[leftyted]

I don't believe that speaking of "future consent" of a "potential person" is useful. A child was never asked if he or she wanted to be born. After birth, parents essentially own their children until majority.

Parents make many, many decisions that will shape their child's future. Maybe editing an embryo is just one more. How is that different than choosing to feed your baby formula, put them in front of a TV all day, or drinking/smoking while pregnant (neither of which is illegal)?

This is the essence of the law: figuring out what happens when various rights intersect. I don't think there are right answers here but I think we need to generate some precedent in this area, and quick.

[whatshisface]

Well, I think most people would look poorly on (say) signing a deal with the Mob eight months before birth to steal your child from the hospital and sell them into slavery. Another argument that gets bandied about is how we shouldn't pollute the planet and ruin Earth for our presently nonexistent grand-children. Another example of worrying about the life of non-existent children is when people start saving early for a college fund.

I'm not sure about the exact philosophical mechanics required to transfer rights from the future to the present (or however you want to phrase it) but parents should not be drinking during pregnancy; and it's for their future child's sake that they shouldn't.

Foolishly subjecting your child to an unproven genetic therapy could ruin their future to an extent closer to the mob example than the TV example.

[AstralStorm]

But what if ruining the future is not the outcome? If the therapy is beneficial, or even more so, required for the child to survive?

Not editing in this case could be construed as future child abuse or even murder.

As a note, chances of a child given the therapy, if it's randomly working, are no different than general population, most likely. And if they're better, there goes this argument.

Fearing known unknowns more than unknown unknowns is not logical. Of course people do it all the time. Why does nature get to play the dice but we cannot?

[whatshisface]

>As a note, chances of a child given the therapy, if it's randomly working, are no different than general population, most likely.

That's not true - the average gene is more likely to be working than not, and the average mutation is more likely to break something, if it changes anything, than not.