{"id":36,"date":"2004-05-07T10:16:41","date_gmt":"2004-05-07T15:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/server97.snhdns.com\/~ravik\/wp\/?p=36"},"modified":"2004-05-07T10:16:41","modified_gmt":"2004-05-07T15:16:41","slug":"designer-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200405\/designer-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"Designer babies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shanti<\/a> finds this medical breakthrough<\/a> disgusting.<\/p>\n

Five healthy babies have been born to provide stem cells for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions. This is the first time “saviour siblings” have been created to treat children whose condition is not genetic, says the medical team.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, parents are having a child just to provide stem cells to an earlier child. Earlier, doing so had a one in five chance, i.e. you needed to have five children on an average <\/i> before you got a kid with the right genetic makeup for your elder kid. Now, the chance has increased to 98%. I think<\/i> though I cannot be sure, that technology has improved the chance of detection<\/i> at an early stage, so you still need to abort an average of four foetuses very early in the cycle, i.e. within a month of the pregnancy.<\/p>\n

So why does Shanti find it abhorrent?<\/p>\n

Has anyone once stopped to consider what kind of people are these babies going to turn into when they find out that they were designed to fulfill the needs of another person and not for themselves?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nWell, how would you feel if your parents told you that you were brought to life to give life to your elder brother or sister? Would you feel used<\/i> or will that make you two siblngs closer to each other?
\nSee what a difference phrasing makes? That’s a good reason not to base your ethical choices on what you find personally repugnant. Shit is repugnant. Cowdung isn’t, for many Indians. <\/p>\n

Or look at it another way, if Shanti feels so much for those five kids who are not her own, so what is the chance that the parents are going to have the attitude “You’ve served your purpose. You are no longer needed.” towards their own kid? Is that how a mother’s mind works? <\/p>\n

Parents have children for many reasons, to stave off a divorce, to have a heir, to replace an elder brother, to fulfill their own dreams. Sometimes they find that these expectations cannot be fulfilled. Most don’t abandon their child for that reason. Even if they have a child for short term reasons like staving off a divorce, they don’t abandon their child once they find that divorce is no longer a possibility (or even if the divorce happens anyway) Yes, some parents do all these things, and they deserve our contempt. But there is no good reason to criticize parents for having children “just for a particular purpose”<\/p>\n

Likewise, it is not a crushing burden for children to learn that their parents have or have had some expectations from them. The kids will grow up fine. <\/p>\n

If anything, it is those abortions I am worried about. If I read right, the parents will have to abort an average of four out of five of their pregnancies very early in their cycle. Now this is really an ethical grey area for me (though not a legal grey area). A foetus is just a bunch of tissues. A child is a miniature human being. At some point in the pregnancy I will stop thinking of the foetus as a foetus and start thinking of it as a child. Unfortunately, not being religious, I cannot think that the soul enters the body at some instant in time. It is a gradual process. So at one month, I will have no qualms aborting the foetus. At 2 months? 3 months? 6 months? 8 and a half months? (So do I believe that abortion should be illegal? No I don’t, but only because I believe that laws should be based on sharp dividing lines, and the point of birth is the one through which such a line can be drawn. But that won’t stop me from being contemptuous of a mother who decides to abort a 7 month old foetus casually, without some compelling reason to counterbalance the wrong. )
\nBut I digress. At one month (which is what we are talking of) I don’t see any ethical issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shanti finds this medical breakthrough disgusting. Five healthy babies have been born to provide stem cells for siblings with serious non-heritable conditions. This is the first time “saviour siblings” have been created to treat children whose condition is not genetic, says the medical team. In other words, parents are having a child just to provide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}