1 00:00:01,330 --> 00:00:05,230 This is bioethics bytes with me, David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton. 2 00:00:05,500 --> 00:00:12,970 Bioethics Bytes is made in association with Vox. We here are Centre for Practical Ethics and made possible by a grant from the Wellcome Trust. 3 00:00:13,270 --> 00:00:23,470 For more information about bioethics bytes go to WW w practical ethics dot oecs docs ac dot UK or to i-Tunes you. 4 00:00:23,890 --> 00:00:30,970 The term designer baby is usually used in a pejorative sense to conjure up some dystopian brave new world. 5 00:00:31,630 --> 00:00:37,150 There are already ways to affect what kind of children you have, most obviously by choosing the partner you have them with. 6 00:00:37,450 --> 00:00:38,650 But there were others too. 7 00:00:39,070 --> 00:00:46,480 A pregnant mother can improve her baby's prospects by eating nutritious food in pregnancy, for instance, and avoiding smoking or drinking alcohol. 8 00:00:47,080 --> 00:00:53,980 With advances in genetics, however, there will soon be radical new methods to select or influence the characteristics of your progeny, 9 00:00:54,490 --> 00:00:57,460 not just physical characteristics like height or eye colour, 10 00:00:57,730 --> 00:01:03,790 but intellectual capacities and capacities linked to morality, such as how empathetic the child will be. 11 00:01:04,690 --> 00:01:09,160 The big question is how much freedom parents should have to make such selections. 12 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:16,870 Julien Saville, Rescue of Oxford, Ohio Centre for Practical Ethics believes that if we can genetically alter the next generation, 13 00:01:17,260 --> 00:01:24,430 not only should we be free to do so. It may even turn out that in some circumstances we have an obligation to go ahead and do it. 14 00:01:24,820 --> 00:01:28,940 Julian Solecki, welcome to Bioethics Bytes. Good afternoon, Nigel. 15 00:01:29,410 --> 00:01:35,350 We're going to focus on the topic of designer babies. Now, could you just begin by saying a little bit about what is possible? 16 00:01:35,800 --> 00:01:43,720 So today we can use various technologies, either testing the foetus or of embryos to look at the genetic constitution. 17 00:01:43,930 --> 00:01:50,860 This is typically done to detect major genetic disorders like Down's Syndrome, cystic fibrosis or thalassaemia. 18 00:01:51,010 --> 00:01:56,169 But increasingly, it's being used for milder conditions or conditions that have a later onset, 19 00:01:56,170 --> 00:02:00,250 such as a disposition to breast or bowel cancer or, for example, Alzheimer's disease. 20 00:02:00,700 --> 00:02:05,799 But of course, in principle, you could test for any genes that the embryo or foetus has, 21 00:02:05,800 --> 00:02:12,340 genes that would code for the height, the personality, the cognitive abilities, the physical make up. 22 00:02:12,820 --> 00:02:17,500 So it opens the door to testing what kind of child you're likely to have. 23 00:02:17,920 --> 00:02:23,260 So it seems to be something quite different from screening out embryos which have a propensity 24 00:02:23,260 --> 00:02:31,149 to illness or disease from actively selecting particular attractive features of the child to be. 25 00:02:31,150 --> 00:02:38,800 So, for instance, to select a baby who will be a brilliant musician is very different from avoiding having a baby with cystic fibrosis. 26 00:02:39,010 --> 00:02:46,030 Well, I think that that's a mistake because many people have in mind the idea of selecting blonde haired, blue eyed children like the Nazis did. 27 00:02:46,510 --> 00:02:56,080 But when it comes to a lot of important aspects of ourselves, how our lives go is at least in significant part, determined by the genetic lottery. 28 00:02:56,410 --> 00:03:03,880 So, for example, one of the strongest features that determines how our lives go is the level of self-control or impulse control that we have. 29 00:03:04,270 --> 00:03:11,020 Walter Michel in the 1960s did a famous set of experiments where he placed a marshmallow in front of four year old children and told the children, 30 00:03:11,020 --> 00:03:16,690 not treat the marshmallow. And he left the room. And if they resisted the temptation, he gave them two marshmallows. 