Whenever I come across a morally tricky issue, I retreat to Utilitarianism. Because it's morality shorn clean of all the frills and clutter - no rights, no duties, and just one simple rule: 'Maximise Total Happiness'. It might not always give the answer you want to here - but it'll always give you an answer. This is all heavily IMO, and it certainly doesn't imply a value judgment on anyone with different opinions.

The Situation

Here's the situation. There is a deaf couple - let's call them Alice and Betty, respectively. They are currently childless. They want a child, preferably a deaf child. They decide in principle to use in vitro fertilisation. They decide that if they go ahead then Betty will provide the egg(s) and Alice will bear the child. They can choose between two sperm donors: Peter and Steve. They have been advised by a genetics expert that if they choose Peter then the child will definately be deaf, and if they choose Steve then the child will definately not be deaf, and have no reason to doubt the expert's word. Peter and Steve are anonymous donors (and they may not even be real names).

The decision is whether to use Peter's sperm or Steve's sperm. A feature of Utilitarianism is that it doesn't care about what the decision is, nor does it care about what decisions have been made in the past - it just gets on with it. The final decision is to be made jointly by Alice and Betty - they may get advice, but it is ultimately up to them. Oh, this isn't a real situation - any similarity with any persons... (etc)

The parties

There are a few different parties that we have to consider. They are:

• Alice and Betty
• The future baby
• Peter and Steve
• Society

Society is a big group, but it's only going to be indirectly effected, whereas Alice and Betty and the baby are a small group that is intimately involved with the decision.

Desires

An important part of happiness is the satisfaction of wants and needs. So let's look at those:

Alice and Betty want a deaf child. There could be lots of reasons for this, but Utilitarianism doesn't really care about them. All that matters is the desire, how important the desire is to their happiness and whether it can be satisfied or not. They've already pretty much decided to use in vitro fertilisation, whichever sperm donor they decide on, so we can surmise that they would prefer a hearing child to no child, and Alice is reasonably happy to go through nine months of pregnancy plus childbirth, and similar things.

The baby doesn't have any desires yet. Hir happiness is just as important as the happiness of anybody else, but it needs to be looked at statistically rather than specifically. So, in this case, the question is basically: are deaf people more or less happy than hearing people? An alternative way of looking at the same issue is to ask: if the baby is deaf, how likely is sie to desire to be hearing, and if the baby is hearing, how likely is sie to desire to be deaf?

Society has a vast array of desires, and is inevitably the point in any Utilitarian calculation where question marks start multiplying like bunnies. Society has a healthcare shortage, so it wants people who need little in the way of healthcare. If more people need healthcare than there is available, then some people who need treatment won't get it, and this will make them unhappy and/or dead. Society also wants people who make other people happy. And society wants people to donate sperm and eggs, because giving a child to an infertile couple makes them significantly happier.

We know little about Peter and Steve, and have no way of knowing. We can surmise a little from their past decisions, though. Both donated sperm, so are presumably OK with that sperm being used. They might have donated for a variety of reasons, including money, altruism, or a desire to reproduce. In the first case, they won't care whose sperm is used - they have their money already. In the second case they donated for the good of society, so we're already taking there desires into account. In the third case, they're essentially donating for the good of the future baby, so again we're already taking their desires into account. On balance then, we can ignore Peter and Steve if we just *very* slightly increase the weight we give to society and to the baby.

Analysis

First question - if we consider a single person, is that person going to be happier deaf or hearing? Already we see Utilitarianism starting to tick the box that reads 'more research needed' - it has a tendency to do that. But we can make some guestimates. Hearing was a benefit during our evolution, or it would have withered away by now. Evolutionary benefit isn't identical to happiness, but there is some correlation. While most people who are born deaf are happy to be deaf, it is not universal, whereas seemingly nobody who is born hearing wishes to be deaf, and many greet the idea with horror. So there is more chance of being born deaf and having an unsatisfiable desire to have be able to hear, compared to the chance of being born hearing and having a satisfiable desire to be deaf. Not withstanding the lack of research and the inability of anyone to truly judge, it seems reasonable to conclude that a hearing person will be happier than a deaf person, all things being equal.

