Yes, top students reap rich rewards, even as egg
donors
Would-be parents want high scorers
Stephanie Ebert, Boston Globe (March 26, 2010)
The Harvard Crimson was one
of three college newspapers that ran an identical classified ad seeking a woman
who fit a narrow profile: younger than 29 with a GPA over 3.5 and an SAT score
over 1,400. The lucky candidate stood to collect $35,000 if she donated her
eggs for harvesting.
From a
sample of over 300 college newspapers, findings revealed that almost
one-quarter of advertisements offered payment in excess of $10,000, a violation
of guidelines issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM).
Compensation
strongly correlated with average SAT score of the university's students,
according to the study published in The Hastings Center Report by researcher
Aaron D. Levine, of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
THE OLD
EUGENICS (not just in Nazi Germany but in the USA):
Theodore
Roosevelt wrote Davenport from Cold Spring Harbor Genetic Labs (my
neighborhood): "Some day, we will realize that the prime duty, the
inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type, is to leave his
or her blood behind in this world; and that we have no business to
permit the perpetuation of the wrong type."
Margaret Sanger,
pioneering feminist and advocate of birth control: "More children from
the fit, less from the unfit that is the chief issue of birth
control."
*FREE MARKET EUGENICS:
Singapore: soft
eugenics: in the 1980s, the government instituted policies to encourage college
graduates to marry and have children a state-run computer dating, financial
incentives for educated women to bear children, courtship classes in undergrad
curriculum, and free "love boat" cruises for singles. At the same time, low-income women who lacked a high school
degree were offered $4000 as a down payment on a low-cost apartment provided
they were willing to be sterilized.
FREE MARKET EUGENICS
The Repository for
Germinal Choice: A eugenic sperm
bank opened by Robert Graham in 1980, dedicated to improving the world's "germ
plasm" and counteracting the rise of "retrograde humans." The "genius" sperm bank closed because
one of the Nobel laureates who had donated sperm revealed his identity.
The 'BABY BJORN' SPERM CRISIS (about 2 years ago):
(source: CNN)
New Yorkers looking for a bouncy, blond, blue-eyed baby
are in a panic...
Cryos International, based in the Financial District,
has gone to seed because the FDA banned sperm samples from 30 countries to
prevent the spread of mad-cow disease.
DESIGNER EGGS, DESIGNER SPERM, CUSTOM-MADE BABIES: RIGHT
OR WRONG?
* In his
book, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of
Genetic Engineering, Harvard professor Michael Sandel writes
"...there
is something wrong with the ambition, be it individual or collective, to
determine the genetic characteristics of our progeny by deliberate design. "
* Whether you're trying to improve your offspring by
genetic technology or by selecting a smart and/or good looking sperm or egg
donor, the ethical question remain: is this right?
* The issue of PAYMENT for eggs or sperm, above and
beyond the compensation given to the donor for their effort, is considered
flawed and rides down the slippery slope of paying for body parts.
*But the question still remains: what's wrong with
prospective parents to try to "upgrade their child?" and how is the GAMETE DATING GAME different from the PEOPLE
DATING GAME?
LIBERAL EUGENICS is explained as aiming to improve what
God deliberately or nature blindly (gave us) (Dworkin)
In that "Genetic supermarket "(Nozick), "...(the
parties to the social contract) want to insure for their descendants the
best genetic endowment (assuming their own is fixed). (John Rawls, A Theory of
Justice)
LIBERAL EUGENICS - PRO
No violation of the child's autonomy or "right to an
open future," provided the enhanced capacity is an "all purpose..."
The liberal "principle of ethical individualism" not
only permits but commands the struggle to "make the lives of future generations
of human beings longer and more full of talent and hence achievement."
LIBERAL EUGENICS - CON
"...genetic
intervention to select or improve children ... violates autonomy because
genetically programmed persons cannot regard themselves as the sole authors
of their own life history and undermines equality by destroying "the
essentially symmetrical relations between free and equal human beings." (Habermas)
Professor Sandel concludes, "Changing our nature to fit
the world, rather than the other way around, is actually the deepest form of
disempowerment."
