"Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children"

Monday, January 12. 2009

"Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children"

The worst evils in history are those that clothe themselves in compassion. The wolf in sheep's clothing. "Procreative Benefience" is one of these very palatable evils. I know Julian Savulescu's paper "Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the Best Children" was published way back in 2002 in Bioethics, but I have been seeing him quoted more and more lately.

As with many issues in bioethics, Catholics need to be ahead of the curve on this rhetoric. "Procreative Beneficence" is by no means a new idea, but Savulesc gives it a shiny new, woolly coat that masks the wolf underneath. What is "Procreative Beneficence" you might ask? I will let Savulesc tell you in his own words:

Eugenic selection of embryos is now possible by employing in vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). While PGD is currently being employed for the purposes of detecting chromosomal abnormalities or inherited genetic abnormalities, it could in principle be used to test any genetic trait such as hair colour or eye colour.

Genetic research is rapidly progressing into the genetic basis of complex traits like intelligence and a gene has been identified for criminal behaviour in one family. Once the decision to have IVF is made, PGD has few 'costs' to couples, and people would be more inclined to use it to select less serious medical traits, such as a lower risk of developing Alzheimer Disease, or even for non-medical traits. PGD has already been used to select embryos of a desired gender in the absence of any history of sex-linked genetic disease.

I will argue that: (1) some non-disease genes affect the likelihood of us leading the best life; (2) we have a reason to use information which is available about such genes in our reproductive decision-making; (3) couples should select embryos or fetuses which are most likely to have the best life, based on available genetic information, including information about non-disease genes. I will also argue that we should allow selection for non-disease genes even if this maintains or increases social inequality. I will focus on genes for intelligence and sex selection.

I will defend a principle which I call Procreative Beneficence: couples (or single reproducers) should select the child, of the possible children they could have, who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available information.

So essentially Procreative Beneficence is a euphemism for old-fashioned eugenics with the added dimension of "parental choice" which somehow supposed to make it acceptable.

But in this day and age of "choice" being synonymous with "compassion," Procreative Beneficence has appeal to those who do not know better. What parent wouldn't "choose" the best for their children?

And therein lies the rub. Procreative Beneficence is not choosing the best FOR your children, it is choosing the "best" child among several children (currently up to 20 and in the future possibly thousands), according to some seriously limited set of criteria.

The fallacious thinking contained in Procreative Beneficence is endless, most notably who dares decide what constitutes a "best life." But I want to address two points that I think are often overlooked.

The first is that children are not things from which one can choose the one that most suits parental ideas of having a "best life." Human beings are not objects from which we can choose those that we think will perform the best. I found this quote from Savulesc that illustrates my point:

Imagine a couple has two embryos that are free of major genetic disorders. 'A' has a 10% chance of Alzheimer Disease while 'B 'does not. What possible reason could there be NOT to select 'B'?

I have a litmus test that I want to try out here. If I can interchange a human being for an object like a car or home in a statement and it still makes sense then there is something seriously wrong with the statement. Let us change the word "embryo" for the word "car" And "Alzheimer Disease" with "transmission trouble" and see what we get:

Imagine a couple has two cars that are free of major mechanical problems. 'A' has a 10% chance of transmission trouble while 'B 'does not. What possible reason could there be NOT to select 'B'?

Children are not cars or homes. When we begin to see them as major investments that we research in Consumer Reports and then make the best choice, we have a real problem. Why? Well, what happens when we do not get what we paid for? Do we get to take them back? Do we sue the 'manufacturer' and call them a 'mistake?' What happens if we decide we should have waited for a better model? Do we get to trade-up? And what happens to the 'outdated unit?' All of a sudden Procreative Beneficence turns children into nothing more than a major life purchase. Is that really giving children the "best life?"

And what if the criteria we used to make our choice was seriously flawed? Which brings me to my second point, which is purely for the secularist. What ever happened to Darwin? The whole idea of evolution is that individuals have small genetic differences and NATURE decides who has the genetic advantage. Nature being a million different influences in an entire ecosystem, most of which our tiny humans brains could not possibly comprehend.

If we could screw up the planet so bad with our choices for a "best life", then who could possibly think we could do better with our own species? Genetics is a truly complex area and it is pure arrogance to think we could ever have all the information to decide which children will have the "best life" based solely on genetic information. By choosing one trait, we may just be choosing against another that would make those who have it better adapted to future environmental constraints. Nature is vastly more qualified than we are to make such decisions. It would be folly to believe otherwise.

It seems to me that to have true Procreative Beneficence we should NOT select the "best" children. Children will have the 'best life" if we embrace the genetic diversity that results from old fashioned reproduction and love our children unconditionally. As for genetic disease, I say we should treat the disease, not get rid of the people who have it. Who knows, that "genetic defect" maybe a "genetic advantage" for a better life in the future.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Eugenics at 13:13 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

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AMEN. And Amen.

I wonder at times just how much understanding such folks have of selective pressures and species survival, quite apart from the ethics with which they don't seem to be troubled.

