Here we go! Lets design our babies to what we want! You want blue eyes? You got it! You want red hair? You got it! This is ok but stem cell research isn’t? Whatever.

designing your own kid just because you can is wrong, everyone should be happy with whatever they have. but if the above situation were to ever happen to me, i’d very much so consider it. I mean if it’s to save my childs life, why not?

Yeah, I liked this story the first time when it was called “Gattaca.” Highly underrated, that movie was.

@Slater: Haha I immediately thought of Gattaca as well!

shut the fuck up, it saved a life, you all would do the exact same thing in that situation

Science saving lives. i love it.

Yeah, born to save a life. But where’s the line?

I’m glad it was only for blood that no one needed, and isn’t going to be a permanent duty of this child to be held like a sacraficial goat for the first born.

Wow, that is truly an amazing story!

Jiff
www.Privacy-center.net

wow!! what an achievement for the parents!
I just had a debate in my values class today whether or not to allow genetic screening today and here it is. Hell ya, it should be allowed, why not?

Chances are that this type of option is only availible to the super wealthy - Im sure if this were a normal middle class family this option would not be availble to them and the ‘first born’ would die and noone would care. Great that its been done now and it saved the life of one rich-spoilt-brat but it will never become something thats viable for everyone.

This really does go towards widening the gap between rich and poor. Soon the rich will be ‘designing’ their kids to have blonde hair, blue eyes and a certain skin tone to in tune with the latest models and fashion influences.

And as for the moral implications - Kids are vindictive - how does a young child comprehend being bought into the world partly to become a resource to be harvested so that his older brother can survive - i think the second child is going to grow up with some serious self esteem issues.

Great story with (apparently) a great ending. I’m very happy to hear that science is advancing in the field of genetics.

I’ve got a condition called “Vitiligo” - a skin pigmentation problem. It’s hereditary. I’m 20 and have already decided that I will not have kids (will adopt) so as not to spread this crap. If science keeps advancing, perhaps by the time I actually want to have children I’ll be able to have them with a guarantee that they’ll be completely healthy!

I c you guys made it to the digg front page…congrats…

ah, ignorant fodder.
they didn’t design the child, they just checked the embryos to see if the hereditary gene in the embryo was active or not. If not, then the child is clear of the disease, and they select that embryo, as opposed to other ones which have the same defect as the already born son.
which would you rather have, 2 children that die by age 10, or a few less eggs in you.

(linkback) Yes or No? Parents engineer 2nd baby to heal the 1st, would you? [VOTE] - http://www.thriveorfail.com/6b279

I think screening embryos to check for diseases is a brilliant idea.

evolution is too slow! we can’t just sit around waiting for the master race to develop naturally! it is our responsibility — nay, our duty, to to bequeath the world to their more enlightened rule as soon as [humanly] possible!

Good story. I support the use of science in saving and creating lives. If it were me and I had the financial ability and the science was there, I’d do the same.

wow, now both children can pass on their hereditory disease.
thanks, science!

Good story. I support the use of science in saving and creating lives. If it were me and I had the financial ability and the science was there, I’d do the same.

what?

kid 1 is gonna die any day now

lets have kid 2, use his marrow, and have not one, but TWO HEALTHY KIDS!

because that doenst make sense.

Genetically making sure that your children don’t have diseases like this is fine - you may be saving them a life of dealing with it. But designing a second child to save your first? If it’s just cord blood, that’s one thing. But where do we draw the line here?

I suffer from depression, when I was 7, my father died and I considered suicide. Things we’re just progressively worse as time went on. I am not going to have children because I don’t want them to suffer as I have. I’d look out the window and wonder why I just didn’t jump. It’s controllable with medication, but the effects are still there. If I knew that my problems could be filtered out I’d go for it. No one deserves to live with this.

You’re all reading waaaaay too much into this:

The Screening was only of in-vitro fertilisation to ensure that the next child did not suffer from the genetic disease. If the parents had naturally had another child and the child did not suffer from the disease the cord blood would cure the brother too.

Only cord blood is required in this case. This is not a case of engineering a child to save another, only preventing the unwanted pregnancy of a child with the disease, something which we have been doing for Downs Syndrome etc for some 30 years, just the selection was made pre-insertion of the embryo.

