THIRTEEN Read more at location 2214
Note: 13@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Effetti della contraccezione: meno matrimoni + tradimenti + figli nati fuori dal matrimonio [effetto Peltzman?]. Le innovazioni nella sfera sessuale hanno sempre ripercussiono norevoli... Fare bimbi sempre migloori. L'eugenetica gode di cattiva fama ma si confondono due piani: l'e. statalista e quella libertaria.... Sembrerebbe una tecnologia progettata x beneficiare le generazioni future: le scelte vengono fatte dai genitori... L'amniocentesi è già una tecnica eugenetca accettata (l'aborto è altra questione). Anche la fecondazione in vitro implica eugenetica... Clonazione. L'ostilità deriva dalla credenza che si tratti di "repliche" ma nn è così, la replica riguarda solo la base do partenza... Coppie gay: meta di uno e 1/4 dell'altro. Ora è possibile produrre artificialmente seme o uova con materiale genetici di un mumbro della coppia... Possiamo agire anche sulle cellule adulte "infettandole" geneticamente con virus creati ad hoc... Il cancro è una disfunzione prob. genetica. Chissà nn si possacurare dirottando l'azoone genetica su alcune cellule... Giustizia: se certi comportamenti criminali fossero di origine genetica la pena potrebbe essere un TSO a base di cure genetiche. Ma sarà ancora la stessa xsona? Lo avremo rieducato o lo avremo cambiato?... Con uteri artificiali ad hoc si potranno dosare gli ormoni ottenendo bimbi con caratteristiche diverse. La distopia di Huxley è ormai realtà.... LlCi sentiamo disturbati da tutto ciò? In fondo nn si fa che rispondere ad un desiderio di base: avere un figlio. Averlo bello, forte, intelligente. E se i governi si costruissero il cittadino xfetto? o il "soldato xfetto"? Mmm, ci vogliono almeno 20 anni e l'ambiente di crescita è cmq indeterminato... Altro rischio: cloni costruiti x i pezzi di ricambio. Tuttavia: 1) nn sarebbe legale 2) il time lag disincentiva pratiche costose e prob. inutili (l'arte medica progredisce 3) già accade che si facciano dei bimbi x il trapianto... Altro rischio clonazione: perdo un bimbo in un incidente e ne vorrei un altro uguale... Altre ragooni x opporsi 1) si tratta di pratiche strambe 2) si tratta di pratiche fallimentari all'inizio 3) potrebbero esserci conseguenze inattese... Esempio: gendrr selectoon. Ma il problema è self correcting con un time lag importante. Poliandria e doti sempre + convenienti favoriranno le donne... Altro esempio: diseguaglianze tra chi potrà accedere ai geni migliori e gli altri. Due obiezioni: 1) nel giro di breve tempo le tecnologie diventsno alla portata di tutti 2) sarà ancora più facile di oggi incrociare le classi... Problema: oggi gli impulsi sessuali sopraggiungono ad u'età in cui nn siamo pronti a gestirli (gravidanze indesiderate eccetera). Presto ci saranno medicinali in grado di sincronizzare meglio l'orologio biologico. Sarà un abuso impiegarli x i ns. figli? Già oggi usiamo medicinali x migliorare il loro carattere (Ritalin) Edit
a steep decline in traditional marriage, a corresponding increase in nonmarital sex, and, perhaps surprisingly, extraordinarily high rates of childbirth outside of marriage.Read more at location 2215
the idea of improving the human species by selective breeding, was supported by quite a lot of people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.'Read more at location 2217
Currently it ranks, in the rhetoric of controversy, only a little above Nazism.Read more at location 2218
two quite different ways of achieving similar objectives. One is to treat human beings like show dogs or racehorsesRead more at location 2219
Such a policy involves forcing people who want to have children not to do so and perhaps forcing people who do not want to have children to do so.Read more at location 2220
The earliest description I know of is in a science fiction novel, Beyond This Horizon, by Robert Heinlein, arguably one of the ablest and most innovative science fiction writers of the twentieth century. Read more at location 2224
With the assistance of expert advice, they select among the eggs produced by the wife and the sperm produced by the husband the particular combination of egg and sperm that will produce the child they most want to have,Read more at location 2226
decision is made by each set of parents for their own children, not by someone for everyone, it should maintain a high degree of genetic diversity;Read more at location 2229
technology should mostly be used to benefit the next generation, not to exploit it. Read more at location 2231
The current, more primitive, method is for a woman to conceive, obtain fetal cells by extracting amniotic fluid ("amniocentesis"), have the cells checked to see if they carry any serious genetic defect - in particular, the extra copy of chromosome 21 that produces Down syndrome - and abort the fetus if they do.2 Read more at location 2231
