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The US House of Representatives is wading into the debate over whether human embryos should be modified to introduce heritable changes. Its fiscal year 2016 spending bill for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would prohibit the agency from spending money to evaluate research or clinical applications for such products.
In an unusual twist, the bill—introduced on June 17—would also direct the FDA to create a committee that includes religious experts to review a forthcoming report from the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). The IOM's analysis, which considers the ethics of creating embryos that have three genetic parents, was commissioned by the FDA.
The House legislation comes during a time of intense debate on such matters, sparked by the announcement in April that researchers in China had edited the genomes of human embryos. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) moved quickly to remind the public that a 1996 law prevents the federal government from funding work that destroys human embryos or creates them for research purposes.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-congress-moves-to-block-human-embryo-editing/
[Source]: http://www.nature.com/news/us-congress-moves-to-block-human-embryo-editing-1.17858
We covered a related story, Three-Person Babies Could Be Possible in Two Years just over a year ago.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:27PM
medical ethics already forbids unnecessary surgery and treatment
Circumcising infants because of the fear of sexually transmitted diseases. We can't even wait until they're 5 or 10 or just leave it be as a decision between a man and his partner.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday June 30 2015, @04:34PM
Let's not get into the whole "religious bullshit tends to give exemptions to good ethical practices" and "preventative care is care" squabbles.
Instead, let's say you're approximately right, but also focusing on an extreme red herring.
We can also talk about adult voluntary surgeries, like plastic surgery, because that comes closer to home. But those two adjectives(i.e. adult and voluntary) I've included reflect an important attribute of those technologies.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @06:24PM
I can see using viable mitochondrial DNA instead of diseased DNA in the 3 parent child approach. Anything more than that gets creepy, and I wasn't confident that TFA or the Chinese research referenced was limited to that.
I think “cosmetic” genetics will be tempting. A guy I know once told me that his parents tried to get their doctor to prescribe him testosterone HRT to make him taller. The doctor was able to talk them out of it.
Now imagine we find a way to guarantee a male child will grow to at least 6'6". We all know that tall is an important skill for a leader, so those parents would have opted for cosmetic genetics if it were available. Now let's say as a child, he dreams of being an air force fighter pilot. I picked 6'6" because that's one inch taller than allowed [afrotc.com]. The example is a bit contrived, but that kid's gonna be ticked at his parents when he finds out why he's too tall to be a fighter pilot.
That's not even talking to the cosmetic arms race that will happen among those who can afford cosmetic genetics. Cosmetic here also including other factors such as intro- or extroversion, intelligence, etc.
All though that leads to another interesting scenario. Say enough people chase that kind of vanity and they find themselves with very little biodiversity. All it would take is the right virus to wipe them out. Another scenario is the fate of Stargate's Asgard [wikia.com] race. It would be funny and ironic as hell if the Masters of the Universe one day just started dying out from having cloned themselves one too many times, but otherwise somewhat far-fetched imo.
Likelier is that cosmetic genetics would be subtler, but it would still give the children of the wealthy elite yet another unfair advantage. I'm guessing that it will not be cheap or covered by insurance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:14PM
Since when does circumcision have to do with STDs? We have better hygene and medical treatments today, but historically problems like phimosis [wikipedia.org], balanoposthitis [wikipedia.org], and others were best treated with preventative measures like circumcision. I've never heard of circumcision provably leading to lower rates of STD infections.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:48PM
Not to go too far off topic, but provably is the key word there. I think the AAP is using “new math” or something, but here you go [aappublications.org].
(no karma bonus checked)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @07:36PM
And even if it did, violating someone's fundamental bodily rights would be unethical. The ends don't justify the means.