What if it was possible to overcome infertility, to reduce the risk of a child developing cancer, and to eliminate genetic diseases all in the same process? Such a process could become essential in addressing mankind’s wellbeing, and should be scrutinized for it moral value and applications. This process is called In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), in which a woman’s eggs are extracted and a man’s sperm sample retrieved, and then manually combined in a laboratory dish. The embryos are then screened and diagnosed for any genetic diseases before implanted into the woman’s uterus, through processes called Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS) and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). Children created from embryos selected through PGD, or the future concept of babies enhanced at the genetic level, are both known as “designer babies”. The process of creating designer babies is morally justifiable not only for fixing pathological issues through PGD, but also for the process of enhancement.
One of the most convincing arguments for the use of IVF is its unique ability to target genetic diseases or malfunctions through PGD. It allows couples with a high susceptibility of passing on genetic diseases to stop or reduce the likelihood of passing on the unwanted inheritance, and circumvents various forms of infertility to allow some couples to have biological children at all. Many of these genetic diseases, like Huntington’s disease, are progressive diseases that significantly reduce the quality of life for both the afflicted and the family of those afflicted. Some of these cause extreme social anxiety or physical limitations, and can end in dementia, cancer, and suicide. These diseases can ravage the lives of so many people, and there is no cure for many of them. The only solution to end them is to “nip them in the bud”, and prevent their creep into the lives of those in the future. Failing to use technology to better the lives of future generations, such as abstaining from vaccinations, is failure to assume moral responsibilities, and PGD’s unique ability to target, eliminate and/or reduce the prevalence of genetic diseases must be available for application for the sake of a better future for everyone.
Creating designer babies is not only justifiable for reducing pathological illnesses, but is also justifiable for the process of enhancement. Many jobs, at their core, are designed to improve the quality of life for both the individual and the community, by providing the individual with the financial means to live a better life and the community through the individual’s service or product. Many jobs are crucial to the wellbeing of the community, but very few if any jobs seek to do improve quality of life before the life has even begun. This is where the positive aspects of eugenics step in. Creating designer babies would be a method that improve the person’s quality of life before it has even started. The process of preimplantation genetic screening allows for the opportunity to further mankind’s adaptations to the constantly evolving environment at the genetic level. Microevolution is observable in everything from bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics, to Darwin’s finches adapting to the changing environment of the Galápagos Islands. IVF may be able to assist humans in ways that nature cannot do, or cannot do quickly enough. CRISPR/Cas9 technology, the ability to “cut, copy, and paste” genetic coding is something that could do more than reduce the prevalence of genetic pathologies. Humans could develop resistance to diseases beyond genetic ones, such as malaria, ebola, and HIV functioning as a sort of permanent vaccination. Humans may be able to become physically bigger and stronger through recreating the “defect” in the myostatin gene, and natural issues, like infertility, could be addressed in the future. Direct genetic enhancement could accelerate or bypass genetic complications that selective breeding strives to accomplish. If CRISPR/Cas9 or some other form of future technology is capable of aiding humanity’s development, then it would be mankind’s moral responsibility to not disregard such knowledge and power, and to utilize that which we can use.
One argument such use of IVF is that controlling the outcome of one’s offspring is too much power in the hands of people. This can be either said as that it should be left to nature, or to God. This is incorrect because not only is IVF not “unnatural”, but the power nature has is no more benevolent or wise than people’s actions, and should not be some ambiguous entity on which we can place abandoned moral responsibilities. A process or thing is not any more good because it is “natural”, nor bad because it is “unnatural”. Nature has always had inequality, death, and living or inanimate agents that control the conditions of life forms, so creating an avenue by which we as people can exert our control on the living status and conditions of the lives of future humans is not an unnatural process, but rather it is undertaking power that nature has exclusively had throughout history. If IVF created inequality amongst people, or allowed people to control aspects of their children, it is not different from nature. Casting power to the chaotic winds of nature, or hoping some higher being will sort out decisions is no responsible way of addressing an increase in power, and is no more benevolent or wise than learning to wield that power.
Every action we take or refrain from taking is a vote for some outcome of the destiny of ourselves and people in the future. Every person is only one celibate ancestor away from never existing. The power to change the world lies not only in the grandest of achievements and events, but also in the littlest of actions. Humans have always had immense power over the lives of others, especially descendants, so saying that humans have too much power in controlling their descendants through IVF is simply ignoring the immense power humans have always had. People have had the power to either bring descendants into existence or not, so managing the details of the outcome is simply gaining more control over natural processes. There is no moral superiority to appealing to nature, and taking the helm of one’s destiny and lineage is not “wrong”. It would be wrong, however, to leave it as a toss-up as to whether your child has a permanent disability which could harm and/or shorten their life. To cast that choice of improving your child’s life and the ultimately the future of mankind to the wind is a failure to assume the new responsibilities of mankind’s evolution. Nature can be immensely cruel, and people have the individual ability to be more kind and compassionate than nature. IVF allows people to do this for some of the most permanent diseases that still harm humanity.
Another argument against IVF is that it is inherently dehumanizing to select, freeze, donate, or destroy embryos. Because of PGD’s contribution to the Greatest Happiness Principle for all parties involved, it is improving the quality of life (or lack thereof) for all people and therefore does not violate the Humanity Formulation. The use of PGD is beneficial to society not only through the end goal, the elimination of genetic diseases and the furthering of humanity’s evolutionary adaptation to the environment, but also in its contribution to the GHP during PGD’s process of selective breeding. It gives life to those who could not be created without it, and it gives meaning to those who are rejected. To those who are rejected, those quasi-hypothetical people gain a valuable purpose in their role of fighting against some of the most vicious diseases, all the while not being treated as mere means to an end by eliminating all possible suffering in their hypothetical future life. If these embryos are considered (by whose moral authority, it is difficult to ascertain) to be humans, they did not die in vain, whereas they might live a painful, horrific life in vain if simply implanted without screening. Based on the hypothetical relationships on which one would have developed with the family, perhaps this would be the earliest example of when one would fulfill a duty to die, or rather a duty to never live. To give life to some, a purpose to others, and perhaps meaning to all created through IVF is a significant contribution to the Greatest Happiness Principle with all parties involved benefiting from it. The family members also do not have to give up part of their time, effort, and lives for caretaking in order to fix a problem which can be removed from the start, and society benefits through a more productive, positive, and competent work force that can focus on more imminent issues. Every action we take is a vote for the future we want to shape, and PGD allows those who would have never existed, and may not exist yet, a place in the GHP.
Failure to implement advancing technology because of an appeal to nature (or God), or failure to address the positive developments in humanity’s control over future wellbeing, is a vote for the stagnation of the human race. At our doorstep lays the technology not only to reduce harmful pathologies through advanced selective breeding, but also the technology to directly enhance the genetics of future generations for the better. Previous generations have implemented their technologies to better our lives, such as germ theory, sewage treatment, and vaccines, our generation and beyond may be called upon through moral obligation to implement IVF to further the health of the public in the future. IVF’s contributions to the Greatest Happiness Principle and its ability to reduce genetic diseases are sufficient reasons to declare that the use of IVF is morally acceptable not only for reducing pathologies but also for enhancement.