Flipping A Coin To Choose Your Kid

Julian Savulescu does a great interview with Dilemata:

I think this is just a basic principle of rational choice applied to reproduction. What surprises me is how much resistance there is, that people really think you should toss a coin when you have information about which embryo is better. Embryologists of course do this when they look at embryos and try to pick the one which looks best. But why do we resist it? There are of course many reasons, but I have argued they are bad reasons.

It is normal that parents look for the best schools, training activities and diets to make their children better people and increase their opportunities in life. However, why do you think that people do not accept so easily the improvement of our children through biological interventions?

Can I Buy Your Ova?

The NYT investigates the odd world of egg donation. The whole article is great, but one paragraph is my favorite, and pretty much exposes why the rest of the article was written:

Sean Tipton, a spokesman for the reproductive medicine society, said that the group had little authority over egg brokers and that concerns expressed about donation smacked of sex discrimination. “It’s interesting to me that people get upset about egg donation in ways they don’t get upset about sperm donation,” he said. “You never hear discussions about, ‘Oh, the sperm donor is going to regret it some day that they have a child.’ ”

And there are more than a few quotations in the article from experts talking about protecting the small-minded lady folk from being tempted or mislead because of the money being offered.

Real, Reversable, Barrier-Free Male Birth Control?

A few researchers who started aiming ultrasound waves at rat testicles may have figured it out:

The intensity of ultrasound required would be similar to that used to break down scar tissue after a sprained ankle, for instance. “Our long-term goal is to use ultrasound from therapeutic instruments that are commonly found in sports medicine clinics as an inexpensive, long-term, reversible male contraceptive.”

Ultrasound was tested briefly in prostate cancer patients in the 1970s, who described the treatment as painless and producing a gentle warming sensation. “It would be like sitting in a mini hot tub once every six months,” said Dr Tsuruta.

I think I could handle that.

A Clone of My Own

Futurama already covered the clone existential crisis, of course.

Bryan Caplan sure knows how to market a book. With one polemic paragraph, Caplan has managed to get a host of blogs to write about his upcoming book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. The offending clump of words:

I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally. Not only do they insult the identical twin sons I already have; they insult a son I hope I live to meet. Yes, I wish to clone myself and raise the baby as my son. Seriously. I want to experience the sublime bond I’m sure we’d share. I’m confident that he’d be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me. I’m not pushing others to clone themselves. I’m not asking anyone else to pay for my dream. I just want government to leave me and the cloning business alone. Is that too much to ask?

There are three levels of this argument. The first is that anti-cloning arguments insult identical twins. The second is that a cloned child is desirable and would be cherished. The third is that the right to clone oneself should a matter of reproductive choice, the government need not get involved. That said, I’d like to note that Bryan Caplan never uses the word “clone” as a noun or a pronoun for potential son. A cloned child is a child conceived and gestated through the means of cloning, but that child is no more a “clone” than a child born of IVF is a “test tube baby.” It’s pejorative language.

I responded briefly to most of the simplistic arguments of the commenters on Marginal Revolution yesterday, but thankfully TNA’s (I laugh every time I write that abbreviation) Adam Keiper offered a more complex rebuttal on the Futurisms blog. Before I get into that, I’d like to talk just for a moment about Steve Sailer‘s response to Caplan. Sailer’s argument can be summarized thus: Arrogant narcissists want to clone themselves because they are arrogant narcissists, and we know they are arrogant narcissists because they want to clone themselves; Two things result from Caplan’s arrogant narcissism – he doesn’t ask his wife if she wants to raise another kid (misogynist!) and the cloned child will be as arrogant and narcissistic as the father (Freud!), making things frustrating (Lacan!). Is that perfectly clear? Sailer’s case against cloning hinges on the personality of the person who wants a cloned child; he makes no “cloning is immoral” argument per se, merely that Caplan himself is confused as to how “sublime” raising a cloned child would be.

