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Would it be ethical?

Would it be ethical?

  • Total voters
    17
Eventually we will need to get off from this rock or face extinction; however I do not see the need to determine the viability of zero-g offspring in the near future. Once we find a suitable new home to send a life raft of humanity towards, and actually need to start planning on a multi-generational journey out to some new planetary system multiple light years away.. then sure it might be a good time to figure this out (although I am thinking that more likely than not there would be artificial gravity on the ship).

Having a kid just for the sake of seeing what happens is much less ethical than a purposeful endeavor to do so to in order to insure the long term survival of our species - A bridge to be crossed when we get to it.

And I have a very bad mental image of a pair of dogs trying to hump in zero-g now thanks to people suggesting we test it on animals first (which I agree to as well.. ideally first see what happens with fertilized chicken eggs, and then mice, and then consider getting the dogs up there for their zero-g humpfest)
 
X Factor said:
The possibility of having to 'euthanize' a baby would be a strong argument against such an experiment.
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Yes, that's how I assumed most people would feel about it.

Kal'Stang said:
Why in the world would you want or need to euthanize the baby?
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Because the child is either going to be obviously defective, or we're going to have to dissect it to see whether or not there were any hidden effects. That's too much of a risk to take with a baby we're planning on keeping.
 
I used to run with a crowd of high IQ eugenicists who wanted to spark a voluntary movement of healthy intellectuals engaging in selective breeding and leaving Terra. One of the major stumbling blocks we ran into was when we first discovered the conclusions of some of the animal experiments-- think it's a major part of what caused the group to fold.

As vital as this effort is to the long-term survival of the hominid genus, we are maddeningly far from being able to expand outward.
 
Viktyr Korimir said:
Because the child is either going to be obviously defective, or we're going to have to dissect it to see whether or not there were any hidden effects. That's too much of a risk to take with a baby we're planning on keeping.
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Why "obviously" defective? If you're thinking about radiation doing something there is no need to worry about that. Astronauts are shielded against radiation.

And there is no need to dissect it. There are tons of tests that can be done without endangering its life and still get all the answers needed.
 
Viktyr Korimir said:
As vital as this effort is to the long-term survival of the hominid genus, we are maddeningly far from being able to expand outward.
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Agreed. Although I think that discovery of somewhere to expand outwards towards would give (some of) us a massive initiative to dedicate substantial resources towards developing this ability. For now it is a novelty, someday there will be a need, but that someday is not today, it is still at least a few generations off - and look how far we have came in just the last few generations..
 
First things first. I've long advocated studying sexual intercourse in space. We should send a male and a female astronaut up, have them have their fun, and monitor their vital signs and how their bodies react to sex in zero gravity.

At some point we may be sending spacecraft on very long multi generational voyages which would require reproduction in space. That's why this kind of research is important.
 
I would not find it ethically wrong if the woman is wilfully consenting to this process. I'm assuming that the woman would also be a scientist engaged in the research.

Women trump embryos.
 
Embryos need gravity to develop correctly. So, it would be unethical for humans to reproduce. If you want to argue that it doesn't matter if you don't plan to reproduce, just to see if the process (sex) works because you're terminating the pregnancy, then the same old arguments will arise that go along with abortion. There doesn't seem to be any problems with animals having sex in space, so I'm sure humans can figure it out just fine.

Simulating gravity for development would be more ethical (just like any other thing you should do or not do for the health of your child).

However, if humans only had the opportunity to reproduce in space - meaning, that's their only choice - then, it would be ethical and probably an imperative.

I'd be curious as to how this question and discussion could be compared to places on the earth with severe hazards to offspring.
 
GreenvilleGrows said:
Embryos need gravity to develop correctly. So, it would be unethical for humans to reproduce. If you want to argue that it doesn't matter if you don't plan to reproduce, just to see if the process (sex) works because you're terminating the pregnancy, then the same old arguments will arise that go along with abortion. There doesn't seem to be any problems with animals having sex in space, so I'm sure humans can figure it out just fine.

Simulating gravity for development would be more ethical (just like any other thing you should do or not do for the health of your child).

However, if humans only had the opportunity to reproduce in space - meaning, that's their only choice - then, it would be ethical and probably an imperative.

I'd be curious as to how this question and discussion could be compared to places on the earth with severe hazards to offspring.
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I fail to see how this article supports what you say. While the clinostat mimics weightlessness it is not true weightlessness. In space there is no gravity. With the clinostat you have gravity pulling at ya from all directions. What a clinostat amounts to is a rubberband being pulled and pulled to near breaking point. The exact center of that rubber band may be "weightless" but it will still break due to being pulled apart at both ends.
 
Animal experiments have already occurred in zero G environments. With fish embryos there seemed to be no differences in the development. However in a rat, which is more related to us, the baby rats never developed the core musculature to be able to turn off their backs and onto their feet. You also would have the effects of gravity on bone growth and development missing. We already know what negative impacts there are on the fully developed human body when in a zero G environment for a period of time, I would assume that the effects would be felt even harder on a developing person. Another aspect of bone growth and strengthening is weight bearing. This doesn't matter in utero, but building bone density through daily activities through bearing weight through arms and legs is a part of the normal development model.

Until we develop sufficient artificial gravity environments, long distance space travel and exploration/colonization is out of the question.
 
Kal'Stang said:
Why "obviously" defective? If you're thinking about radiation doing something there is no need to worry about that. Astronauts are shielded against radiation.

And there is no need to dissect it. There are tons of tests that can be done without endangering its life and still get all the answers needed.
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He meant that either the child will have obvious defects (meaning you'll know them when you see them) or the child will have internal defects that would only be revealed through dissection -- and that unless you dissect the child, you'll never fully understand the risks of breeding in space.
 
Experiments on reproduction in mice has already been conducted in zero-G on the International Space Station. From what I remember, the baby mice who were gestated in space, were brought back to Earth and experienced many developmental defects compared to their control subject "siblings" who were reared on the ground. Someone could Google it though, and get the specifics I'm sure. :shrug:
 
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