Following my super-long post on "The Genetic Debate," Phil got right to the point with a brief comment:

Parents want to protect their children from risk. Society generally looks favorably upon this predisposition. The first "augmentations" that are practiced will likely be protections from genetic predisposition to things like diabetes, heart disease, and various forms of cancer. Who would prevent parents from safeguarding their children's future in this way? Everything else will follow.

Today we learn that two couples in England are set to become the first people to have designer children:

Two couples whose families have been ravaged by breast cancer are to become the first to screen embryos to prevent them having children at risk of the disease, The Times has learnt.

Tests will allow the couples to take the unprecedented step of selecting embryos free from a gene that carries a heightened risk of the cancer but does not always cause it. The move will reignite controversy over the ethics of embryo screening.

An application to test for the BRCA1 gene was submitted yesterday by Paul Serhal, of University College Hospital, London. It is expected to be approved within months as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has already agreed in principle.

This isn't genetic engineering - it's selective implantation. But all the politics of the "genetic debate" are present. Again my point is that you don't have to desire genetic enhancement for yourself or your children to default, politically, into the transhumanist position. If you think that people should have reproductive freedom - which in this case means the freedom to protect their family from a deadly disease - then you will think that this procedure should be allowed.

It would be preferable if IVF didn't involve the creation of embroyos that are discarded. This routinely happens for reasons other than genetic sorting. Genetic engineering tech could potentially reduce this problem.