Have you ever seen The Oblongs? The show plays genetic segregation for laughs. Mutations are produced by toxins that drain down into the valley where the working people live, and the "beautiful people" who live on the hill are inbred, selfish and stupid.

Having a real genetically-produced underclass is just scary.

I'm also not so eagerly awaiting the upcoming war between India and China, whose abandonment of female children will produce two nations awash with untethered testosterone.

Even so, if I could know that a child of mine was dealt the gene suite for juvenile diabetes, I would want to fix that if it could be done. I could support another parent who wanted to do something similar for similar reasons, to preserve a child's life and prevent undue suffering. The big question is, how do we define suffering? Life-threatening illness only, or do imperfect teeth rate too?

We can attempt to ignore these developments. Not everyone will, though. It will be more effective, in my opinion, to conduct the moral and social debate on the front end, rather than to try to enforce rules and laws created in reaction to abuses that result from a see-hear-speak-no-evil approach.