I’d say everyone so far has been a little too flippant, as well as too quick to ignore the nuance. Whatever side you fall on, this second child was NOT “gentically engineered” to save his brother. That’s another question for another day; rather, before implantation, they screened the embryo. Moreove, it sounds as if they were planning on having a second child prior to realizing that the cord blood could save the current one.

Honestly, in the past, it might have been more moral for the parents not to have any kids, for fear that they might have the disease. But now, hey, they can have disease free kids (and to the idea that they will pass it on: I don’t have specifics, but in general, such diseases only occur when two parents share the same allele, and thus the chance that the kid would marry someone else with the same allele is extremely rare). If I’m the second kid, I’d be happy: I’m not diseased (I know, if I was, I wouldn’t be the same person.

Regardless, if you have no problem with implantation in general, screening out diseases is certainly no worse. The moral ambiguity comes from whether the parents would have even had the child, were it not for the possibility to save the other. For that, we’d need to know more, but I think that in this specific case, I’d fall on the side of the parents right to choose, sans government interference. They certainly can do no harm, except perhaps to the physche of the second child, or the first, but seriously, parents have been known to do a little worse than that.

I think the comment from ‘caped crusader’, above, deserves serious attention, though. In a time of sky-rocketing health care costs, especially in the U.S., where many people do not even have insurance, should such procedures be subsidized? In general, why should ANY elective procedure be subsidized by the government, when so many can not afford basic health care. But assuming that the families can afford to pay, we enter an dangerously brave, new world.

Do we want a fad whereby the richest 1% create smarter, stronger, better-looking children? That really throws a wrench in the conservative argument that inante talent is a legitimate basis for a meritocratic society. That said, I think the worry and problem is less what this will cause than what it says about us already.

…

I think I’ll go watch Wall-E again.

this is so wrong, if you are carrying a genetic disease you shouldn’t be reproducing it, just deal with the fact that nature didn’t give you the opportunity to do so, so now what? is andres gonna have to have his kids genetically engineered when he comes into reproductive age?

I can’t fault these parents for doing what they did. They had the power to markedly improve the life of their existing child, while simultaneously giving him the gift of a sibling. As long as they express their affection for both children in an even and liberal fashion, I can’t see how this won’t turn out for the best. From day one the younger child is a hero. Hopefully the experience (or rather the story of it) will help them both grow up to be thoughtful and compassionate human beings.

I’ve wrestled long and hard with the ethics of passing on genetic diseases. I’ve come to the conclusion that no one is perfect. If you dig deep enough into anyone’s genetics you’re bound to find predispositions to unpleasant conditions. That’s life. The pursuit of genetic “perfection” is a fool’s errand. Life is what you make of it, plain and simple.

I have celiac disease, which means I’m allergic to gluten: a protein found in most cereal grains. I also have mild eczema, a condition that sometimes results in itchy skin rashes. I’ve found that by staying away from alcohol and milk products my eczema remains dormant, and by staying gluten-free my intestines work just fine! As a bonus, my genetics are such that I’ll probably never gain much in the way of unwanted weight, and my tolerance of heat is much greater than most. The trick to happy, healthy living is to know what your challenges are, and then to overcome them. I’m grateful to my parents for giving me a shot at life, and for giving me an awesome brother.

private practice just tackled the ethics behind engineering a baby to save the other child.
I agree with Spherical Cow: they didn’t engineer the baby, they just wanted to see if the baby would help their son. If Javier didn’t, they’d be sad that Andres wouldn’t have the donor he needed but they’d be happy Javier wouldn’t have to go through what Andres is going through and that he’d live a full and happy life

i am happy for the responsible parents, who were careful

i am happy for the child born free of this decease

i am happy for the elder, who will hopefully now be cured

most of all iam happy for science for bringing hope of freedom from needless suffering and avoidable deceases

cheers

the story made my day

You know, i really have to wonder. What if YOU were put into a situation where doing something like this was the only way to save someone you LOVE SO MUCH. Would you drop all of your morals in order to save your sons or daughters life, your parents, brothers or sisters life. What about your own life. Would you be so willing to just give up on life and die or have someone die because “morally” it’s wrong. We are a curious species. We have the need to explore and become better. Yes, i’m sure that a lot of things are things that i probably wouldn’t myself approve of. But who am i to judge you for the decisions that you make with your life. Who am i to judge what you may believe to be morally wrong or right. Who are you to judge me. The way i see it, In order for the human race to evolve and become better, we must explore. It’s in our nature to do so.

