When does genomics become eugenics?
By Eben Kirksey,
Financial Review
| 12. 11. 2020
As the tools to identify human traits and manipulate them become more refined, ideas about normalcy and deviancy, fitness and disability, are subtly changing.
Simply Google “BGI NIFTY” and you will find a slick website from China’s premier genomics company offering new options in the quest for quality children. This screening technology has already been used in more than 62 countries in Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East.
The NIFTY webpage has a “decision calculator” to see if you should mitigate the risks of your pregnancy. An embedded YouTube video offers a perspective from a young white couple. They talk in British accents about the importance of accuracy, saying that they are willing to pay for the best prenatal care on the market. An older single woman says that this will be her first and perhaps only baby, and she wants to make sure that nothing is wrong.
Previously in China, under the controversial one-child policy, couples were encouraged to make the most of their only shot. Amniocentesis – the insertion of a needle through the abdominal skin into the uterus to extract amniotic fluid which is then tested – was promoted by government experts as part of the practice...
Related Articles
It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
• • •
Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
By Gemma Conroy, Nature | 06.27.2024
Image by Robina Weermeijer from Unsplash
A molecular-editing tool that’s small enough to be delivered to the brain shuts down the production of proteins that cause prion diseases, a rare but deadly group of neurodegenerative disorders.
The system — known...
By Mesha Maren , Salon | 07.20.2024
By Alcott Wei, South China Morning Post | 07.13.2024
China has banned all clinical research involving germline genome editing under a newly released ethics guideline.
Germline gene engineering relates to altering the DNA in sperm, eggs or early embryos to introduce changes that can be inherited.
“Any clinical research...