If a person is neither narcissistic or arrogant, but still wants a clone, then Sailer’s case is refuted. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say that Bryan Caplan doesn’t want to clone himself, just another child, but his wife, Corina, wants a clone of him as their next child. Her reasons are her own and I need not conjecture. Now it’s easy to say Bryan Caplan is an arrogant narcissist: he is a blogger and a professor. To call Corina Caplan arrogant and narcissist is difficult, because by Sailer’s own logic, she couldn’t get along with Bryan let alone have ever gotten married. So in this thought experiment, let’s assume Bryan is just arrogant and narcissistic enough to be a professor and a blogger, but not to want to be cloned, while Corina is well matched personality-wise to enjoy the company of mildly arrogant and narcissistic individuals. Furthermore, let’s go way out on a limb and assume that Bryan, who clearly takes a significant interest in his family and his children, does not treat his wife as chattel and they share family and household responsibility 50/50. Suddenly, the cloned child is in a situation where the mother wants and knows how to handle him, the father helps plenty and isn’t strong headed enough to cause problems anymore significant than a normal family, and POOF, there goes Sailer’s case.

I know that might be mindblowing to you, Mr. Sailer, but what is misogynistic is not Bryan’s lack of “consulting his wife” which is presumed in this day and age, but the fact that you, Mr. Sailer, presume that Bryan’s wife will be dealing with most of the results.

FURTHERMORE, a cloned child is still their child. The point Cowen was making by bringing up adoption and genetics percentages was an effort to show that our society is ok with variation in genetic relationship to parents. To somehow assume that a clone of Bryan Caplan would be “Bryan’s” child while the other kids were both Bryan and Corina’s is vulgar and preposterous. Cloning is a method of reproduction just like IVF and PGD and rutting in the back seat and the rhythm method. If Mrs. Caplan carried the cloned child to term, he would have Mrs. Caplan’s mitochondrial DNA and would imprint on her, not to mention that the child would have an utterly different environment, family situation, and nurturing conditions. I don’t know why so many neoconservatives are simultaneously genetic determinists and ostensible meritocratists. /rant.

In short: Sailer makes no arguments against cloning, merely against the Caplans’ reproductive rational. His points are based on conjecture and circular logic. Moving on.

Adam Keiper’s more delicious post actually makes arguments against cloning proper. Here we come into the second strange paradox of the neoconservative logic – the impacts of social construction and societal pressure are always important, but god forbid we try to alter the sources. Keiper quotes, at length, from the Presidential Council on Bioethics, best known for its landmark tome of finger-wagging, arm-crossing, and head-shaking: Beyond Therapy. Keiper is actually citing an essay in Bioethics from the PCB, but the language and logic is the same. A taste, and please note that in the following are assertions there is no explaination of how or why these things are so:

Of course, our genetic makeup does not by itself determine our identities. But our genetic uniqueness is an important source of our sense of who we are and how we regard ourselves. It is an emblem of independence and individuality. It endows us with a sense of life as a never-before-enacted possibility. Knowing and feeling that nobody has previously possessed our particular gift of natural characteristics, we go forward as genetically unique individuals into relatively indeterminate futures.

We haven’t had a grasp on genetics, particularly not on a social level, until this century, and even then not much till the ’70s. I am almost certain that human beings were endowed with a “sense of life” and “never-before-enacted possibility” before Mendel, Watson, Crick, and Collins, but I might be wrong! Do you see how these arguments work? The PCB asserts a reality and we nod our heads accordingly, then they say new technology X violates the ineffable, ethereal reality they’ve constructed. Where is the evidence people identify with their genetics? Anyone? Habermas? C.S. Lewis? Fukuyama? Anyone wanna show me some evidence of anybody but the goddamned monarchy system and American political dynasties (Kennedy, Bush) who care that much about genetics? The above paragraph from the PCB is so demonstrably false as to be comedic. And just so you know the PCB isn’t a bunch of insensitive jerks, they explain why identical twins don’t count in their calculus:

It may reasonably be argued that genetic individuality is not an indispensable human good, since identical twins share a common genotype and seem not to be harmed by it. But this argument misses the context and environment into which even a single human clone would be born. Identical twins have as progenitors two biological parents and are born together, before either one has developed and shown what his or her potential — natural or otherwise — may be. Each is largely free of the burden of measuring up to or even knowing in advance the genetic traits of the other, because both begin life together and neither is yet known to the world. But a clone is a genetic near-copy of a person who is already living or has already lived.

