On August 16,2012, the UK Telegraph published this article: Genetically engineering ‘ethical’ babies is a moral obligation, says Oxford professor
The claim is simple: Genetically screening our offspring to make them better people is just ‘responsible parenting’, claims an eminent Oxford academic.
Professor Julian Savulescu said that creating so-called designer babies could be considered a “moral obligation” as it makes them grow up into “ethically better children”.
The expert in practical ethics said that we should actively give parents the choice to screen out personality flaws in their children as it meant they were then less likely to “harm themselves and others”.
Savulescu is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, made his comments in an article in the latest edition of Reader’s Digest.
Interesting to note, the Journal of Medical Ethics received death threats after they published an article on AFTER BIRTH ABORTIONS. The authors, Alberto Guiblini and Francesca Minerva, of that horrific publication maintain that abnormalities cannot always be detected in a fetus and women cannot choose to abort or not. “A serious philosophical problem arises when the same conditions that would have justified abortion become known after birth. In such cases, we need to assess facts in order to decide whether the same arguments that apply to killing a human fetus can also be consistently applied to killing a newborn human”.
Below is an audio interview of the author about the article on AFTER BIRTH ABORTIONS:
In justifying their publication of the article, the editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Julian Savulescu wrote “Many people will and have disagreed with these arguments. However, the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises. The authors provocatively argue that there is no moral difference between a fetus and a newborn. Their capacities are relevantly similar. If abortion is permissible, infanticide should be permissible. The authors proceed logically from premises which many people accept to a conclusion that many of those people would reject”.
Back to the RATIONAL DESIGN ARGUMENT:
Savulescu explained that we are now in the middle of a genetic revolution and that although screening, for all but a few conditions, remained illegal it should be welcomed.
He said that science is increasingly discovering that genes have a significant influence on personality – with certain genetic markers in embryo suggesting future characteristics.
By screening in and screening out certain genes in the embryos, it should be possible to influence how a child turns out.
In the end, he said that “rational design” would help lead to a better, more intelligent and less violent society in the future.
“Surely trying to ensure that your children have the best, or a good enough, opportunity for a great life is responsible parenting?” wrote Prof Savulescu, the Uehiro Professor in practical ethics.
“So where genetic selection aims to bring out a trait that clearly benefits an individual and society, we should allow parents the choice.
“To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality.
“Indeed, when it comes to screening out personality flaws, such as potential alcoholism, psychopathy and disposition to violence, you could argue that people have a moral obligation to select ethically better children.
“They are, after all, less likely to harm themselves and others.”
“If we have the power to intervene in the nature of our offspring — rather than consigning them to the natural lottery — then we should.”
So much can be said about these comments, but calling them MORAL and CHOICES are despicable reasoning for simple EUGENICS !
So what is MORAL Behavior and what personality and character would this professor deem reasonable to breed?
In 1904, Frances Galton who coined the term EUGENICS and was a cousin to Charles Darwin, stated in his writings:
“Persistence in setting forth the national importance of eugenics.”
He said, “There are three stages to be passed through:
(I) It must be made familiar as an academic question, until its exact importance has been understood and accepted as a fact.
(2) It must be recognized as a subject whose practical development deserves serious consideration.
(3) It must be introduced into the national conscience, like a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox religious, tenet of the future, for eugenics co-operate with the workings of nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest races.
Galton then observed that “What nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.” AH…there is that so-called MORAL OBLIGATION AGAIN !
Galton continued,” The improvement of our stock seems to me one of the highest objects that we can reasonably attempt. We are ignorant of the ultimate destinies of humanity, but feel perfectly sure that it is as noble a work to raise its level, in the sense already explained, as it would be disgraceful to abase it.” THERE IS THAT SO-CALLED “rational design”, again !
In 1904, Eugenicist George Bernard Shaw said, “What we must fight for is freedom to breed the race without being hampered by the mass of irrelevant conditions implied in the institution of marriage.”
Theodore Roosevelt, wrote this in a letter to eugenicist Charles Davenport in 1913, hoping that “Someday we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”
The 1917 California amendment, the third sterilization bill in the nation, worded the description of a diagnosis warranting sterilizations from “hereditary insanity or incurable chronic mania or dementia” to a “mental disease which may have been inherited and is likely to be transmitted to descendants.”
At state and local fairs during the 1920s and 1930s, the American Eugenics Society sponsored lectures and exhibits intended to demonstrate principles of heredity and the menace of unchecked breeding among the unfit. “Some people are born to be a burden to the rest” read the signs above their booths. In 1936 the Eugenics Institute listed its activities for the previous year: “the training of SS doctors; racial hygiene training; expert testimony for the Reich Ministry of the Interior on cases of dubious heritage; collecting and classifying skulls from Africa; studies in race crossing; and experimental genetic pathology.” In 1937 Frederick Osborn a founder of the Eugenics Society in America , himself “praised the Nazi eugenic program as the ‘most important experiment which has ever been tried.’”
That was the year after Julian S. Huxley coined this staggering term: Selection through Favourable Variations, when he said, “But in civilized human communities of our present type, the elimination of defect by natural selection is largely (though of course by no means wholly) rendered inoperative by medicine, charity, and the social services; while, as we have seen, there is no selection encouraging favourable variations. The net result is that many deleterious mutations can and do survive, and the tendency to degradation of the germ-plasm can manifest itself.”
So as you can see this professors “ideas” are not new in any way- they are regurgitated evil eugenics at its worst, plain and simple !
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