Problem of choice basic lines of child: half, color of eyes, hair, modern possibilities of medicine. Possibility choice of design of child at artificial impregnation. Ethic problem of choice of design. Value of problem of choice of sex of child in China.
Аннотация к работе
Jeff Steinberg, who runs a Fertility Clinic in LA and is a 1970s In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) pioneer, is offering a chance for IVF patients to choose the physical traits of their child, such as hair and eye color, using Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (P.G.D.) They already offer people the choice of selecting the child’s gender (Fink). In Vitro Fertilization is used to provide infertile couples with a chance to have a child and P.G.D. is used to insure that parents with a disease that can be passed on to the child will have a healthy child by excluding the disease-carrying genes (Handyside and Delhanty 270; Belkin). One problem associated with the ability to choose the traits of a child is that, from the point of view of ethics, this allows the parents to play the role of “God” and the child to be treated like a toy. With the ability to choose, children will turn into some sort of competition between parents, a contest to make the more beautiful baby. Moreover, the parents cannot be completely certain that the child him/herself will be satisfied with the looks the parents chose, and this will create tension in their future relationship.