Today, obesity and diseases related to it are big problems for many Samoan people. Centuries ago, however, that tendency to accumulate body fat made possible their survival on long ocean voyages aboard wind-driven craft with limited space for food, and consequently their colonization of the islands of the South Pacific. Is their metabolism a flaw or an advantage? It depends on whether or not you have a steady food supply.

Sickle cell anemia is, even with today's treatments, a terrible disease. In times past those affected seldom lived to adulthood. But in malaria-ridden areas of Africa, carriers have a measure of resistance to the disease. If not carrying the gene at all is as likely to result in early death as carrying two copies of it, is it any wonder that evolution has favored the heterozygous?

Would advocates of "procreative beneficience" have selected against quirky geniuses like Steinmetz, Tesla, and Einstein because of their physical or psychosocial defects? Or would they prefer a world peopled entirely by such geniuses? Or perhaps there's a "golden mean" of just the right proportion of genial sociopaths to sound people of average intelligence?

It's not just a sanctimonious platitude that our strength lies in our diversity. It behooves our mad scientist friends to think very, very hard about the genes they might like to see eliminated from our genome in the future. Some of them might one day be the key to our survival.

#1 cminor (Homepage) on 2009-01-12 20:02 (Reply)

I don't know if this blog still operates, I just stumbled across it and I thought that I would comment.

No argument put against Savulescu here is sufficient to undermine his argument.

His argument is this; Moral action requires that we do what we have most reason to do. We have more reason to choose a child with more well-being than a child with less. The child who will have the most well-being is the best child. Therefore, we ought to choose the child with the most well-being. This is what we call in logic a valid argument. That means that if you want to deny the argument you must prove one of the premises false.

To substitute child for car does nothing to undermine Savulescu's argument. In fact, it supports it. Practical reason demands that we do what we have most reason to do. We have more reason to choose a car without problems than a car with problems. Therefore, we ought to choose the car that is likely not to have problems. All, you have done is demonstrate the validity of Savulescu's argument.

The closest you come to making a suitable argument against Savulescu is when you suggest that Humans cannot understand the complexities of nature and if we start choosing children, that might mess with natural selection.

However, when you claim this, you forget what you admitted earlier. With procreative beneficence you are choosing the best child. You choose from children that you can have. The embryos involved are created by nature, all that is being done is selecting from these embryos which one is the most likely to have the best life. There will be cases where this will be easy to identify. If one child will have Tay Sachs syndrome, that child cannot be chosen. Other times, it will be more difficult, many embryos will display the possibility of having a good life. In that case, there is no more reason to choose one over another and morality allows you to choose any.

What I have described cannot adjust the course of natural selection as you suggest it might. We are not genetically engineering children, we are choosing from naturally created embryos using PGD and IVF. Consider that weird family you know that has 11 kids. Now imagine they have no kids and they use IVF to create 11 embryos. Those embryos could be the embryos that created the 11 kids that exist in reality. All PGD would allow the parents to do (in our imagined case) is select from the 11 embryos the one they consider to have the best chance for the best life. Procreative beneficence says they must choose the one that will have the most well-being. You have given no reason to think that we should not do that.

There are good reasons to oppose Savulescu, you have not identified any.

Thanks

#1.1 Warren Beaty on 2012-02-02 07:09 (Reply)

You clearly buy into the idea that children are commodities from which one can choose "the best."

Children are not commodities to be measured and evaluated according to our flawed and limited criteria.

You and Julian confuse parents choosing the best FOR their children, and choosing the "best" child among many.

#1.1.1 Rebecca Taylor on 2012-02-04 10:29 (Reply)

I don't think I do. Parents ought to do what is best for their children. I agree and so would Julian. Julian however thinks that we ought to pick the child with the best chance in life. The child who will have the best chance is also the best child. You are right to challenge the idea that we could have a good criteria for determining what the best child is because we would certainly have trouble ascertaining which child, of possible children, has the best chance of the best life. However, it is likely uncontroversial to say that some genetic factors seriously affect the possibility of a good life. If we can identify these factors then, says Julian, we ought to use technology to do so in order to have a child who will have a good chance at a good life.

Is this the commodification of children? I don't think so. You are merely picking the best child of the possible children that you can have. Its important to remember that whatever child you choose could have been born naturally. All the new technology allows is for parents to eliminate some of the natural randomness inherent in natural reproduction. Since this is the case, to resist using this technology in this case is tantamount to defending the randomness of natural reproduction. Why defend this randomness? Is it not better to avoid birthing children who will have debilitating genetic diseases such as Tay Sachs?

Perhaps I just don't understand the commodities objection. How does choosing a child of possible children that you can have amount to the commodification of children? And, if it does, what exactly is undesirable or reprehensible about doing so? I believe you have invoked this objection so that the view of choosing children looks like choosing a car, and, of course, there are similarities. However, this is not enough to establish the claim that there is something objectionable about choosing children. I am interested to know what exactly you find reprehensible about choosing children. I have a suspicion about what it is but I will put the question to you rather than speculate about the source of your worries.

Thanks

#1.1.1.1 Warren Beaty on 2012-03-02 14:58 (Reply)

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