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.)
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.)