, well,
Speaker 1: this is going to be sort of a an upper
Speaker 1: crust sort of thing. So there's almost kind of a
Speaker 1: like a class envy there, you know, where you think, well,
Speaker 1: this would be technology that's only going to be available
Speaker 1: for a certain segment of the population. Yes, but then
Speaker 1: for far A. Honey points out that overwhelmingly when parents
Speaker 1: are trying to create biological children, they want them to
Speaker 1: look like themselves. It's sort of an ego thing. So
Speaker 1: most likely parents are going to go way outside of
Speaker 1: of even how they want their child to be as
Speaker 1: a human being. And I mean traits like openness or uh,
Speaker 1: introverted or extroverted or you know, all these sort of
Speaker 1: certain things that determine our personalities, let alone their hair
Speaker 1: color or their eye color. So I think what Farah
Speaker 1: Honey is saying there is that, um, you know, just
Speaker 1: that we may just be over extrapolating this idea that
Speaker 1: we're going to create these children that are vastly different
Speaker 1: from ourselves. Yeah, yeah, I think so. All right, So
Speaker 1: there you have it, designer children. Some of the uh,
Speaker 1: some of the current sciences out there. There's some of
Speaker 1: the near future science that's there as well, uh and
Speaker 1: a lot of just concerns over the ethics the morality
Speaker 1: of this whole topic. And so I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of you have some informed opinions on all of this.
Speaker 1: What do you what do you think about the idea
Speaker 1: of designer children? What would what would you do? What
Speaker 1: wouldn't you do? Uh to have healthy offspring? Yeah? Where
Speaker 1: do you think the goal post would be set? Way
Speaker 1: too far down the field. I'm very interested in knowing
Speaker 1: that from you guys out there, Like, what do you
Speaker 1: think is okay in terms of genetic conkering and what
Speaker 1: is like No, forget it. I say no more than
Speaker 1: six arms and no metal skin, because it's just it's
Speaker 1: just gonna be difficult to handle the playground, Like I
Speaker 1: was just thinking, the playground, that's just such an advantage
Speaker 1: for some children. Yeah, but then how are you gonna
Speaker 1: get them off the playground equipment you're trying to Let
Speaker 1: have you ever tried to pull your child off of
Speaker 1: like a ladder or something. It's like they have amazing grip.
Speaker 1: Imagine if they had six arms, it would be almost impossible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would need a special instrument for that. And you
Speaker 1: have to wipe all those hands after they're through, you know,
Speaker 1: decimating a bowl of apple sauce. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: too much. Keeps limited to really two hands for Max.
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