Baby the wrong gender? Abort it, says expert

01/09 Caroline Overington, The Australian | PARENTS should not be forced by law to give birth to children of a type or gender they do not want, the Melbourne-born head of Oxford University's ethics department says. Julian Savulescu, who holds the Uehiro Chair of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, said legislation before the Victorian parliament that would legalise abortion on request before the 24th week of pregnancy was flawed, because it did not give couples enough freedom over the number or the type of children they have, The Australian reports.

"The legislation seems to suggest that some fetuses can be aborted at any time, while others cannot," Professor Savulescu said. "Abortion is an area where there is hypocrisy between practice and legislation. "Abortion is a legitimate way for people to control the number of children they have. Morally, we should suggest to the women that they give up the children they don't want, put them up for adoption. "But there is a division for what, morally, people should do, and what the law requires them to do.

... Professor Savulescu is among prominent Victorians agitating for the commission's Model C, abortion on request at any stage of a pregnancy. ... It's quite possible in the future that a fetus below the age of 20 weeks or even 15 weeks will survive, so will we then revise legislation? "Say we could keep embryos alive at some point in the future. Would we then demand that all embryos be protected?"

Professor Savulescu has generated a storm of controversy at Oxford, where he has argued that parents should be allowed to use genetic testing to select certain characteristics, such as sporting talent, or intelligence, for their children. (bio below)

Julian Savulescu

01/09 Wikipedia Bio | Julian Savulescu is a Romanian-Australian philosopher and bioethicist. He is currently the Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. He is Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He is also Head of the Melbourne-Oxford Stem Cell Collaboration, which is devoted to examining the ethical implications of cloning and embryonic stem cell research. In addition, he was the editor of the prestigious Journal of Medical Ethics, which was until 2005 the highest impact journal in medical and applied ethics (as ranked by Thomson-ISI Journal Citation Indices).

In some of his publications he has argued for the following: (1) That parents have a responsibility to select the best children they could have given all of the relevant genetic information available to them (Bioethics, vol. 15 no. 5/6, pp. 413-425), a principle that he extends to the use of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnoses (PGD) in order to determine the intelligence of embryos and possible children. (2) That stem cell research is justifiable even if it means killing a (human) person (Bioethics, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 508-528). His argument is based on the principle that killing is justified if some of those at risk of being killed stand to benefit from the killing and whether those benefits are more likely in a world in which the killing occurs. Thus, he concludes that even if embryonic stem cell research involves the killing of a person, it is justified.

The ideas interview: Julian Savulescu

From the Archives 10/10.2005 The Guardian.co.uk | The Boys From Brazil is one of Julian Savulescu's favourite movies. That would not raise an eyebrow, were it not for the fact that his main interest as Uehiro professor of practical ethics at Oxford University is "biological enhancement" - also known as "the new eugenics". Savulescu's views on cloning and the improvement of the body have caused controversy before. So having a soft spot for a film that imagines Josef Mengele cloning an army of Hitlers seems a little risky. Yes, he says, but the film's value is that it foregrounds cloning as an all-important issue: "What was science fiction when the film was produced, is reality today."

That may be true. But however one renames it, can eugenics ever throw off the legacy of the Third Reich? "It depends what you mean by eugenics," he says. "In point of fact, we practise eugenics when we screen for Down's syndrome, and other chromosomal or genetic abnormalities. The reason we don't define that sort of thing as 'eugenics', as the Nazis did, is because it's based on choice. It's about enhancing people's freedom rather than reducing it."

"Enhancement" comes up time and again with Savulescu. Doesn't "enhancement", as he applies it, go well beyond screening for Down's? "Yes and no," he replies. "Enhancement can be seen as the whole range of things we do nowadays to manipulate, for example, the maternal environment to have a healthier or more intelligent child. In so far as we can use biological interventions or reproductive interventions, I see them as being no different from providing good schools or more nourishing school meals."

Does he, then, foresee parents using gene therapy to ensure their children get a head start in life? "Yes, in the same way that parents today give their children vitamins to make them brighter. But as for genetic manipulation, I don't think that it's 10 years away, but, yes, at some point we will be intervening at the genetic level in the way that we intervene in the dietary level now."

.... Cloning, too, he sees as a challenge not a threat. When the United Nations, in March this year, issued its denunciation of cloning, in all its forms, as an insult to human "dignity", Savulescu shot back with a co-authored paper. Drawing a clear line between reproductive cloning (which he agreed should be banned) and therapeutic cloning (essential), Savulescu insisted: "The UN must immediately retract its misguided and immoral Declaration on Human Cloning before it consigns many more future people to early and avoidable suffering and death."