31 00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:19,719 Now, when he followed these children up ten years later, 32 00:03:19,720 --> 00:03:25,990 those who were able to devise strategies to delay gratification withstand the temptation of the marshmallow. 33 00:03:25,990 --> 00:03:31,000 Those children had more friends, more motivation to succeed, and much higher SAT scores. 34 00:03:31,480 --> 00:03:35,350 So whether you've got poor impulse control is going to affect how your life goes. 35 00:03:35,800 --> 00:03:43,390 So whereas many people think of diseases like a cleft lip or palate as being very significant, they can have an effect on bonding. 36 00:03:43,660 --> 00:03:46,690 But something like poor impulse control is going to have a much more profound 37 00:03:46,690 --> 00:03:50,270 effect on how your life goes than many diseases that we take very seriously. 38 00:03:50,290 --> 00:03:52,929 So I think we've got exactly the same reason. 39 00:03:52,930 --> 00:04:00,160 That is, care for how our children's lives go to select for those advantageous genes and to select against the disadvantageous ones. 40 00:04:00,790 --> 00:04:05,290 Or we could in principle do that by looking at the kind of partners we breed with. 41 00:04:05,800 --> 00:04:09,760 The logical extension of what you're saying is that we ought to be much more careful about 42 00:04:09,910 --> 00:04:15,310 selecting our partners because we've got a responsibility to have the right kind of babies. 43 00:04:15,790 --> 00:04:19,719 Well, of course, we've been practising genetic selection at a subconscious level all through human history. 44 00:04:19,720 --> 00:04:26,980 When we track partners that are more likely to be fertile and beauty is correlated with signals of fertility. 45 00:04:27,190 --> 00:04:33,879 And you're correct. I mean, if our main goal was to select a child with the best genes, we would select our partners very carefully. 46 00:04:33,880 --> 00:04:37,900 But that's still not going to guarantee that you're going to have the best child that you could have. 47 00:04:37,900 --> 00:04:45,640 Even with that partner, even with the best partners in the world, we still will have some embryos in foetuses with much shorter straws than others. 48 00:04:46,150 --> 00:04:50,500 So maybe we can select out a characteristic that is unattractive. 49 00:04:50,650 --> 00:04:57,880 But when we're talking about designing a baby, we're talking about a cluster of different features which operate together. 50 00:04:58,060 --> 00:05:00,850 You talk about impulse control, but it may be that we can. 51 00:05:00,930 --> 00:05:08,669 Pest control is highly correlated with some of the highly attractive qualities that maybe only people with weak impulse control will be creative, 52 00:05:08,670 --> 00:05:14,489 for instance. Well, to really get a program of designing babies off the ground ethically, 53 00:05:14,490 --> 00:05:19,290 you need to have a robust conception of what well-being is, what a good life for somebody is. 54 00:05:19,620 --> 00:05:27,950 And you need very good empirical evidence. So we need to know whether poor impulse control is associated with other advantageous tries. 55 00:05:28,170 --> 00:05:31,049 And in fact, we do have science to tell us something about that. 56 00:05:31,050 --> 00:05:37,560 It doesn't seem to be correlated with anything advantageous, except perhaps a slightly lower propensity to depression. 57 00:05:37,860 --> 00:05:41,550 But that evidence is very weak. But that's exactly the kind of research we need to do. 58 00:05:41,730 --> 00:05:45,930 But when we have that evidence in place and we do have good reasons to believe that some 59 00:05:45,930 --> 00:05:51,509 biological feature or genetic feature is correlated with a a more advantageous life, 60 00:05:51,510 --> 00:05:56,130 with more opportunity, with a better prospect of a better life. I think we've got a moral obligation to do that. 61 00:05:56,490 --> 00:06:01,320 The important fact is that all biology is distributed unequally. 62 00:06:01,620 --> 00:06:05,160 It's just a curve. The IQ curve is the most well known bell curve. 63 00:06:05,580 --> 00:06:09,910 We arbitrarily define disease as two standard deviations below the mean. 64 00:06:09,930 --> 00:06:15,810 If you've got an IQ less than 70. In fact, there was a woman recently executed in Virginia because her IQ was 72, 65 00:06:16,290 --> 00:06:20,469 and her counsel tried to argue that this made no functional difference to her capacities. 