I ran across a controversial news article and I thought I’d kick this week off by starting an argument amongst the Novelty Girls. Remember that we’re all friends and all have wildly different backgrounds, so I thought it would be interesting to see what everyone’s take would be. I’m sure we’ll all disagree.
Anyway, the article was about a study being conducted in Texas at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine where parents get to decide whether they want to have a boy or a girl. Read the full article here.
The study is interesting to me because they’re using it as a social science experiment–what are the motivations of the people going for girls versus boys or vice versa. I’m pretty sure that part of it is going to geek Dayna out because she has a degree in head-shrinkering.
Now for me, I’m just going to come out and say I have no moral objections to people picking their child’s sex. Or hair color. Or whatever. I also don’t have a problem with cloning, human or otherwise. My only concern comes when we end up with too much of one thing. Humans messing with nature means any natural balance that comes out in genetics gets pooch-screwed. Other than that, I’m all for it. Spiritually, morally, I’m fine with scientists doing their thing to try to rid the world of disease and defect in utero. Maybe if I was a parent I’d feel differently, but I’m not, so I can’t say how I would react if I had a child already and knew there was a possibility this could have changed how they had turned out. I can say I’m from a family with a child that was born with a serious disability. As in needed to be institutionalized by age 5 type disability. I’m not saying I would change my younger brother for anything, but I know that him being born the way his was made things rough on a lot of levels for all of us. You know how you see those families on TV where they have a kid with Spina Bifida or Down’s Syndrome or severe ADHD and they’re so serene you wonder how they manage? Yeah, I didn’t come from one of those families. So I say if we can prevent the less than perfect families from going through that, praise the Lord and pass the genetic manipulation.
In any case, I am interested to see the study and find out what conclusions they drew about people and the choices they made for gender. What would motivate people? Who knows why anyone does what they do…especially for something this important? The social scientist/academic in me is curious to read the final report. I mean, there are so many angles to look at this. Psychology, sociology, history, cultural anthropology. I don’t know of a single social science discipline off the top of my head that wouldn’t want a piece of this.
It’ll also be interesting to see how long it takes for this to end up in one of my books. Hee!
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:04 am
I am of two minds about this and not because I have a background in biology and genetics and grew up in a religious home.
More because I at look at it more objectively from the point of view of a breeder.(Of animals, get your minds out of the gutter.) As a breeder of both cattle and dogs, there are traits that you try to breed out. Every time something that is desired in a breed is bred for, a flaw will emerge. In cattle and dogs, you simply remove those animals from the breeding pool.
But inevitably someone thinks that some of these traits are great and they start to breed for those. You should never be able to find a white German Shepard. It is an undesirable mutation yet open the paper and there are some for sale.
All that being said, genetic variation is what keeps us strong as a species. Modern health care has managed to allow individuals to contribute to the gene pool who never would have been able to 100 years ago. For example, a hundred years ago, there were no female hemophiliacs, only males. Males rarely survived childhood. With the availability of inject able clotting factors, hemophiliacs are living longer and longer and the first girls are being born with this disease. Think about the ramifications of this. Women bleed once a month.
I would love a world with no cancer, no disease, a world where my nephew wouldn’t have Spina Bifida, but would I trade it for a world where no one is overweight, no one has freckles, or red hair. No never.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:18 am
I’d want to be very careful about genetic manipulation. It’s way too close to playing God and we humans aren’t even close to being that wise.
I’d like to see it used to keep to a minimum genetic problems such as were listed above. But let’s face it, we humans are a shallow lot and will start selecting for silly things like looks, height and weight.
I’m now thinking of a couple of cautionary tales from SF.
A few years ago I designed a cyberpunk role playing game. I put together a world history of what happened between 1995 and 2060.
There were some brackets; caste, cultural or socio-economic; in certain areas that were becoming extinct. Why? Because they made sure sure that the majority of the children born to these brackets were boys. And they were so chauvinistic that they wouldn’t mate ‘outside their own’. They were trying to pick up the slack with cloning, artificial births and in vitro, but these methods couldn’t make up for what they lost. Too expensive and too tricky.
In an SF novel I read a few years ago, one planet used genetic manipulation to remove all forms of mental illness from their gene pool. It worked. Unfortunately they also ended up losing genius as well. It didn’t last long after that.
Genetic engineering is something that will have to be used with great care and restraint. I’m not sure we humans are up to the task though.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:29 am
I don’t support genetic selection for personal preference. There are some genetic disorders that are more likely to manifest in a male or female, and I if the parents are at a strong risk for passing on the markers, then I could see doing this from a medically necessary perspective.
I am staunchly pro-choice, and I support the right of a woman to choose for whatever reason. However, we have seen where gender-based abortions have caused trouble in societies where male children are more highly desired than females, and now there are groups of young men coming of age, and no women for them to marry. While it is unlikely a gender-selection technology would be available to the public at large because of cost prohibition, it does present the scenario of artificially creating a surplus of one sex, whereas nature gives us a fairly balanced number of males and females.
I know several parents of children with disabilities. A friend of mine lost her three year old son to neurodystrophy this year. In light of the pain and struggles I have seen my friends go through, having a healthy child should be desire enough for any parent.
Selecting from a menu of superficial traits, such as sex, hair color, eye color, etc. seems to be catering to the worst desires of a parent. Someone who so strongly desires THIS kind of child is being set up for a world of disappointment. WHY do you (generic) want a boy so much? WHY do you want a girl so much? Is a parent envisioning ball games or ballet recitals? What will they do when their princess prefers to grub in the dirt, or when their son would rather wear a tutu than play with trucks? Is it fair to bring a child into the world with so many expectations?
While parents are certainly already having children with preconceived notions of eventually handing over the family business, or shopping for prom dresses, or whatever, I don’t think it’s ethically responsible to medically accommodate–and thereby validate–those fantasies.
Betsy
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
It is a fascinating question. We were given free will and the mind to seek solutions and solve equations and figure out how to do things.
But very often we figure out the how before we truly understand the why imo.
Rob makes a good point.
I better save some of my thoughts for tomorrow LOL
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:32 am
I think what’s interesting is that part of what they’re doing is trying to answer the question of WHY someone wants a boy or a girl.
Thanks for weighing in, everyone. I’m so glad you all put so much thought into your responses!
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
I am absolutely opposed to genetic manipulation. And to support my opinion, I just have to look at the movie Jurassic Park. Nature has a way of ‘correcting’ itself. And I think that genetic manipulation would open the door to a whole new set of problems. Will we cure one disease only to find ourselves battling a stronger, more deadly one? Will we have a world full of two many of one gender?
the entire idea really bothers me. Cloning, gender manipulation…what’s next? Brainwashing in-utero?
Why rid the world of everything that makes us unique as humans and open the door to something bigger, badder, and more difficult to resolve?
June 28th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Crystal, I agree with you. Althoough I hate “science” as a subject and couldn’t stand it when I was in school, I applaud those who CAN understand it and can use it to help others. Me for one, I’d choose to have “all” boys for purely selfish reasons. I can’t stand getting up in the morning combing three heads of hair. Keeping mine up is a chore in itself. LOL I guess I’ll save my more controversial comments for Saturday. teeheehee If I have any.