So let me get this straight: An identical twin, who has the same birthday, same parents, same neighborhood, same friend group, same native language, same historical period, same socio-economic status, same religion, same womb as his or her twin is less constricted in his or her life decisions than a cloned child with different all-of-the-above. For real? Does anyone really believe a cloned child would have anymore perceived pressure to live up to their parent’s standard than any other child does? I thought the Oedipus complex was some sort of basic, universal aspect of development, but according to the PCB, it is unique to clones, those poor saps. Are you beginning to see how reductionist and preposterous these arguments are?

I’ve already rambled on for too long, so let me get to the most important points. First, cloning is a method of reproduction, where in the percentages of DNA are different in the child than they would be from unassisted reproduction. IVF, adoption, surrogate parenting, and egg/sperm donation all also alter the genetic make up of the child from unassisted reproduction and produce no ill effects on parent/child relation. Second, identical twins have orders of magnitude more social pressure to either be like or be different from their twin and have the genetic, nurture, and environmental deck  stacked against their becoming individuals, yet they invariably do, in fact, become different people. Third, anytime a bioconservative argues that a cloned child would be subject to exceptional prejudice, pressures, or perceptions which would be detrimental to that child, remember that it is by and large bioconservatives who perpetuate the idea that a cloned child is determined by its genetics, suggest that a cloned child would/should be perceived as lesser than a “normal” child, and help fan the very social stigmas about which they worry. I too, worry about the social pressures and normative stigmas against children born via cloning, and so I work to break and uproot the biases and dogmas that nourish them. I do not use stigmas and social pressures as a kind of “it would be too hard for a cloned child, so shouldn’t we ban the creation of the little abominations” argument.

Cloning is a method of reproduction, a cloned child is not determined by its genetics any more or less than an identical twin, and if a social dogma is a problem you remove the dogma not the victim.

Bryan Caplan Wants A Clone

Tyler Cowen goads his readership with this paragraph from Caplan:

I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally.  Not only do they insult the identical twin sons I already have; they insult a son I hope I live to meet.  Yes, I wish to clone myself and raise the baby as my son.  Seriously.  I want to experience the sublime bond I’m sure we’d share.  I’m confident that he’d be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me.  I’m not pushing others to clone themselves.  I’m not asking anyone else to pay for my dream.  I just want government to leave me and the cloning business alone.  Is that too much to ask?

Then, Cowen being Cowen, he asks his readers to share their thoughts as to why or why not cloning should be allowed. MR is known for having an impressive readership, but the vast majority of comments boiled down to simplistic and poorly constructed arguments. Anti-cloning arguments as drawn from the MR thread can be reduced to the following:

1. Yuk! a la Leon Kass, this is not a rational argument, but in fact is supported by the instinctual revulsion to the concept.

2. Caplan, as a stand in for anyone who wants a clone, is arrogant, vain,  and an egomaniac.

These first two points aren’t even arguments, just gut reactions with no warrant.

3. Cloning reduces genetic diversity.

4. Cloning will be psychologically harmful to the child.

5. Cloning will be physically harmful to the child.

6. Cloning will complicate legal/domestic situations.

None of these cases hold water.

3a. Cloning no more alters genetic diversity than having twins does. Issues of genetic diversity would only arise if most births were of the same clone, not if lots and lots of different people each had clones. A population of 50,000 is sufficient for genetic diversity.