Obtain eggs from the intended mother, sperm from the intended father. Fertilize in vitro - outside the mother's body.Read more at location 2234
Select from the fertilized eggs one that does not carry whatever serious genetic defect they are trying to avoid. Implant that egg back in the mother.Read more at location 2236
We will then be in a world where at least some people are able to deliberately produce "the best and the brightest" of the children those people could have had.Read more at location 2240
The one that has gotten most of the attention is cloning, producing an individual who is genetically identical to another.'Read more at location 2243
Much of the initial hostility to the technology seemed to be rooted in the bizarre belief that cloning replicates an adultRead more at location 2248
Another technology, a little further into the future, is genetic engineering. If we knew enough about how genes work and how to manipulate them, it might be possible to take genetic material from sperms, eggs, or adult cells contributed by two or more individuals and combine it,Read more at location 2250
Another possibility is to create artificial genes, perhaps an entire additional chromosome.'Read more at location 2254
Current and near-future technologies to control what sort of children we have depend on IVF, a technology originally developed to make it possible for otherwise infertile women to have children.Read more at location 2256
It has also already made it possible for surrogate mothers to bear children produced from other women's fertilized eggs. Read more at location 2259
same-sex couples. At present a pair ofwomen who wish to rear a child can, in at least some states, adopt one.Read more at location 2260
But they cannot do what most other couples desiring children do: produce a child who is the genetic offspring of both of them. The closest that can be managed with traditional technology is to use sperm donated by a father or brother of one to inseminate the other, producing a child who is, genetically speaking, half one of them and a quarter the other. Read more at location 2261
That situation is changing. Techniques have been developed for producing artificial sperm containing genetic material from an adult cell. They may make it possible in the fairly near future for two women to produce a child who is, in the full sense, theirs.Read more at location 2264
This form of genetic engineering has already been used to combat severe combined immune deficiency - SCID - the genetic disease that makes children's bodies unable to defend themselves against infection.Read more at location 2277
My development from a fertilized ovum to an adult was made possible by cell division, starting with a single cell.Read more at location 2281
Once I reach my full size, most of those cells must stop dividing, since otherwise I will keep growing. Cells are provided with mechanisms to make them divide - oncogenes - which get turned off when division is no longer necessary. They are provided with additional mechanisms to stop them dividing, in case the oncogene gets somehow stuck on "divide." And, just to play safe, they have a third mechanism to make the cell self-destruct if the first two fail. Read more at location 2283
Which suggests a possible tactic for curing cancer. Genetically modify the cancer cells in a way that fixes at least one of the three things that is wrong with them. If you fix one of the first two, the cancer cells stop dividing. If you fix the third, they die. Read more at location 2287
Suppose we conclude that some of the causes of criminal behavior are genetic; perhaps that there is a gene, more likely a group of genes, for psychopathy. Instead of sentencing a criminal to be imprisoned we sentence him to have his genes revisedRead more at location 2289
Another possibility is by changing their environment - their very early environment. There is now good evidence that subtle features of the prenatal environment, the mother's womb, have significant and interesting effects on how the occupant turns out. Read more at location 2293
It has long been observed that, on average, males seem to do relatively better at mathematical learning, females on verbal. Apparently the difference is at least in part due to their different uterine environments. Not only does a womb with a male fetus have, on average, a higher level of testosterone than a womb with a female fetus, but among males or among females the level of testosterone correlates with relative mathematical and verbal abilities. Read more at location 2297
In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley described a future dystopia in which the state produced different sorts of people for different purposes,Read more at location 2300
possible to do new things; there remains the question of whether they are worth doing.Read more at location 2302
