A just world is a world where no child is born predetermined to endure avoidable illness simply because of ancestral bad luck.
In clear-cut cases, this principle seems sound; if a certain gene only has deleterious effects, and it can be removed, this is clearly better (for the individual and almost certainly for everyone else too).
In practice, this becomes more complicated if one gene has multiple effects. (This may occur on its own or because the gene interacts with other genes.) What if the gene in question is a mixed bag? For example, consider a gene giving a 1% increased risk of diabetes while always improving visual acuity. To be clear, I’m saying complicated not unresolvable. Such tradeoffs can indeed be resolved with a suitable moral philosophy combined with sufficient data. However, the difference is especially salient because the person deciding isn’t the person that has to live with said genes. The two people may have different philosophies, risk preferences, or lifestyles.
However, the difference is especially salient because the person deciding isn’t the person that has to live with said genes. The two people may have different moral philosophies and/or different risk preferences.
A good rule might be that the parents can only select alleles that one or the other of them have, and also have the right to do so as they choose, under the principle that they have lived with it. (Maybe with an exception for the unambiguously bad alleles, though even in that case it’s unlikely that all four of the parent’s alleles are the deleterious one or that the parents would want to select it.) Having the right to select helps protect from society/govt imposing certain traits as more or less valuable, and keeping within the parent’s alleles maintains inheritance, which I think are two of the most important things people opposed to this sort of thing want to protect.
My current guess at the best regulatory stance—the one that ought to be acceptable to basically everyone, and that would result in good outcomes—is significantly more permissive, i.e. giving more genomic liberty to the parents. There should be rights to not genomically engineer at all, or to only GE along certain dimensions; and rights to normalize, or to propagate ones genes or traits, or to benefit the child, or to benefit others altruistically.
Your rule might for example practically prevent a deaf couple from intentionally having a child who is deaf but otherwise normal. E.g. imagine if the couple’s deafness alleles also carry separate health risks, but there are other deafness alleles that the couple does not have but that lead to deafness without other health risks.
I still haven’t fully thought through the consent objection, though.
Restrictions on genomic liberty should be considered very costly: they break down walls against eugenics-type forces (i.e. forces on people’s reproduction coming from state/collective power, and/or aimed at population targets). Like with other important values, this isn’t 100% absolute. E.g. parents shouldn’t be allowed to GE their children in order to make their children suffer a lot, or in a way that has a very high risk of creating a violent psychopath. But every such restriction rightfully invokes a big pile of “Wait, who decides what counts as a ‘good’ allele or as a ‘disease’?”.
I think mostly we’re on the same page then? Parents should have strong rights here, and the state should not.
I think that there’s enough variance within individuals that my rule does not practically restrict genomic liberty much, while making it much more palatable to the average person. But maybe that’s wrong, or it still isn’t worth the cost.
Your rule might for example practically prevent a deaf couple from intentionally having a child who is deaf but otherwise normal. E.g. imagine if the couple’s deafness alleles also carry separate health risks, but there are other deafness alleles that the couple does not have but that lead to deafness without other health risks.
That’s a good point, I wouldn’t want to prevent that. I’m not sure how likely this is to practically come up though.
Restrictions on genomic liberty should be considered very costly: they break down walls against eugenics-type forces (i.e. forces on people’s reproduction coming from state/collective power, and/or aimed at population targets).
This should be true for any trait that is highly polygenic and that we know many associated variants for, yeah.
I’m not sure how likely this is to practically come up though.
IDK, but if I had to make a guess I would guess that it’s quite rare but does occur. Another sort of example might be: say there’s a couple whose child will likely get some disease D. Maybe the couple has a very high genetic predisposition for D that can’t be attenuated enough using GE, or maybe it’s a non-genetic disease that’s transmissible. And say there’s a rare variant that protects against D (which neither parent has). It would be a risk, and potentially a consent issue, to experiment with editing in the rare variant; but it might be good all things considered. (If this sounds like sci-fi, consider that this is IIUC exactly the scenario that happened with the first CRISPR-edited baby! In that case there were multiple methodological issues, and the edit itself might have been a bad idea even prospectively, but the background scenario was like that.)
In clear-cut cases, this principle seems sound; if a certain gene only has deleterious effects, and it can be removed, this is clearly better (for the individual and almost certainly for everyone else too).
In practice, this becomes more complicated if one gene has multiple effects. (This may occur on its own or because the gene interacts with other genes.) What if the gene in question is a mixed bag? For example, consider a gene giving a 1% increased risk of diabetes while always improving visual acuity. To be clear, I’m saying complicated not unresolvable. Such tradeoffs can indeed be resolved with a suitable moral philosophy combined with sufficient data. However, the difference is especially salient because the person deciding isn’t the person that has to live with said genes. The two people may have different philosophies, risk preferences, or lifestyles.
A good rule might be that the parents can only select alleles that one or the other of them have, and also have the right to do so as they choose, under the principle that they have lived with it. (Maybe with an exception for the unambiguously bad alleles, though even in that case it’s unlikely that all four of the parent’s alleles are the deleterious one or that the parents would want to select it.) Having the right to select helps protect from society/govt imposing certain traits as more or less valuable, and keeping within the parent’s alleles maintains inheritance, which I think are two of the most important things people opposed to this sort of thing want to protect.
My current guess at the best regulatory stance—the one that ought to be acceptable to basically everyone, and that would result in good outcomes—is significantly more permissive, i.e. giving more genomic liberty to the parents. There should be rights to not genomically engineer at all, or to only GE along certain dimensions; and rights to normalize, or to propagate ones genes or traits, or to benefit the child, or to benefit others altruistically.
Your rule might for example practically prevent a deaf couple from intentionally having a child who is deaf but otherwise normal. E.g. imagine if the couple’s deafness alleles also carry separate health risks, but there are other deafness alleles that the couple does not have but that lead to deafness without other health risks.
I still haven’t fully thought through the consent objection, though.
Restrictions on genomic liberty should be considered very costly: they break down walls against eugenics-type forces (i.e. forces on people’s reproduction coming from state/collective power, and/or aimed at population targets). Like with other important values, this isn’t 100% absolute. E.g. parents shouldn’t be allowed to GE their children in order to make their children suffer a lot, or in a way that has a very high risk of creating a violent psychopath. But every such restriction rightfully invokes a big pile of “Wait, who decides what counts as a ‘good’ allele or as a ‘disease’?”.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfrSZaf3JC8vJdbZL/how-to-make-superbabies?commentId=ZeranH3yDBGWNxZ7h
I think mostly we’re on the same page then? Parents should have strong rights here, and the state should not.
I think that there’s enough variance within individuals that my rule does not practically restrict genomic liberty much, while making it much more palatable to the average person. But maybe that’s wrong, or it still isn’t worth the cost.
That’s a good point, I wouldn’t want to prevent that. I’m not sure how likely this is to practically come up though.
Strong agree.
This should be true for any trait that is highly polygenic and that we know many associated variants for, yeah.
IDK, but if I had to make a guess I would guess that it’s quite rare but does occur. Another sort of example might be: say there’s a couple whose child will likely get some disease D. Maybe the couple has a very high genetic predisposition for D that can’t be attenuated enough using GE, or maybe it’s a non-genetic disease that’s transmissible. And say there’s a rare variant that protects against D (which neither parent has). It would be a risk, and potentially a consent issue, to experiment with editing in the rare variant; but it might be good all things considered. (If this sounds like sci-fi, consider that this is IIUC exactly the scenario that happened with the first CRISPR-edited baby! In that case there were multiple methodological issues, and the edit itself might have been a bad idea even prospectively, but the background scenario was like that.)