Eugenics; Good or Bad? (+ best genes poll)

And that's why I wouldn't leave this to the free market of the general populace. If the market's stupid to pick blu-ray over it's superior competitors just because it sounds cooler, I don't want in command of what characteristics make it to the next generation.

This is almost certainly true; but there's a subtle difference between saying this and saying "Indeed many advances in physics and maths are due only to autism..." which I think is almost certainly false.

Edit: interestingly enough, I think that savants (who are, say, exceptional at calculation) tend not to have particularly great abstract reasoning skills.

Wait, so you don't want parents to have a say over their children's future because they're too stupid to know what's in the long-term interests of the human race? Have you any idea how illiberal that is?

You've pounced on the words "free market" as though I'm proposing privatisation of the human genome. Nothing of the sort. All that is being suggested is the free choice of couples to select what they consider the best possible combination of their genes. Where's the objectionable part to that?

And this isn't illiberal - unless you're implying that parents have ownership over their child as they would a car?

They shouldn't, but in our society they do, or might as well. Children and the young are treated as a combination of pets and possessions, and society accepts this without question. If you, like me, disapprove of this situation, then you have an unbelievably large hill to climb.

Here, of course, we're talking about embryos, not children, so the issue is a little different.* It's a thorny issue, but I'll say this much: While I have problems with the idea of "owning" your own conceptual offspring (as distinct from the zygotes, whose ownership is self-evident), if it's not the parent's right then whose is it? Their claim to the right to make that judgement is highly flawed, but it's the best one there is.

Even if the embryo/zygote is considered a mere piece of property, any manipulation of it (IVF, Abortion etc) still requires expressed approval of a doctor. If they don't allow free reign of a parent to do as they wish, why should it be the same for designer babies?