blog.bioethics.net

Worth reading from the weekend

One piece about the genetic present, the other on the genetic future.

First, in the NYT Magazine Peggy Orenstein explores the questions and concerns prompted by egg donation:

It was weird to look at these pictures with Becky. I inevitably objectified the young women in them, evaluating their component parts; it made me feel strangely like a guy. Becky clicked on a photo of a 22-year-old brunette with a toothy grin. Each profile listed the donor's age (many agencies consider donors to be over the hill by 30), hair color (there seemed to be a preponderance of blondes), eye color, weight, ethnicity, marital status, education level, high school or college G.P.A.'s, college major, evidence of "proved" fertility (having children of their own or previous successful cycles). Some agencies include blood type for recipients who don't plan to tell their child about his conception. Others include bust size and favorite movies, foods and TV shows. One newly pregnant woman told me she picked her donor because the woman liked "The Princess Bride." "Some donors chose 'Pulp Fiction,' and their favorite color was black," she said. "That's just not me. If I have the choice between someone who likes 'The Princess Bride' or someone who likes 'Pulp Fiction,' everything else being equal, I'm going for 'Princess Bride.' "

And in the second piece, Freeman Dyson argues for do-it-yourself, decentralized genetic technology in the New York Review of Books:

I see a close analogy between John von Neumann's blinkered vision of computers as large centralized facilities and the public perception of genetic engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts Monsanto because Monsanto likes to put genes for poisonous pesticides into food crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because he liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs secretly at midnight. It is likely that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so long as it remains a centralized activity in the hands of large corporations.

-Greg Dahlmann