Designer Babies are here

Slashdot | Designer Babies

“The Fertility Institutes recently stunned the fertility community by being the first company to boldly offer couples the opportunity to screen their embryos not only for diseases and gender, but also for completely benign characteristics such as eye color, hair color, and complexion. The Fertility Institutes proudly claims this is just the tip of the iceberg, and plans to offer almost any conceivable customization as science makes them available. Even as couples from across the globe are flocking in droves to pay the company their life’s savings for a custom baby, opponents are vilifying the company for shattering moral and ethical boundaries. Like it or not, the era of designer babies is officially here and there is no going back.”

This brings whole new meaning to the notion of adaptive design. Now how about designer parents please? Here’s the full article and a link to their evil web site.

Ok, even if we do put aside the whole issue of the evils of gender selection and inconvenient disabilities, eugenics is just plain evil and stupid. It is a cultural form of short sighted hubris. It is a form of mono-cropping that will surely be detrimental. Challenges lead to innovative thinking, and innovative thinking is good. Although, here’s a thought. Set up a company like this, and whenever parents come, put them on a list for removal from the gene pool. I’m not talking about people who have very specific healthcare risks that they don’t want to pass down to their children unnecessarily… that’s a different issue. People who want designer babies have perhaps lost an understanding of the value of bio-diversity, and perhaps represent a danger to the survival of our species as much as any other eugenics enthusiast.

The Teenager Audio Test - Can you hear this sound?

The Teenager Audio Test - Can you hear this sound?

Clicking the play button below will produce a tone that is generally only heard by people under the age of 25. It has been used as a deterrent device to keep teenagers from loitering in malls and shops, and sounds similar to a buzzing mosquito. Typically the longer you listen to it, the more annoying it gets.

Try it and let me know. I can hear it, at 46 yrs old with a combined hardware and software hearing loss of 40%.

The Disappearing Male - Doc Zone | CBC-TV

The Disappearing Male - Doc Zone | CBC-TV

“We are conducting a vast toxicological experiment in which our children and our children’s children are the experimental subjects.” Dr. Herbert Needleman

The Disappearing Male is about one of the most important, and least publicized, issues facing the human species: the toxic threat to the male reproductive system.

The last few decades have seen steady and dramatic increases in the incidence of boys and young men suffering from genital deformities, low sperm count, sperm abnormalities and testicular cancer.

Some researchers say that declining male fertility rates could be the first sign of extinction.
At the same time, boys are now far more at risk of suffering from ADHD, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, and dyslexia.

The Disappearing Male takes a close and disturbing look at what many doctors and researchers now suspect are responsible for many of these problems: a class of common chemicals that are ubiquitous in our world.

Found in everything from shampoo, sunglasses, meat and dairy products, carpet, cosmetics and baby bottles, they are called “hormone mimicking” or “endocrine disrupting” chemicals and they may be starting to damage the most basic building blocks of human development.

Thanks to AlexB for sending me this. I can’t but laugh. You mean people just noticed? This has been going on as a discussion for over a decade that I’m aware of it. And of course I try to avoid most of these products, and succeed. But parents… they just surround their world and children with plastics… and then pop them in the mircowave.