66 00:06:20,470 --> 00:06:26,370 And they were exactly right. There's no difference in the abilities of somebody with an IQ of 69 and somebody with an IQ of 72. 67 00:06:26,700 --> 00:06:29,910 Yet in one case, you're eligible for the death penalty. In the other case, you're not. 68 00:06:30,450 --> 00:06:35,909 Now, that's just an arbitrary decision that we've made. What matters is not how many statistical deviations. 69 00:06:35,910 --> 00:06:44,010 We are away from the mean. What matters is how likely a particular biological feature is going to be to how well life goes, 70 00:06:44,010 --> 00:06:48,180 or in this case, to how competent you are to make decisions about criminal behaviour. 71 00:06:48,810 --> 00:06:56,910 So you're saying that not only can we make these genetic modifications to the child that we might have, but that we ought to do that. 72 00:06:56,910 --> 00:07:02,730 There's a responsibility with the parent to be to analyse the kind of child that they're going to produce. 73 00:07:03,150 --> 00:07:07,170 Of course, terrorism. And I think that what's most important is how well our lives get our well-being. 74 00:07:07,170 --> 00:07:14,070 And insofar as we have an obligation to have healthier children, we have the same obligation to have children with better lives. 75 00:07:14,340 --> 00:07:17,340 Now, that's not an overriding or an ultimate obligation. 76 00:07:17,340 --> 00:07:23,399 It's not something that quashes every other reason. Of course, there can be other reasons for not doing this, but prima facie, 77 00:07:23,400 --> 00:07:28,320 in the first instance, we have a reason, a moral reason that has to be outweighed. 78 00:07:28,470 --> 00:07:32,720 If I decide not to give my child a medical treatment, I have to have a good reason not to do it. 79 00:07:32,730 --> 00:07:35,940 But likewise, if I decide not to give my child a vitamin, 80 00:07:36,180 --> 00:07:41,009 that will increase that child's IQ or make that child more empathetic or achieve some other goal. 81 00:07:41,010 --> 00:07:44,220 We uncontroversial, we think, is good fit. You have to have a reason for it. 82 00:07:44,550 --> 00:07:50,459 And the same goes for genetic selections. Of course, if they're dangerous or expensive, these would be reasons against them. 83 00:07:50,460 --> 00:07:54,090 But in many cases, in the future we'll be accessing the whole genome. 84 00:07:54,210 --> 00:07:59,250 Why wouldn't we get information that's there and use it if it's going to make for children who have better lives? 85 00:07:59,970 --> 00:08:05,040 Well, one reason might be that there are many different conceptions of what makes a life go well. 86 00:08:05,100 --> 00:08:09,210 There isn't complete consensus about what a good or better life is. 87 00:08:09,690 --> 00:08:15,700 Of course, is huge dispute. This has been going on for thousands of years, but there will be some clear cut cases where there's reasonable consensus. 88 00:08:15,720 --> 00:08:19,470 I gave the example of self-control, impulse control. This is a try. 89 00:08:19,470 --> 00:08:23,129 That's good for you. No matter what kind of life you want to leave, you want to lead a religious life. 90 00:08:23,130 --> 00:08:30,810 You want to be a fighter. You want to be a doctor. It's good to be able to marshal your impulses in order to train or to work towards 91 00:08:30,810 --> 00:08:34,980 those goals so we can at least focus on those so-called all purpose goods. 92 00:08:35,100 --> 00:08:40,550 But I think that we will and we do have a convergence on some ideas about the good life. 93 00:08:40,560 --> 00:08:44,220 After all, how else would we design educational institutions? 94 00:08:44,490 --> 00:08:51,360 How else would we bring up children? We think it's good that children are tolerant, empathetic, have a sense of justice. 95 00:08:51,750 --> 00:08:58,979 If there are biological dispositions that give us variable levels of empathy, then I think it's quite open for debate to say, 96 00:08:58,980 --> 00:09:03,210 well, whether we should be using our knowledge of biology and genetics to try to influence those. 97 00:09:03,690 --> 00:09:11,010 Now that to me sounds like a kind of social engineering at a general level that we're deciding what kind of people we want in our society. 