"My guess is that Siddiqui’s superbabies (bless them) will find themselves just as plagued by the travails of life as any other child." - Correct, which undermines the central argument of the piece.
If all people face challenges, including challenges that strengthen them, and bring opportunities for joy and virtue to their community, then removing one specific challenge (an identifiable disease) will not adversely affect that person's or their community's ability to embody "what it means to be a successful or thriving human being".
The author does not posit, though perhaps he should boldly do so, that people with a genetic predisposition to greater disease and disability are more moral or have more meaningful lives. That would be an interesting position, and would be an effective riposte to Orchid's offering. Indeed, it would then logically follow that we should genetically screen for and actively promote such greater disease propensities. That of course is a position the author would not take.
That leaves us in the unremarkable position of just saying that the current (arbitrary) genetic predisposition to disease is correct and should not be tampered with. That kind of defense of the status quo is fairly uncontroversial, but not without its own problems, as it opens us to questions of what other status quo circumstances we should not tamper with.
Should we not undertake any medicine or technology, or improve our nutrition, or even participate in any activism or philosophical argument, because each of these alter our received status quo and materially change our life outcomes, our struggles, our opportunities for joy though sacrifice? That is also clearly not a position the author would take. Hence, we are left wondering what differentiates Orchid's particular intervention from all the other interventions the author presumably supports.
The cynical answer would be that the author objects to the destruction of embryos through IVF technology, but does not see that as a winning argument, so builds a facade about joy through sacrifice. Less cynically, we could just say that the author needs to re-work this position with more rigor, to better identify what makes this practice meaningfully different from all of the other life-saving and life-easing interventions we have embraced over the last 500 years. Focusing on the despicable history of eugenics and the hubris of man is certainly a good start, but it's not a complete argument.
As an aside, the charge of ableism is accurate. But this is also not as powerful as the author might hope. Is it ableist to set a bone correctly in order to prevent future disability? Yes. Is it ableist to reduce an infant's fever to prevent deafness? Yes. Is it ableist to properly care for a serious burn to preserve function in the limb? Yes, all ableist, and all welcome and uncontroversial practices.
"what makes this practice meaningfully different from all of the other life-saving and life-easing interventions we have embraced over the last 500 years?" What makes it different is that life-saving and life-easing interventions focus on saving the life of, or easing the suffering of a person, while this practice kills/disposes of persons (who just happen to be at a very early stage of development) who are suffering, or, more accurately, "may" (or may not) suffer at some unknown point in the future.
Meaning the objection is primarily to the mechanism of the technology, which involves destruction of embryos, i.e. the means. But the article spends most of its time instead arguing against the ends (goal, purpose) of the technology. This implies that you might not object to a similar technology that could be implemented without embryo destruction, e.g. a gene therapy that "fixes" the DNA of a living embryo, regardless of how ableist that might be. And if that's the case, then most of the article is moot.
It's absurd to place healing on the same moral plane as killing. One can understand that suffering has the capacity to, and often does, produce moral or other greatness while still lamenting it, and still acknowledging that it sometimes produces just suffering, and can, in fact, lead to moral and other failings. It is totally coherent to desire a world without disease and to oppose eugenics. My argument is that killing someone who is, or who may, suffer, is an absurd and dangerous way to deal with the problem of suffering and disease. If you wish to suggest that that makes my article moot, then so be it.
The argument made asks the question, "what if a technology in the future can influence genetics, but does not require killing/disposing of persons (who just happen to be at a very early stage of development)" For example, let's say in the future there is a technology where we are able to actually change the genes of an embryo so that they are no longer at high risk for early-onset Alzheimer's. This results in neither killing nor disposing of persons. Would you be for it or against it? If you are against it, then it sounds like your main problem with embryo selection is less so about discarding embryos and more so about the end results.
Also, if you did hold strongly the view that discarding embryos is bad, you'd have to be against IVF as well, which maybe you are, but that's a big bullet to bite.
""[...] the challenges faced by children who might possess an “undesirable” genetic trait may lead them to become above-average human beings.""
I wish things worked that way. I don't object to the general message of the article per se, but I'm not averse to parents wanting their children (boys especially) to have the most potential for success (social or otherwise) and for preferential treatment. The stakes are not nearly as high for girls, regardless what women want to think. I think most men recognize as eugenics the sexual selection behavior that deems them inferior and excludes them (to the extent that selection is based on what the choosers consider to be superior, or what is socially determined to be superior).
