There is evidence that there is a statistical bias for birth rate of male babies, especially after the first born, and especially among immigrant families from cultures that favor males.
For women looking to artificial insemination, there are commercial sperm banks offering choices of sperms from famous university graduates, good looks, and other desirable characteristics.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=52e43aa6-b15c-423f-a845-13a845143e70&k=9062
In the case of using ultra sound scans to determine the gender of the fetus, then going through with an abortion if the parents were looking for a different gender, there is the argument of wasting a potential life to gender selection.
However, in the case of the choice of sperm from the sperm bank for artificial insemination, the question is purely should we choose at all when the natural reproduction process involve no such choices.
Not that there is no choice at all in the conventional process of mate selection.
Healthy, intelligent people with good family background or abundant resources are already prized candidates for mate selection so choice is subtly built in to the selection of our children.
So, should we choose at the sperm bank?
If so, should we take a more radical step and choose a surrogate female for the quality of her egg?
Or should we let randomness and mutation take its course to give us pleasant as well as nasty surprises?
Who should be deciding on what sperm and egg should get together?
If we look at the animal and horticultural side, breeders routinely improve on their breed to get the characteristics most desired by their customers.
Who is the "customer" for the human race?
Is the lack of this "customer" and ultimate decision maker the reason why we should leave the choice to randomness?
To go the other direction, is it unethical to select life mates on the basis of them being better parents or genetic characteristics?
Are we currently going halfway in making this choice, but uncomfortable in going further with new technology just because we are creatures of habit ?
Why stop at genetic characteristics, is it unethical to choose someone to be a partner because this person is a "good provider" for the family? Maybe we should let the challenges of life mold the next generation.
Finally, there is unconscious choice. We may be choosing our mates based on smells indicating the difference of their genes from ours
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_08.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/real/l_016_08.html
And we think we know what we are doing?
Let's hear your ideas this coming Wednesday!
Hi there :) I hope every one is doing well, I am sorry I could not make it today, I am a bit sick. I wrote down my thoughts below:
ReplyDeleteTo discuss morality means to distinguish what is a necessity (what is capable of being known; gnoseology) and what is arbitrary (methodology of knowledge; epistemology). In the same way that states (fundamental power structures) are necessary but nations (imagined communities) are arbitrary, nurturance and family policy is necessary but nuclear households is arbitrary, so is to say fertility is necessary but in vitro fertilization is arbitrary. The discussion is then less on the improvement and heath of reproductive assistance – the knowable, but more of the improvisation and choice of reproductive assistance – the ethics.
To begin, I might introduce an observed cognitive condition I label as the will to balance, a principle of duality. The empirical, “independent”, evidence does not always elicit the necessarily true. We borrow faculties to act tautologically for and explain the lack of meaning in natural phenomenon; faculties such as logistics, intelligence, the imagination and reason. Just as how study participants reminded more of their own mortality and powerlessness were more likely to accept Intelligent Design and Creationism over Darwinian Evolution, we often feel the need to employ an orderly agent in the face of existential uncertainty. This tendency for balance acts as “expectations” in the mindset of eugenics.
To expect (L. expectare/exspectare – “to await, look out for, desire, hope") is how we identify with our experiences – knowledge that has yet to happen. Discrepancies between expectation and experience can be designed objectively or subjectively. By having low expectations and following “materialist, reductionist” objectivity, as in artificial insemination to reduce communicable diseases, one sacrifices the uncertain but anticipatory sense of joy, often siding to a fallacy by division (believing what is true of the whole must be true of the parts). By having high expectations and following “quasi-idealist, romantic” subjectivity, as in believing the genotype (genes, genomes) of an organism would predict its phenotype (height, weight, personality), one risks disappointment in feeling thoroughly satisfied, often siding to a fallacy of composition (believing what is true of the parts must be true of the whole). When an individual is given a situation suggesting the excess of control, they would likely have lower expectations, such as emotional emancipation and seeing their child as ‘designer babies’. When an individual is given a situation suggesting the lack of control, they will likely have higher expectations, such as living vicariously through their child.
The rising employment of biotechnological selection is a symptom hinting at multinational effects. Like the falling fertility, smaller families, income disparities, and ultrasound technologies that lead to the epidemic of ‘gendercide’ in developing nations, stagnant social mobility, elite plutocracies, skill inequality and cryopreservation has brought a skewed western demand for the ‘survival of the fittest’. Such a distorted competition can bring about unethical practices such as inordinate focus on short term results that neglects long term consideration, as we already see with China’s “Guang Gun, or Bare Branches” from the disproportionate male to female ratio and the widespread health consequences of one sperm donor being related to 150+ offspring.
It is not wrong to use reproductive assistant as a last hope, as we are our own customers. Neither is it right to have a multibillion dollar fertility industry answer our every need, the answer is likely somewhere else.
Thank you very much! :) I hope to make it next week, take care!
If its culturally necessary to produce male heirs then only restructuring of the culture could change gender preference. For some its not discrimination, but the hope to participate in the culture. Prohibiting ultrasounds may reduce abortions but does it help newborn's born in foreighn countries to intergrate? And when does it become enforcing? And, how often do children get opportunities to go against their parents views? Thats if they have that opportunity. Schools could do more to help with gender discrimination. Equality is important in Canada, but its something you can't see so easy as counting baby girls versus baby boys. So many kids today think girls can do everything boys can so that makes it "fair"...its a start!
ReplyDeleteBut to think of all the cases where girls are utterly mistreated, in countries where equality isn't so important helps.Many campaigns focuss on girls rights and its helping to change stereotypes.
Great point about restructuring culture as the root cause of the discrimination.
DeleteIf the change in attitude towards smoking is any indication, then it seems like the real change started only after hard rules were made to have non-smoking sections and eventually ban all indoor smoking altogether.
Did the non-smokers benefit from the social attitude change towards smokers or did the ban push the attitude away from smokers? Not easy to tell is it?