You all might be interested in the novel My Sister’s Keeper about a similar situation, see it at Amazon http://tinyurl.com/4lotng A very interesting look at it from the child’s perspective of being the donor to her sister; in the book, it ends up being a lifelong situation rather than one-time from cord blood.

hooray for science! two lives saved at once!

If it was me, I would do the same thing. If my first / older child was not sick I wouldn’t. It had the potential to save my childs life. I was PROTECTING his life. I would do just the same if it was me. I was also giving my second child the gift of not having the disease to pass on to his children. It was a gift to the second child as well. His family is less likely to have to be concerned about passing on disease to their children.

I think a lot of you need to take your tin foil hats off, you watch too much tv. Electricity, phones and sanitation were only for the wealthy at one time.
Ideally we are trying to make the world a better place when we aren’t killing all the animals to make way for animals we eat, or trying to swindle each other out of our property. I’d rather no diseases than lots. I’d also rather not see people grow kids for kidneys, etc. But do I really need to tell you people this. Go outside. Get some love. The world is a lot less conspiratorial than you think.

“Genetically engineered children” sounds scary to me…

You know what, we have an individual moral responsibility that overrides any regulations or legality, and it’s really obvious that in this case, nobody gets hurt, the second child would have happened anyway, the parents merely used the tools at their disposal to allow his birth to help their dying child as anyone without a hang-up would probably do. Maybe they should have used the genetic ID in the first place to prevent the older son’s disease in the first place, but ultimately although it’s unconventional, the story is touching.

Just a thought which actually doesn’t really have anything to do with this story. Is medical science stopping the evolution of the human species? I mean, if natural selection rids a species of defective organisms, how will humans evolve? Without medical science a seriously defective human would die and not propagate it’s genes. Pick any hereditary illness—some would eventually disappear because the carriers couldn’t survive to pass on their genes. But, with the continuing advances in medical science, genetic diseases CAN continue to be passed to progeny thereby keeping them in the gene pool. Just a though.

that’s amazing …

awesome …

thang God that it did work for the first born, but the genetically disigning a baby to help another of your kids survive, i wonder who will be who? surely noone would like to live in someone else’s place.
maybe one will become a servant of the other and therefore conflict may rise.

Parents have always designed their offspring to some extent. Healthier and more attractive people are generally preferred as mates, so they produce more offspring. Any young person in love who has never considered the question “Is this the person I want to help raise my kids?” isn’t being entirely honest, IMHO.

I was a teenager when the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in the mid-1970s. Her parents weren’t “playing god”, they were just doing whatever it took to have a baby. Javier’s and Andres’ parents are doing whatever it takes to preserve their family, so they’re no different.

The title of this article is totally misleading. They didn’t “engineer” Javier’s genotype. From how I understand the article, the only human intervention was the in-vitro fertilization, which, again from my interpretation, used the father’s natural sperm and the mother’s natural eggs, and genetic screening of the embryos. (Embryos- like in most in-vitro procedures, I’m assuming the doctors implanted multiple fertilized eggs to increase the mother’s chances of carrying a baby to term.) There’s a quite distinct line between using this technique to screen for deadly disorders, and to screen for hair and eye color.

Two points:
First, this is probably not particularly expensive—or, at least, only trivially more expensive than in vitro fertilization is to start with. The genetic testing probably only adds a few hundred bucks to the whole cost of IVF—it’s an incredibly simple test.