"My guess is that Siddiqui’s superbabies (bless them) will find themselves just as plagued by the travails of life as any other child." - Correct, which undermines the central argument of the piece.
If all people face challenges, including challenges that strengthen them, and bring opportunities for joy and virtue to their community, then removing one specific challenge (an identifiable disease) will not adversely affect that person's or their community's ability to embody "what it means to be a successful or thriving human being".
The author does not posit, though perhaps he should boldly do so, that people with a genetic predisposition to greater disease and disability are more moral or have more meaningful lives. That would be an interesting position, and would be an effective riposte to Orchid's offering. Indeed, it would then logically follow that we should genetically screen for and actively promote such greater disease propensities. That of course is a position the author would not take.
That leaves us in the unremarkable position of just saying that the current (arbitrary) genetic predisposition to disease is correct and should not be tampered with. That kind of defense of the status quo is fairly uncontroversial, but not without its own problems, as it opens us to questions of what other status quo circumstances we should not tamper with.
Should we not undertake any medicine or technology, or improve our nutrition, or even participate in any activism or philosophical argument, because each of these alter our received status quo and materially change our life outcomes, our struggles, our opportunities for joy though sacrifice? That is also clearly not a position the author would take. Hence, we are left wondering what differentiates Orchid's particular intervention from all the other interventions the author presumably supports.
The cynical answer would be that the author objects to the destruction of embryos through IVF technology, but does not see that as a winning argument, so builds a facade about joy through sacrifice. Less cynically, we could just say that the author needs to re-work this position with more rigor, to better identify what makes this practice meaningfully different from all of the other life-saving and life-easing interventions we have embraced over the last 500 years. Focusing on the despicable history of eugenics and the hubris of man is certainly a good start, but it's not a complete argument.
As an aside, the charge of ableism is accurate. But this is also not as powerful as the author might hope. Is it ableist to set a bone correctly in order to prevent future disability? Yes. Is it ableist to reduce an infant's fever to prevent deafness? Yes. Is it ableist to properly care for a serious burn to preserve function in the limb? Yes, all ableist, and all welcome and uncontroversial practices.
"what makes this practice meaningfully different from all of the other life-saving and life-easing interventions we have embraced over the last 500 years?" What makes it different is that life-saving and life-easing interventions focus on saving the life of, or easing the suffering of a person, while this practice kills/disposes of persons (who just happen to be at a very early stage of development) who are suffering, or, more accurately, "may" (or may not) suffer at some unknown point in the future.
Meaning the objection is primarily to the mechanism of the technology, which involves destruction of embryos, i.e. the means. But the article spends most of its time instead arguing against the ends (goal, purpose) of the technology. This implies that you might not object to a similar technology that could be implemented without embryo destruction, e.g. a gene therapy that "fixes" the DNA of a living embryo, regardless of how ableist that might be. And if that's the case, then most of the article is moot.
It's absurd to place healing on the same moral plane as killing. One can understand that suffering has the capacity to, and often does, produce moral or other greatness while still lamenting it, and still acknowledging that it sometimes produces just suffering, and can, in fact, lead to moral and other failings. It is totally coherent to desire a world without disease and to oppose eugenics. My argument is that killing someone who is, or who may, suffer, is an absurd and dangerous way to deal with the problem of suffering and disease. If you wish to suggest that that makes my article moot, then so be it.
The argument made asks the question, "what if a technology in the future can influence genetics, but does not require killing/disposing of persons (who just happen to be at a very early stage of development)" For example, let's say in the future there is a technology where we are able to actually change the genes of an embryo so that they are no longer at high risk for early-onset Alzheimer's. This results in neither killing nor disposing of persons. Would you be for it or against it? If you are against it, then it sounds like your main problem with embryo selection is less so about discarding embryos and more so about the end results.
Also, if you did hold strongly the view that discarding embryos is bad, you'd have to be against IVF as well, which maybe you are, but that's a big bullet to bite.
""[...] the challenges faced by children who might possess an “undesirable” genetic trait may lead them to become above-average human beings.""
I wish things worked that way. I don't object to the general message of the article per se, but I'm not averse to parents wanting their children (boys especially) to have the most potential for success (social or otherwise) and for preferential treatment. The stakes are not nearly as high for girls, regardless what women want to think. I think most men recognize as eugenics the sexual selection behavior that deems them inferior and excludes them (to the extent that selection is based on what the choosers consider to be superior, or what is socially determined to be superior).