An old friend
Who tends to get overheated.
I thought it was about time I updated the old laptop. I don’t really use the machine any longer except when there’s something on it which I don’t have on the new one, and normally I don’t go online from it. Anyway, since I’m here, it’s time for another ethical dilemma. The question is, “Would it be unethical of me to throw the more annoying pupils in my classes out of the window to confirm that there really is gravity because any means by which we reconfirm some evident truth is acceptable?”
[Due to certain typographical errors, the ethical dilemma outlined above superficially seems to be of a rather different nature to the ethical dilemma actually under discussion. This has now been corrected. –ed.]
The 29th dilemma is another about babies in Diktatia. Like the previous dilemma, there are still designer babies, but the basic job of combining eggs and sperm is done in the lab before the embryo is implanted. Other businesses offer surrogate mothers to bear the child so that the biological mother can smoke, drink and scoff ice cream to her heart’s content. There are also businesses which have artificial placentas in which the baby is grown, being fed on an appropriate diet.
Thus there are three options: a.) the mother bears the child; b.) a human surrogate bears the child; c.) a device bears the child.
This is obviously another gradient problem. Most people probably wouldn’t have serious objections to the first option, although we might prefer it if a lab could ensure successful fertilisation where natural means had been unsuccessful. In the second instance, people would start having qualms about surrogacy especially if the surrogate was from a Third World country. My suspicion, and probably that of many others, would be that such women were being exploited. They may not be, but it’s hard not to think that. Again, my anxieties increase if the biological mother has adopted this method out of vanity rather than practical necessity. The third method seems a little creepy to say the least.
The discussion at the back of the book mentions Huxley’s Brave New World in which babies are bred and conditioned and links state interest in the production of children to the ideas about dog breeding which Socrates discussed with Glaucon in Dilemma 27. I think, though, that outside of certain unsavoury regimes, which may arise at any time, the state is more likely to regulate such services than it is to actually control them directly for its own ends.
As for the means by which the baby might come into the world, it cannot be denied that if there are choices and the mother has the means to pursue them, then she might choose whichever one she preferred.
[Due to certain typographical errors, the ethical dilemma outlined above superficially seems to be of a rather different nature to the ethical dilemma actually under discussion. This has now been corrected. –ed.]
The 29th dilemma is another about babies in Diktatia. Like the previous dilemma, there are still designer babies, but the basic job of combining eggs and sperm is done in the lab before the embryo is implanted. Other businesses offer surrogate mothers to bear the child so that the biological mother can smoke, drink and scoff ice cream to her heart’s content. There are also businesses which have artificial placentas in which the baby is grown, being fed on an appropriate diet.
Thus there are three options: a.) the mother bears the child; b.) a human surrogate bears the child; c.) a device bears the child.
This is obviously another gradient problem. Most people probably wouldn’t have serious objections to the first option, although we might prefer it if a lab could ensure successful fertilisation where natural means had been unsuccessful. In the second instance, people would start having qualms about surrogacy especially if the surrogate was from a Third World country. My suspicion, and probably that of many others, would be that such women were being exploited. They may not be, but it’s hard not to think that. Again, my anxieties increase if the biological mother has adopted this method out of vanity rather than practical necessity. The third method seems a little creepy to say the least.
The discussion at the back of the book mentions Huxley’s Brave New World in which babies are bred and conditioned and links state interest in the production of children to the ideas about dog breeding which Socrates discussed with Glaucon in Dilemma 27. I think, though, that outside of certain unsavoury regimes, which may arise at any time, the state is more likely to regulate such services than it is to actually control them directly for its own ends.
As for the means by which the baby might come into the world, it cannot be denied that if there are choices and the mother has the means to pursue them, then she might choose whichever one she preferred.
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