The Minority Report

I blogged about this last month when I read the article that Daniel MacArthur originally wrote.

It would appear that the right-wing religious, pro-life nutbag wackos got to him a lot quicker than I thought they would He held out for what…two weeks?

I’ll tell you what happened, he got hundreds of phone calls and emails from “outraged” people that couldn’t believe what he was doing even though in 100 years this will all be completely normal. So bowing to pressure and the sad reality that he needs to stay in business, he folded like a cheap embryo.

People obsess about picking out the right clothes their kids wear, what schools their kids go to, what their kids eat, etc. I think it’s completely hypocritical that people pretend to be outraged about picking their kids eye color WHILE they are screening for diseases.

Frankly, I applaud Dr. Steinberg. He’s on the cutting edge of science and his research will contribute so much more greatly to humanities welfare and health in the long run than anything the “outraged” parents and dogodders….hehehe….doGODders…will EVER do.

As soon as Dr. Steinberg and his colleagues can do the predicting and mixing with just the egg and the sperm before they become a combined cluster of cells…uh…embryos…THAN they should be fine with the religious nuts.

Every generation before and every generation after will have these fucktards that are so afraid of technology, technology that can be used for BOTH critically relevant things AND cosmetic things. There is nothing wrong with choosing your embryos eye color, hair color…if that is what YOU choose to do. Nobody is forcing it other people.

Just remember, “this has all happened before and will all happen again”.

Last month I mentioned a US fertility clinic that was offering couples undergoing IVF the opportunity to screen their embryos for sex, and for genes associated with “cosmetic” traits such as eye and hair colour. I used this as an opportunity to note that the genetic complexity of many traits (e.g. height, also discussed yesterday) would make it highly unlikely that embryo screening would be effective for these, although for hair and eye colour such screening is certainly feasible.

The media coverage of this fertility clinic – run by reproductive endocrinologist Jeff Steinberg (pictured) – predictably sparked a wave of moral outrage and tedious chest-beating about the “slippery slope” of parents “playing God”.

It appears that this outrage has made an impact: Steinberg announced on Tuesday that his clinic will not be offering “cosmetic” screening to couplesGenetic Future : “Designer baby” doctor no longer offering embryo screening for cosmetic traits

A fertility doctor who offered to customize traits like eye and hair color is backing down and says he will mess with Mother Nature only for medical reasons – for now.

“We’re going to limit it to people with genetic diseases because we just cannot keep up with what’s going on,” Dr. Jeff Steinberg said TuesdayDesign-a-kid clinic puts offer on hold

At the moment, he can’t accommodate parents who want a certain eye and hair color for cosmetic reasons, he said. He’ll focus instead on families with histories of albinism, color blindness and several other genetic disorders. Design-a-kid clinic puts offer on hold