98 00:09:11,040 --> 00:09:12,630 But at a particular level, 99 00:09:12,840 --> 00:09:21,360 I might love soccer and try and breed a super child who can play at the top level with the Premier League and score lots of goals. 100 00:09:21,360 --> 00:09:28,500 So some of those selections may be antithetical to the sorts of values that you saying we might want in society perhaps. 101 00:09:28,530 --> 00:09:32,999 Being a brilliant sportsman is not compatible with being generous, 102 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:38,760 spirited and a range of other traits because it requires a certain level of competitive spirit that overrides that. 103 00:09:38,850 --> 00:09:44,430 There may well be conflict between social goals and personal goals or goals for the child's life. 104 00:09:44,450 --> 00:09:48,240 The child has the best life possible and those would be difficult things to balance. 105 00:09:48,570 --> 00:09:51,840 In general, I think the principle should be child focussed. 106 00:09:51,840 --> 00:10:00,780 We should choose those traits that make that child's life go as well as possible, unless that child will represent a direct threat to other. 107 00:10:00,870 --> 00:10:08,040 People. So if somebody wanted to engineer or select for extreme ferociousness and viciousness or psychopathy, 108 00:10:08,040 --> 00:10:10,920 I think society would have a legitimate reason to say at that point, 109 00:10:11,100 --> 00:10:16,290 because of the risk, the direct threat to other people, we have a reason to veto that kind of choice. 110 00:10:16,290 --> 00:10:21,720 But the sporting example is an interesting one because there is a gene that's been identified, the act and three gene, 111 00:10:22,230 --> 00:10:28,709 which if you've got two copies of one version, you're more likely to be good at Sprint events and two copies of the other version. 112 00:10:28,710 --> 00:10:34,410 You're likely to be better at endurance events. Now, how should we think about that in terms of selecting the best child? 113 00:10:34,770 --> 00:10:36,450 It doesn't seem to me there's any clear answer. 114 00:10:36,480 --> 00:10:41,360 It's not a case that we can say it's better to be better at sprint events or better to be better at endurance events. 115 00:10:41,610 --> 00:10:46,680 That's the sort of thing we should just give people freedom to make their own choices about what sort of child they want to have. 116 00:10:47,340 --> 00:10:48,960 Some people are going to say, listening to this, 117 00:10:49,320 --> 00:10:57,150 you've got a kind of godlike view of what you're doing with the child, that you are creating a child as you see fit. 118 00:10:57,210 --> 00:11:01,110 And that's going against the whole history of humanity, 119 00:11:01,110 --> 00:11:07,800 where there's a lottery about what kind of child that you have and the child takes what it gets and makes the most of it. 120 00:11:07,920 --> 00:11:12,900 It seems to me that that's going to introduce all kinds of strange dynamics between children and parents. 121 00:11:12,910 --> 00:11:17,520 The parents can, to some degree, be held blameworthy if things don't go the right way. 122 00:11:17,970 --> 00:11:24,690 I think you're correct that most people have this gift view where given the child and we should just provide the best for that particular child. 123 00:11:25,260 --> 00:11:28,440 And I think you're correct that this could go wrong in lots of different ways, 124 00:11:28,470 --> 00:11:33,480 but it's important to recognise the biological starting point is extreme genetic inequality. 125 00:11:33,900 --> 00:11:38,520 So if we can overcome that, we do achieve something positive. That is, we give them a better start in life. 126 00:11:39,210 --> 00:11:45,180 And then the second challenge is to ensure that those children are raised in a way that gives them autonomy, 127 00:11:45,180 --> 00:11:50,850 that respects them, and that we don't hold parents responsible for the fate of their children in any way. 128 00:11:50,850 --> 00:11:57,450 That's different to today. The point is not that we must legally be compelled to have designer babies. 129 00:11:57,690 --> 00:12:00,480 It's just that we have a reason to have them. 130 00:12:00,840 --> 00:12:07,710 We should be free to engage in natural reproduction without any genetic selection, and we should also be respected in those decisions. 