3b. It is reasonable to assume that a society in which cloning is perfected would have some degree of genetic engineering. If cloning is possible, then genetic safeties and enhancements are likely possible, further negating problems of diversity.

4a. Being a twin is not psychologically harmful. No precedent.

4b. Any child raised in a neglectful, abusive, or manipulative household will be traumatized. There is no evidence that a cloned child would be any more subject to these problems than any other. Given the extra and deliberate steps necessary to create a clone, one might argue the child would be more wanted and cherished, therefore in an above average situation.

4c. The primary threat of psychological trauma comes from outside the family, among those who used arguments (1) and (2) to argue that cloning is inherently wrong. Those individuals who are disgusted by cloning would be the very people who would damage the child’s psyche through indirect insults, questioning the child’s humanity, and general revulsion.

5a. No sane proponent of cloning (and Caplan is quite sane) advocates the process if it is unsafe. Animal testing must be thorough, rigorous, and successes conclusive and easily repeatable. As with any other process, such as IVF, there will be risks early on, but those risks must first be at or below the level of standard, unassisted pregnancy before experiments on humans are even considered.

5b. Safe, successful cloning would, by definition, have no complications or affects on the child of note. If this is the case, cloning is no more physically dangerous than being a twin.

6a. Identity is not determined by genetics, identical twins prove this. The law would be no different than it is for identical twins. The clone would have a new social security number, new birth certificate, and the rest of the grid (school enrollment, passport number, drivers license, etc) would fall into place, entrenching and reinforcing the individual identity of that person, just as it does for all of us.

6b. Issues of “raising oneself” or “falling in love again with the clone of one’s wife” or abusing one’s clone as “masturbation” demonstrate not problems of cloning but the various strains of pathology running through the minds of commenters. Most of us have a friend who looks “just like” their parent did at a given age, with similar quirks, interests, physical affectations and behaviors. No one would make the above arguments in the later case. Gross oversimplification of psychology and parent/child relationships is required to even consider these points. I often am at a loss to address these arguments because they require such a demented and pathological view of humanity I feel there is no hope of convincing those who believe them.

There is one real moral objection to cloning: right now, cloning is an unproven and verifiably dangerous process. The chances of the child not coming to term at all, being born fatally deformed or under-developed, having life shortening and worsening complications, and/or being developmentally disabled are so high as to make it a crime to attempt to clone now. Only a few clones of any species exist in the world currently. Until the process is proven safe, reliable, and to have no more risk of complications than “natural” reproduction among non-human species, it would and will be a moral violation to even begin experimenting with human cloning. The process is so new, I suspect Caplan will not live to see a world in which cloning is safe enough for him to reproduce that way. But when the technology is ready and safe, then there is no reasonable moral or ethical case for prohibition of the process.

Dog Adopts Boy

Personhood is everywhere. Netflix recently added Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends to their “instant play” repertoire, which means I may or may not have spent several hours watching a cartoon from the early sixties as part of my Saturday routine. As usual, there was a little bit of transhumanist propaganda hidden within it.

In the first episode of the series, where everyone is introduced, we first meet Mr. Peabody doing yoga in his penthouse in New York City. Glancing at the Way-Back-Machine, Peabody notes, “ah, that’s Sherman’s. Sherman is my boy.” Peabody recounts how he acquired Sherman, spoofing the story of how a person gets their first dog: he looked and looked at strays in the pound, but some sad mutt on the street, Sherman, won his heart. Peabody rescues Sherman from bullies and, upon trying to return him to the orphanage, is saddened by the condition of Sherman’s life.

What makes this so interesting is that the cartoon acknowledges that Peabody is a dog and that dogs can’t adopt a boy. That Peabody can graduate Harvard, work on the stock market, or enlist in the foreign service, or develop projects for the government (key points in his auto-bio) aren’t big deals, but when he wants to start a family of his own, suddenly that’s a legal matter. Peabody goes through the adoption process and gets references from old friends (the sitting president), but a trial still occurs.

