A better analogy for "designer babies" would be performance enhancing drugs in sports. If we accept their use, then it basically becomes a requirement on anyone that wants to participate (or at least compete).
The real ethical issue is that you're giving "performance enhancers" to babies. We can't test this stuff in vitro or in adults, not really. So any baby born this way is, in some sense, an experiment.
And crucially, so are all of those babies' children and their children, because they will inherit some or all of the genetic changes.
This outlook basically presupposes that society is a competition of everyone against everyone. Does it have to be? If it does, what does "losing" mean, and can we reduce its impact to the point where it stops mattering?
One other thing. Just because I own fewer resources than someone else, doesn't mean that I "lose". I mean, you can arbitrarily define it that way, but in practice, I only need enough resources to sustain a certain quality of life. So, while universe may be finite wrt resources in theory, the actual number is so big that it may well be treated as infinite for all practical purposes, provided that we don't have unbounded population growth.
Sure, but society can prevent you from hogging too much for yourself (via taxes etc), so long as it's not 100% laissez-faire, and not just the rich have political rights.
No, but I don't see the "designer baby" tech as something that radically changes the nature of the problem (which already exists, and has existed for a long time), either. Basically, insofar as status quo is tolerable, this doesn't move the needle enough to care.
The other thing is, coming from a "well, something must be done about it" perspective, fixing these aspects of human society strikes me as the least intrusive and harmful side-effect-free approach, compared to all the other alternatives (which are mostly about tightly regulating the tech and its use). Heavy handed regulation, in particular, will just produce a black market with no regulation at all, which is likely to result in more problems in the end.
It's not always about whether or not you see everything as a competition. Consider the "requirement" nowadays of a college degree. I could say that you "need a college degree to compete in the work-force," but that doesn't mean you just need a college degree only if you want to be the "best of the best." Also see sci-fi exploration of this topic (e.g. Gattaca).
>Also see sci-fi exploration of this topic (e.g. Gattaca).
Don't use this as part of an argument. Some stories made up based on assumptions of writers not backed by any evidence have little to do with the ethical implications of actual technology.
Are you saying that we should disregard all science-fiction that has explored this topic when considering possible implications? I was referencing sci-fi as more of a "further reading" than as part of an argument.
I think the need for a college degree to even get a job is (1) specific to American society and regulations, and (2) not really true even there.
Since we're talking about general human morality, I wouldn't put much weight on the particulars of this region in 2016.
On a healthy job market, you get paid about as much as you produce. Regardless of what others produce. You also get to benefit from whatever inventions any new super talented people come up with.
Finally, the more intelligent a population is in general, the more peaceful it is.
Most world class athletes are already genetically superior by the measure of athleticism. Even though these favourable mutations or inherited traits have not been engineered, they still exist and it does enhance the athlete's performance.
> What about drugs in general, not just performance enhancing drugs? I meant, everyone want to participate in modern medical treatment, right?
What? I'm talking about performance-enhancing drugs here because they enhance performance. So everyone else operating in the same space as you will need to also use performance-enhancing drugs if they want to compete. I'm not sure why this is a hard concept to grasp.
If there were a pill you could take to turn you into the mythical "10x programmer," the implication of industry-wide usage would be that you would have to start taking that pill to participate in the industry or else you wouldn't be able to keep up.
We already have such pills, in effect. For example, someone who has depression (a very common ailment), but also has access to drugs that mitigate it, can easily be 10x better programmer relative to someone who has depression but no drugs.
Come to think of it, this goes for a lot of other things. Having a car is better than not having one, if only because you shorten commute times, and so have more free time - which translates to better rest and therefore higher productivity, or you could spend it learning new things, again, for higher productivity.
So basically anything that improves your quality of life in exchange for money is "performance enhancing" directly or indirectly.