131 00:12:08,010 --> 00:12:14,489 I think that brings out what seems to me your underlying position, which is a liberal one, that you're saying that unless there are very good reasons, 132 00:12:14,490 --> 00:12:19,559 the state shouldn't be allowed to intervene in individual matters of choice so 133 00:12:19,560 --> 00:12:23,520 that parents should be free to make the choices that they see fit to make, 134 00:12:23,760 --> 00:12:25,290 even if they're making mistakes, 135 00:12:25,290 --> 00:12:32,250 even if they've got slightly bizarre views about the kind of offspring that they might have that should still be tolerated. 136 00:12:32,460 --> 00:12:39,440 Absolutely. As I said, there are only very, very rare circumstances where a choice will impose direct harm on other people. 137 00:12:39,480 --> 00:12:42,299 The states are entitled to intervene, but in most cases, 138 00:12:42,300 --> 00:12:48,780 the role here is to provide people with good scientific evidence, a discussion and a robust conception of wellbeing, 139 00:12:49,050 --> 00:12:56,010 and to try to persuade people to make selection decisions that will have children with the best prospects of the best life. 140 00:12:56,400 --> 00:12:58,650 But people should have freedom of reproduction, 141 00:12:58,920 --> 00:13:03,300 freedom not only to decide how many children to have a when to have children, but what kind of children to have. 142 00:13:03,660 --> 00:13:05,910 And freedom sometimes has a price. 143 00:13:05,910 --> 00:13:12,900 Sometimes people make decisions that we disagree with or indeed that are wrong, but we should respect those unless they directly harm a child. 144 00:13:13,410 --> 00:13:16,950 Important thing in reproduction is when you're selecting between different embryos. 145 00:13:16,950 --> 00:13:20,730 The parents are not harming an embryo by selecting a different embryo. 146 00:13:21,240 --> 00:13:28,080 So they're different two cases after birth where if somebody refuses to have the treatment of disease or to treat deafness, 147 00:13:28,080 --> 00:13:33,510 they're actually harming that child. When you select between a deaf embryo and a hearing embryo or between an embryo 148 00:13:33,510 --> 00:13:37,950 with an advantageous genetic constitution and a disadvantageous constitution, 149 00:13:37,950 --> 00:13:42,060 the child that will result, provided they have a life worth living, has no complaint. 150 00:13:42,210 --> 00:13:48,570 This is a different category of decision that we can grant much more freedom to than we would typically give to parents when we bring their children. 151 00:13:48,720 --> 00:13:58,350 One side effects of what you're saying might be that people who have some kind of genetic difference from the norm, 152 00:13:58,980 --> 00:14:08,100 that a large number of people selecting out will feel that society is prejudiced against them, that if people are screening out shorter people, 153 00:14:08,100 --> 00:14:11,370 for instance, people who happen to been born, 154 00:14:11,370 --> 00:14:17,249 the genetic predisposition to be short may then feel doubly discriminated because not only are they short, 155 00:14:17,250 --> 00:14:20,640 but the people around them telling them that it's bad to be short. 156 00:14:21,060 --> 00:14:22,740 Absolutely. That could be a consequence. 157 00:14:22,740 --> 00:14:27,809 And in fact, we see that again with Down's syndrome, because of fewer children being born with Down's syndrome, 158 00:14:27,810 --> 00:14:32,040 because nine out of ten people who find today that they're carrying a Down's syndrome 159 00:14:32,670 --> 00:14:36,510 baby decide to abort because there's fewer children being born with Down's syndrome. 160 00:14:36,840 --> 00:14:42,270 The argument is that those children are doubly discriminated against, and it's possible that that's true. 161 00:14:42,750 --> 00:14:46,110 The response to that, though, is not to ban Down's syndrome screening. 162 00:14:46,440 --> 00:14:53,280 It's to change people's attitudes, to get rid of those discriminatory attitudes, to educate people better and to respect freedom. 163 00:14:53,640 --> 00:14:58,140 Does the freedom that you're talking about extend to choosing the sex of your baby? 164 00:14:58,500 --> 00:15:04,710 Absolutely. I mean, unless you can point to a. Clear harm, then people should be free to make those choices. 