The prosecution’s case: “This dog isn’t a fit person to raise the boy, in fact, he isn’t a person at all!” Ah, yes, the dehumanization defense. Sad.

Peabody, acting as his own lawyer (of course) retorts: “Thank you, I consider that an excellent recommendation.” (Yes, Mr. Peabody is in fact using reverse discourse to turn the prosecution’s insult into a point in his favor.)

The court decides, “We see no reason that if a boy can have a dog, a dog can’t have a boy.”

Sometimes it takes a cartoon to cut through the the legalese and make a point so obvious. Children accept the evidence in front of them: Mr. Peabody is smart, good, and responsible; Sherman lives in an orphanage with a terrible head master; Mr. Peabody would like to adopt Sherman, everybody wins. In this rare case, the courts actually make the right decision for the right reasons and the brilliant Peabody takes Sherman home.

Now think about the scenario this way: Mr. Peabody, a successful, intelligent committed-bachelor with no interest in women, living in New York City, who wears a bow-tie and has an aloof speech affectation, decides he would like to adopt a child, but is told by the courts he cannot because he isn’t fit. Is anyone seeing any parallels, here? I often wonder if shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle accidentally placed the seeds of social liberalizing. It sounds like a plot Glenn Beck would dream up: “Now, I’m not saying this is true, but isn’t it interesting how Rocky and Bullwinkle are both men, but the two Soviet spies, Boris Badinov and Natasha, are a couple? And why doesn’t Mr. Peabody have a wife? Is this cartoon, this show for children, saying America is a land of homosexuality and pedophilia, while communist Russia is the country with the proper values? These are just questions, people, but why am I the only one asking them?” Beck would then attempt to derive some hidden message from the various animals portrayed on the show using his magic blackboard of insanity.

The point, if there is one here, is that a cartoon in the sixties figured out that adoption is a matter of taking a child in a bad or sad position and putting that child into a home with a parent or parents who will love and care for him or her. That’s it. Why we haven’t figured that out yet in 2010 I don’t know.

How To Make Sex Better

Sex, on its own, in the wild, natural and unadorned, is still complicated. Don’t believe me? Look at a peacock or a bird of paradise. Salmon die after they procreate. Sea slugs penis joust. Now throw in evolved human biology, history, culture, technology, and science and you have a real disaster on your hands.

But sex isn’t alone in being affected by these things. But for everything that isn’t sex, we apply “lifehacks” to increase our productivity, organization, mood, and leisure time. We read monthly manuals on what to eat to lose weight, how to stay fashionable, what entertainment we might like, and news about our favorite hobbies. Yet we constantly mystify sex. Our culture treats it as this untouchable, morally ambiguous, thing-that-is-not-mentioned that EVERYONE talks and thinks about. We are at the beginnings of an era wherein sex and sexuality will become both more liberated and more complex than any previous era by orders of magnitude.

Transhumanism, as a philosophy and the technologies it embraces, may offer us a chance to finally take some of the stress and mystery, and hence create more enjoyment, over this taboo part of our lives. When Ben Goertzel and I had our little exchange on sex (he mostly ignorned my critique and tsk tsked me), I said “If sex is messy and imperfect, we need to improve it, not get rid of it.” here are my suggestions on how to do it.

1. Better matches: It is always impossible to guess what discoveries will occur in the future, but science has been confirming over the past century that both sexuality and gender are more of a spectrum than a binary. You know how politics is better plotted on a grid than a line? Well, sexuality is best plotted in a kind of hypercube. Sexuality is more like taste in music than it is an either/or situation, with thousands of combinations and often very eclectic interests. Now consider this: imagine a Facebook app that takes the voluminous knowledge of OK cupid, Match, or E-Harmony, combined with psychological research and an enormously powerful algorithm that is designed to help you understand your sexuality. In short: a Pandora or Netflix or Amazon “you might like this” of dating and relationships. It might even suggest a whole genre shift: “you like partners that bite, pinch, and slap, you should try: Bondage!” Instead of worrying about whether or not your profile picture is right, you can focus on being yourself.

