I'm trying to think of any logical reason for not choosing desired characteristics
But I think the closest I can come up with as that, when it comes to choosing superficial characteristics, people will be trying to give their child an advantage but their well-meaning choices will be subject to whatever fashions are dictating to be 'attractive.' And if we start homogenising our phenotypes further, we start to take a bite out of the wonderful natural variability of the species. Now of course I realise that there are far more important genes which would be overlooked in such a process, but one of our best defences against a sudden change in circumstances is that, due to how naturally varied we are, at least a few of us would serendipitously be kitted out to survive it. I'm really clutching at straws here, I'm just trying to somehow extend the same idea with which I would discourage mothers from sterilising their baby's environment lest it contain any bacteria - i.e., there's a perfectly good natural system in place already for dealing with it. But maybe I'm just trying to find reasons to rail against the idea of engineering your sprog to be tall, blonde and gorgeous when really I just think it would encourage us to be even more shallow than we already are.

And of course, if you're picking the genes for less shallow reasons, then I can't argue with the idea of editing out hereditary disease - it's surely better for all concerned from a human point of view. Similarly your point about people being naturally bad parents* is perfectly right - in some ways it's a shame we don't have the technology to amend that.

*_{"Parenting" was always a horrible but recently-accepted verb that I always disliked. Oh well, too late for this qotw now...}
(LongJohnBaldry, Thu 15 Apr 2010, 16:17, 1 reply, 16 years ago)

I don't buy that people have such a homogeneous set of desires, though.
Even if everyone chose blond, blue-eyed kids - and why is it always that? - there'd still be a metric fuckton of variation between them.

I do accept that being that picky might be a sign of distinctly iffy parenting skills, but - again - that shifts the emphasis to being a better or worse parent. And since the picky parents would still be better than some, and since even bad parents tend, on balance, to be (just about) good enough, it's not obvious that the danger's great.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 15 Apr 2010, 16:33, Reply)