165 00:15:04,720 --> 00:15:09,580 Now, when it comes to sex selection in countries like the UK or America or Australia. 166 00:15:10,150 --> 00:15:11,680 People, studies have shown, 167 00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:18,850 typically want sex selection for their second or third child and they want the opposite sex to the sex that they've already got. 168 00:15:19,240 --> 00:15:21,640 And just over 50% of them choose to have a girl. 169 00:15:21,940 --> 00:15:29,570 Now, those sorts of choices don't express any discriminatory attitude, and nor will that affect the sex ratio of the country. 170 00:15:29,590 --> 00:15:31,569 If you were concerned about the sex ratio, 171 00:15:31,570 --> 00:15:38,680 you could easily make six selection only available for family balancing only for the opposite sex two children that you've already had. 172 00:15:38,890 --> 00:15:43,720 So there are very practical strategies that you can adopt to prevent any disturbance of the sex ratio. 173 00:15:44,150 --> 00:15:50,410 Countries like the UK. There's also the worry that the people who will actually be able to make the 174 00:15:50,410 --> 00:15:55,209 meaningful decisions about what kind of children to have will be the rich people. 175 00:15:55,210 --> 00:16:02,020 It'll actually encourage a wider division between rich and poor because only people who can afford the treatments will be able to say, 176 00:16:02,200 --> 00:16:09,950 I would like a child who is six feet to first class mind, superb athletes, genial disposition, compassionate. 177 00:16:09,970 --> 00:16:12,310 The poor people will just have to take what they get. 178 00:16:12,670 --> 00:16:19,060 Well, of course, that's what happens today in terms of education, access to computer technology or other technology, access to health care. 179 00:16:19,330 --> 00:16:23,890 So inequality does exist. And we seem to think that it's reasonable to tolerate that kind of inequality. 180 00:16:24,220 --> 00:16:29,710 But say we didn't say it was going to lead to this kind of two tiered genetic division in society. 181 00:16:30,280 --> 00:16:32,850 What's the solution to that? Well, there are two solutions. 182 00:16:32,860 --> 00:16:39,520 One is to ban the use of the technology, and the other one is to make it freely available as we make basic medicine, basic health care available. 183 00:16:39,940 --> 00:16:44,829 And I think if you're talking about genes that have significant effect on a child's later prospects 184 00:16:44,830 --> 00:16:49,810 of having a good life change that would affect mood or personality or cognitive abilities, 185 00:16:49,960 --> 00:16:54,220 then I think those things should be treated as we treat basic health care on a free basis. 186 00:16:54,490 --> 00:17:02,410 So how you use this technology, what kind of society it creates, is up to us to decide according to our policies. 187 00:17:02,560 --> 00:17:06,850 It seems to me the most irrational policy is one that just we won't use it at all. 188 00:17:07,090 --> 00:17:08,830 Now you'd be making this sound reasonable, 189 00:17:09,160 --> 00:17:15,490 but there are lots of people listening to this who will think it's the most terrifying development in the history of humanity. 190 00:17:15,670 --> 00:17:21,310 We've got the evidence of Nazi eugenic programs. We've got religious worries about playing God. 191 00:17:21,640 --> 00:17:27,760 They think you're a crazy scientist wanting to use your evil discoveries to create a master race. 192 00:17:27,940 --> 00:17:35,589 You're right, this has a tainted history. But it's also true that we've made these sorts of decisions all the time throughout history. 193 00:17:35,590 --> 00:17:39,969 Remember, we selected our mate when we selected the circumstances of the time at which we 194 00:17:39,970 --> 00:17:44,470 bring up children in order to maximise the resources that we have for them. 195 00:17:44,830 --> 00:17:48,309 We've been making these kinds of decisions and that's what it is to be human. 196 00:17:48,310 --> 00:17:55,840 To be human is to try to improve your condition and to improve the condition of your children, to improve the sorts of children that you have. 197 00:17:56,320 --> 00:18:06,459 Now, the challenge is to avoid the kind of Nazi eugenics which was involuntary, according to a social Darwinist racist view of how society should be, 198 00:18:06,460 --> 00:18:12,390 which had no concern for the well-being of the children, produced a no concern for the well-being of the parents. 