2. Safer: There is already a vaccine available for HPV, it isn’t impossible that other strains of both viral and bacterial STIs could be vaccinated against. The stigma that protection oneself against STIs means one is sexually reckless (a paradox, given that a person taking preventative measures is likely to be a good decision maker in general) is going the way of the dodo. A combination of vaccinations, regular testing, antibiotics and barrier methods, if used in large enough numbers, could effectively create a herd immunity. We eliminated small pox, measles, mumps, and polio, we can get rid of STIs.

3. Reproductive Choice: To make something a choice, it has to reasonably something you control. Reproduction, as it stands, is hard to control, despite all the options.  The Today sponge, which went of the market temporarily, is available again in the US. Lots of different forms of long term hormonal birth control are available. IUDs are now far safer and better designed. Condoms are cheap and prolific. There is some truly great news on the horizon, however: the male pill. Despite the clamor of men’s magazines and the apparently hilarious joke that men are reckless morons, every guy I’ve talked to would love to be able to take a male pill. Why? Because most of my friends are smart and realize the awful consequences of accidentally getting someone pregnant. The male pill lets men take a much bigger role in pregnancy prevention and ads a huge aspect of redundancy to birth control. And better control means fewer accidental pregnancies, the central goal of both the pro-choice and pro-life movement.

4. Science Knowledge: A common complaint is that porn causes unrealistic attitudes about sex. A common joke is that young boys look at naked natives in National Geographic to get their jollies. Perhaps the undiscussed middle ground – TLC and Discovery Channel shows on human sexuality – could provide a fruitful place of learning. I know a lot of people (myself included) who learned how all the plumbing and hardware worked, while satisfying their curiosity and need for titilation, by watching science shows. Having the birds and the bees narrated to you by David Attenbourough is a glorious thing (it also makes Planet Earth even more erotic). Knowledge is sexy.

5. More Intentional: I posted about “tinkering with libido” some time ago, but it’s really an astonishing idea that bears repeating. Presuming well-made, low side-effect drugs, one could actively control one’s libido. Long day at work? Pop a libido suppressor and keep saucy thoughts from distracting you. Finally heading home? Take a libido enhancer and be very excited to see your significant other by the time you come in the front door. As Megan McArdle pointed out in a brave post on pedophilia, there are some sexual desires that are taboo, but still natural and uncontrollable. Schizophrenics, the mentally disabled, severe autistics, and a range of other conditions would be greatly eased by a reduced sex drive. Alternatively, those on anti-depressants or social anxiety drugs often lose sex drive, canceling out one of the major benefits of their medication. Libido control, and many of these drugs are in the works, would do wonders for many.

These are just a few ideas working with what we have and what we could accomplish in the near future. In the long term, ideas are absolutely mind bending. Synthetic skin could allow a person to amplify nerve endings all over the body, making every sexual experience otherworldly. Anti-aging might radically alter just how long our “hedonistic” youth is while simultaneously letting us have long term monogamous relationships that don’t have to suffer from the libido dampening effect of aging. Telepresence and virtual reality could help make long distance relationships easier and less taxing. Radical but safe and effective body modifications might allow for entirely new forms of sex and sexuality and gender to emerge.

As with everything transhuman, the goal is not to reduce the very things that make us human, like our sexual drive, but to open them to new and exciting possibilities. The goal isn’t to guide sex and sexuality towards some version of perfection, but instead to create orders of magnitude more options, to allow better control and safer conditions. Transhumanism is about diversity and choice, why not bring that to sex? Sex can be mystical and is perhaps ultimately ineffable, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it better with technology, knowledge, and freedom.