Second, please realize that there isn’t any genetic engineering going on here. Genetic engineering would involve putting genes into embryos to express certain traits, and it is not currently done. This procedure is just a test. There’s no ethical difference between this and basic IVF practices. And I guarantee no one here who has a genetic disorder or a close family member with one would want to hear your cries of “GATTACA” while struggling through a preventable disease. We can all agree that putting new genes into an embryo to design your baby is clearly unethical, but ending your families history of genetic disease by simply choosing an embryo that is not diseased out of a group of 100 where 50 are diseased and 50 aren’t? You have to oppose all IVF to think that is wrong.

god, u ficked me off big time craped homo… look at an atlas… the usa is one of the only dark aged pay for health serfdom in the world… this treatment is available for everyone in spain because we have global health care you dumb fuck

also, homo, in spain, universal means universal and includes illegal immigrants. next time you try to think, think about humanity, u dumb fuck

and lastly caped assbandit, do you really think that his “self-esteem” troubles will be worse than one dead baby (himself) and one dead brother??? oh, u probably do, thats why you’re fighting in irak (show me the nucs homo)

sorry, i said last, but there’s one thing more, caped… u should ask yr parents for a brother, so he can give u some brains

“designing your own kid just because you can is wrong”… WHY ?

” everyone should be happy with whatever they have.”… and again, WHY ?

Hate this kind of BS, people claiming that something is right or wrong and you should this and shouldn’t that.. without ANYTHING to back it up.

” everyone should be happy with whatever they have.”… WHY WHY WHY ??? Because your mommy told you so ?
IF 100 000 years ago people had been “happy with what they had”, you would still be gathering rotten fruits and sleeping in a f…ckin cave.

You know what this means!!!! WE WILL HAVE SUPERPOWERED BABIES!@#!@#!@!@!@#%!#$$%@@$%!@$#%#&$%*&#@QGBNFGHTUIUWERGHEV%Y Q#$%1!!1123!#$@#4

As far as I can tell from this story, the child was not actually “engineered”. That would involve manipulation of his genetic material. Instead the child was tested before implantation and presumably this embryo was chosen because it was free of the hereditary disease. There are two completely different ethical questions here. The first is whether you should test your embryos and destroy unwanted embryos because of disease or other genetic traits. The second is whether we should actually manipulate DNA in humans, which I think is a pretty clear NO (though I know others disagree). The first question is much more murky. I think it is not necessarily wrong, depending on your views about the rights of embryos, but we have to be careful about the possibility of genetic discrimination in the future (like in GATTACA) which I think is a very real possibility if we, as societies, do not begin to address the problem now.

How anyone could be angry that this family used screening technology to make sure that their son is healthy is beyond me. This bodes well for our future.

beta Thalassaemia major is NOT a rare genetic disease. you should take a look at how many people have it in the Mediterranean countries, who also happen to live for many years. yeah, there is no cure but treatment includes blood transfusion twice a month with a blood compatible down to their genotype. treatment can be commenced from early age, and continue throughout their lives. they can also have children of their own, not carrying the disease (always according to Mendel laws).
and heck, why not engineer? thats what science is all about!!! saving a life, at no cost. let the critics not do this for their struggling child.

This was a Law and Order episode. The second child in that case was a girl, and was born to save the first child who had some disease of the bone marrow

Eeriely similar. In that case, the older child POISONED the younger one, killing her, because she was suffering so much from giving bone marrow (they literally drilled holes in her bones.) thus signing his own death warrant as well.

Heres hoping this one turns out better.

First, to the Law and Order fanatic- this is real life, not a Bruckheimer original.
The facts are these:
This couple was going to have another child that could have been effected by the same fatal disease as his brother.
The couple saw a chance to ensure their second child’s life would not be touched by SCID, while also hoping that there would be a genetic match up for a bone marrow transplant that could possibly save their oldest son.
Doctors took fluid from the umbilical cord, and no harm was done to the younger child.

Why, I ask, would a person not choose this route?
Parents faced with circumstances such as these are wrought with distress over decisions. The fact that this couple used the scientific advancement of in vitro fertilization to ensure their child a life free of the isolation and pain that comes with SCID, while giving hope to their oldest son shows the love involved in the decision.

This is no case of genetically engineering your child to look or act a certain way, it’s saving a life, maybe even two.

Yes, science is saving lives, and i’m happy to say so.