As the technology gets better, it opens the possibility of eliminating less serious defects - the risk of a bad heart, say, which seems to be in part genetic, or alcoholism, which may well be - and selecting in favor of desirable characteristics. Parents want their children to be happy, healthy, smart, strong, beautiful.Read more at location 2307
A dictatorial government might try to engineer the entire population, to breed some inconvenient characteristic, say aggressiveness or resistance to authority, out of it.1°Read more at location 2309
It takes about twenty years to produce an adult human; few real-world governments can afford to plan that far ahead. And while a clone will be genetically identical to the donor, its environment will not be identical,Read more at location 2312
One further argument against the idea is that if it is an attractive strategy for a dictatorial state, it ought already to have happened. Selective breeding of animals is a very old technology. Yet I know of no past society that made any serious large-scale attempt at selective breedingRead more at location 2314
an adult produces a clone of himself in order to disassemble it for body partsRead more at location 2319
One obvious problem with that scenario is that even if the cloning were legal, the disassembly would not beRead more at location 2320
But one can imagine a future society in which it was. On the other hand, the process again involves a substantial time lag, and becomes increasingly less useful as improved medical technology reduces the problems of transplant rejection. Read more at location 2321
Looking at it suggests that producing a human being at least partly to provide tissue for transplant may not be such an ugly idea after all.Read more at location 2322
In 1988, Anissa Ayala, then a high school sophomore, was diagnosed with a slow progressing but ultimately fatal form of leukemia. Her only hope was a treatment that would kill off all her existing blood stem cells and replace them by a transplant from a compatible donor. The odds that a random donor would be compatible were about 1 in 20,000. Read more at location 2323
Their second daughter Marissa was born - and compatible. Fourteen months later she donated the bone marrowRead more at location 2327
consider parents whose small child has just been killed in an auto accident. Parents have a very large emotional investment in their children, not children in the abstract but this particular small person whom they love.Read more at location 2331
The first is the "yecch" factor. New technologies involving things as intimate as reproduction feel weird, unnatural, and for many people, frightening and ugly.Read more at location 2335
That reaction may slow the introduction of new reproductive technologies but is unlikely to prevent it,Read more at location 2337
A second reason is that new technologies usually do not work very well at first.Read more at location 2338
The final reason is the most interesting of all. It is the possibility that individual reproductive decisions might have unintended consequences - perhaps seriously negative ones. Read more at location 2341
selective infanticide - has been in use for thousands of years. A less costly alternative - selective abortion - is already being used extensively in some parts of the world." And we now have ways to substantially alter the odds of producing male or female offspring by less drastic methods.'Read more at location 2344
The problem maybe self-correcting - with a time lag. In a society with a high male-to-female ratio women are in a strong bargaining position, able to take their pick of mates and demand favorable terms in marriage."Read more at location 2350
A high ratio of men to women might also result in a shift in mating patterns in the direction of polyandry:Read more at location 2352
without changes in marriage laws there is still the possibility of serial polyandry.Read more at location 2353
worries that the long-term result might be a society divided into two classes: generich, the genetically superior descendants of people who could afford to use new technologies to produce superior offspring, and genepoor. Read more at location 2356
sperm is a free good, hence provides a low-cost way of obtaining high-quality genes for one's offspring.Read more at location 2363
The essential problem is that we are physically ready to reproduce before we are emotionally or economically ready.Read more at location 2366
With the continuing progress of medical science, we may soon be able to reverse that change. Read more at location 2368
Suppose a drug company announces a new medication - one that will safely delay puberty for a year, or two years, or three years.Read more at location 2369
Are parents who artificially delay the physical development of their daughters guilty of child abuse?Read more at location 2370
May schools pressure parents to give the medication to boys about to reach puberty, as many now do for other forms of medication designed to make children behave more as schoolteachers wish them to?Read more at location 2371