Miscarriage Made Illegal and Abortion At Home

Wayne Crews (via the ever hyper-ventilating Drudge) points to a new medicine-induced “at home” abortion technique available soon in Oregon:

Planned Parenthood of Southwestern Oregon plans to offer medication-induced abortions at its clinics in Ashland and Eugene beginning sometime in March.

Cynthia Pappas, Planned Parenthood’s executive director, said the organization’s board of directors decided to offer the service to provide women with an option for terminating a pregnancy in the comfort and privacy of home. Medication-induced abortions use drugs to expel a fetus. The federal Food and Drug Administration approved their use in 2000.

It’s noteworthy that part of the impetus for making this form of abortion available is that local doctors are reaching retirement age. Hmm, I wonder why there aren’t more young abortion doctors? I wonder if its the fear of anti-choice terrorism?

In other news, the ever-progressive state of Utah is thinking about making miscarriage illegal. That’s right, something that occurs naturally in 1 out of 6 women is being legislated against. As usual, Dan Savage does an excellent job extrapolating the insanity by explaining how this law would have to be executed, if done fairly and properly:

If every miscarriage is a potential homicide, how does Utah avoid launching a criminal investigation every time a woman has a miscarriage? [...] And how is Utah supposed to know when a pregnant woman has had a miscarriage? You’re going to have to create some sort of pregnancy registry to keep track of all those fetuses, Utah. Perhaps you could start issuing “conception certificates” to women who get pregnant? And then, if there isn’t a baby within nine months of the issuance of a conception certificate, the woman could be hauled in for questioning and she could be indicted for criminal homicide if it’s determined that she intentionally or accidentally induced a miscarriage.

But here is my question: how does behavior like this from the government not make liberals run like crazy from public health care? Reproductive rights, among the most fundamental and private rights a person has, are over-legislated and tightly controlled, which is why there is an abortion debate in the first place. How is it that the very people desperately fighting for rights don’t see that the thing preventing them is not their political opponents, but the government’s very dominion over the issue. If no one has the right to tell a person what to do with his or her body, why then does the government even have a say? My problem with Roe v. Wade is not that it established the legality of abortion but that it did not restrict government interference on the issue in total. How the government even has dominion on how or what I do with my body is something I still do not understand. And does everyone somehow think that when health care is a central government issue, it’s going to become less politicized?

Those in favor of liberal reproductive rights should be banging down the door for fewer regulations on health care and be damn right terrified of public health care. But of course, they’re not.

IVF Babies Have Altered DNA

Which makes sense, of course, given the enormous amount of influence our gestational environment can have on our genetic expression. 80 beats has the story:

Says lead researcher Carmen Sapienza said “By and large these children are just fine, it’s not like they have extra arms or extra heads, but they have a small risk of undesirable outcomes” [The Guardian]. Rather, the team found a very subtle impact. In 75 IVF babies and 100 naturally conceived ones, they examined 700 genes that particularly interested the researchers because they are linked to fat cell development, insulin signaling, and other functions associated with diseases for which people tend to be at higher risk as they age. The scientists checked DNA methylation, a modification to DNA which affects gene expression, and found that 5 to 10 percent of IVF babies had abnormal patterns of methylation.

I’d like to note that this is precisely what Habermas talks about in The Future of Human Nature and, by extension, would like to point out that his thesis is demonstrably false. Woops.

What To Do With Embryos?

Francesca Minerva (what a cool name) at Practical Ethics gets into the sticky morality of adopting embryos:

[I]f the main concern of couple who adopt embryos is to save as many embryos as possible because they consider them as morally valuable as already born children, why shouldn’t they adopt children who are already born?  In-vitro fertilization involves costs and health risks for women that adoption does not involve. It seems, then, that anything equal, adopting a child instead of an embryo is a more rational choice.

Moreover, if the goal is to save as many human lives as possible, we need a reason why an embryo is more entitled to be “saved” than a five year old child, for example.