X-Message-Number: 28180
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 13:11:53 -0600
From: "Anthony ." <>
Subject: DNA screen-- paradox

Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 08:24:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: human screener <>
Subject: Subject: Re: Times (UK) article-- DNA screen-- paradox-- anthony

> Anthony's counterpoint doesn't
> fly, however, because the simple animal's biological
> will to live-- in this particular case-- Mark Plus's
> biological will to live--  is not the issue here--

Why not?

> My argument here is that it's just as
> paradoxical to support a medical technology that would
> have prevented your own existence as it is travel back
> in time to prevent your creation.

I think this is totally irrelevant to actual decision-making, though
interest to think about. Here's why:

Supporting this technology, or any other technology or action that
prevents the existence of not-yet-existing persons (e.g. abortion,
abstainence, sterilisation) will not and cannot prevent your own
existence. It is not an existential worry, or even a paradox.

Furthermore, support for technologies or actions that prevents the
existence of not-yet-existing persons are supported and enacted by
many people in many ways. As I pointed out, the decisions of:
whether to reproduce or abstain/be sterilised, who to reproduce with,
how to reproduce (IVF, cloning, sex), and
when to reproduce (spermatazoa have a life of about 5 days)
will determine the non-existence of - literally - billions and
billions of individuals. Furthermore, it is now theoretically possible
to reproductively clone oneself (aka asexual reproduction) using any
living cell. Not understaking this action again means the
non-existence of billions of individuals every moment.

Indeed, the very act of gestating a foetus means that other possible
individuals cannot be gestated during this time. Does this mean it is
paradoxical to even become pregnant in the first place? No.

Would you have us all reproduce continually using these many methods?
And then have the offspring do the same? If we do not do this (& we
are not doing these almost all of the time), then we are preventing
the existence of individuals, just as our parents did - and all those
humans and pre-humans before them.

Do these decisions mean that we support the retroactive annihilation
of ourselves? Of course not - rather - it means that we make
reproductive decisions.

The decision to screen xygotes is of a similar order. The womb itself
will spontaneously abort embryos (aka miscarriage) that are too
deformed or diseased to be viable. But this is a crude kind of
screening, because it still results in many impaired individuals who
"passed the screening test", some of whom will not live beyond the
first few days. Should we continue to let nature decide on who lives
or dies? Then take no medicine and go to no doctor. The technological
screening we now have is in addition to this biological screening, and
we should be thankful we have the choice to make an impaired
individual a non-existant individual.

That does not mean, though, that we should do so thoughtlessly, and
this is why I appreciate your views.

Perhaps the only alternative could be to cryopreserve the damaged
embryos who fail the test, and to thaw them when technology becomes
available to cure them. If the parents are still alive and still want
children, then they can opt for implantation. However, this seems to
be somewhat unnecessary, and by logical extension, we should be
freezing unused ova and sperm (ever 5 or so days). This is simply
unnecessary.

As I've indicated, it is a fine line between not ever existing, and
being the 1 in 5 million spermatazoon who makes it to a particular and
unique ova during that same sperms 5 day life. To then reject the
resulting embryo is hardly any loss at all.

Anthony






>        Based on this paradox alone, the policy of the
> fertility lab in London [5] that screens for 6,000
> DNA-problems and simply discards zygotes that don't
> meet their order-of-magnitude higher and broader DNA
> standards needs to be yellow-flagged and reconsidered
> more deeply because none of us would likely have met
> their standards-- and yet we're pretty much okay.
> After all, we're cryonicists! The point is that we
> ought not support a policy that throws the proto-baby
> out with the bad-DNA bathwater so cavalierly. On the
> basis of the Zygote-Screening Paradox alone,
> cryonicists should at least wonder about such a DNA
> screen a little bit more than Mark and Anthony have.
>

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