199 00:18:12,400 --> 00:18:15,520 Indeed, in some cases they were killed to realise those sorts of goals. 200 00:18:15,790 --> 00:18:22,540 That's quite a different view to saying that we should use our knowledge of science to improve the human condition. 201 00:18:22,810 --> 00:18:30,280 Now, if you reject this, what you're saying is that natural God gives us something which is good enough or optimal. 202 00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:34,150 And I think when you look at the scientific evidence for that, it's just not true. 203 00:18:34,300 --> 00:18:39,490 At one point in history, people thought that disease was God's punishment for sin, 204 00:18:39,490 --> 00:18:46,090 that pain in childbirth was Eve's curse, and that you shouldn't vaccinate or provide pain relief in labour. 205 00:18:46,420 --> 00:18:50,649 Well, I think the kind of opposition to blanket opposition to the use of this technology is 206 00:18:50,650 --> 00:18:55,660 exactly the same as that kind of opposition to vaccination and pain relief in labour. 207 00:18:56,200 --> 00:19:02,350 If you were going to have another child now, what character traits and physical traits would you select? 208 00:19:02,890 --> 00:19:09,940 So I wouldn't use any of this technology now because the technology at the moment for those sorts of things is too immature and it does involve risks. 209 00:19:10,390 --> 00:19:16,360 I'm a believer that at this point nature surpasses the sorts of choices we can make in ten or 20 210 00:19:16,360 --> 00:19:22,520 years when whole genome analysis is much cheaper and we have a better idea of what genes do do. 211 00:19:22,600 --> 00:19:29,559 Then I would use it, and I would want my children to be empathic and capable of interacting and belonging 212 00:19:29,560 --> 00:19:32,770 to a social group and responding appropriately to other people's emotions, 213 00:19:32,770 --> 00:19:36,280 being able to read other people's intentions and identify their emotions. 214 00:19:36,700 --> 00:19:41,049 I'd want them to have high level cognitive abilities because IQ and other general cognitive 215 00:19:41,050 --> 00:19:45,610 abilities simply allow you to understand and use information about the world more effectively, 216 00:19:45,610 --> 00:19:48,370 quickly and progressing through more logical steps. 217 00:19:48,550 --> 00:19:55,060 Those kinds of abilities to live a social existence, have imagination, to have a good humour, subjective well-being. 218 00:19:55,060 --> 00:19:58,600 Just how happy we tend to feel has a very significant biological component. 219 00:19:58,610 --> 00:20:04,850 Some people are just flat and depressed. That's not due to their circumstances in these cases, it's due to their biology. 220 00:20:04,880 --> 00:20:07,220 I wouldn't want my children to have a personality disorder. 221 00:20:07,220 --> 00:20:12,560 I wouldn't want them to have a disposition to borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder. 222 00:20:12,710 --> 00:20:16,220 The important thing to recognise here is we won't be able to design a child. 223 00:20:16,910 --> 00:20:23,330 We won't be able to say this child will be Mozart or we will be able to do his change the chances of various outcomes, 224 00:20:23,600 --> 00:20:28,430 raising the probability or reducing the probability. And I think that's quite a reasonable thing to do. 225 00:20:28,550 --> 00:20:32,900 Of course, the outcome is going to be influenced by their environment, their upbringing, 226 00:20:32,900 --> 00:20:36,950 their experiences and how they turn out will be largely undetermined. 227 00:20:37,190 --> 00:20:41,480 But on that bit that we can influence the time of that procreation, we should influence it. 228 00:20:41,660 --> 00:20:46,670 We've got a reasonable conception of well-being and good evidence about the relationship of biology to that. 229 00:20:47,420 --> 00:20:50,720 Julian Sevilla. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thanks, Nigel. 230 00:20:51,080 --> 00:20:59,630 For more information about bioethics bites, go to W WW dot practical ethics dot oecs dot ac dot UK or iTunes u.