But all things are not equal. This child will be born to a deaf couple, and it seems obvious at first blush that deaf people will be happier if their parents are deaf than if their parents are hearing. Will this increase in happiness be enough to outweigh the lower happiness inherent in being deaf? Certainly most people like to have things in common with their parents - whether it be skin colour or social class or hearing ability - even if that thing is a disadvantage. Further, the parents have decided they would prefer a deaf child, and parents almost always place a high priority on the happiness of their offspring. That alone is a significant piece of evidence in favour of a deaf child, and it's one of the few pieces of solid evidence we have. In the absence of evidence that the parents have a history of selfish behaviour, it seems dangerous to second-guess them.

So, I conclude that there is no reason to suppose that the future baby will be happier deaf than hearing, or vica versa. I can set aside the baby's feelings now, and concentrate on the effects the baby will have on wider society and on Alice and Betty.

The good of the many

Which does wider society prefer? This is really tricky. Deaf people don't need any more healthcare than hearing people: it's partially deaf people that are different here. Deaf people do consume resources in other ways: having signers or subtitles for TV programs and other forms of entertainment, for example. But one more or less deaf person won't significantly effect most of those resources - you'd have to almost completely eliminate deafness before you could scrap subtitles - something that is currently impossible. Likewise, increased diversity is not very relevant: one more deaf person won't really change deaf culture. What about the ability to make other people happy? Well a hearing person has more options, so they probably have a greater ability to make people happy. Naively, I'd guess that a hearing person earns more money on average - so there's a greater potential for hir to spend that money on charity, or on making friends and relatives happy. But on the other hand, a deaf person is going to choose a job that you don't need hearing to do - and if they didn't do it then someone else would have to. Heck, with the improved vision of deaf people, they might even do it better...

What about the reaction of society? If Alice and Betty choose to have a deaf child, that's obviously going to hit the papers, and will no doubt infuriate some readers of the Daily Express. But if they don't the Express will find some other story to cover - is "Couple manufacture deaf child!" more or less infuriating than the average drivel? The story might raise awareness of deaf rights and change attitudes, which might be worth irritating tabloid readers for. Plus, the irritation for tabloid readers will last only a handful of minutes at most, whereas this decision will effect Alice, Betty, and the baby, for the rest of their lives. Nevertheless, it is a factor, and it needs to be factored in. There might be an impact on sperm and egg donations - "well, if that's what they're doing, I want no part of it" - tricky to figure out whether it'll simply result in higher incentives to counteract that, though - and what if all publicity is good publicity in this case? Seems like the extra interest in donation might well outweigh the downside. Do people who are against 'designer babies' donate anyway!?

On balance then, society would probably prefer Steve to be chosen, and a hearing baby to be born - mainly because a hearing baby has greater economic worth (though the same intrinsic worth, I hasten to add). But there's not a huge amount in it.

The good of the two

Finally - Alice and Betty. This one is easy - they want a deaf baby, and it would be strange to suggest that they want something that will make them actively unhappy. It would be different if they were uninformed, but having a baby is not something people go into lightly, and they both know what it is like to be deaf, and presumably know (or at the very least know of) other deaf parents. Plus, they desire a deaf baby, and satisfying desires is an important part of happiness. It's hard to argue against that. If society consisted just of Alice, Betty, and the baby, then I don't think there could be any dispute that choosing a deaf baby was the right decision.

But society is much bigger than that, so we have a classic case of weighing up the happiness of the many against the happiness of the few. Which is very difficult. Economists would offer a simple solution: calculate the cost to society of a deaf baby, compared to a hearing baby. If Alice and Betty are prepared to pay that amount of money to society, in exchange for permission to have a deaf baby, then they should be allowed to. A slightly cold solution, but it does provide a useful clue: the right decision depends on how deeply Alice and Betty want a deaf baby, and how much happier they think sie would make them. At one end of the scale, if they aren't particularly fussed, then they should have a hearing baby. At the other end of the scale, if they passionately want a deaf baby, and are convinced that the baby and them would all be much, much happier if the baby is born deaf, then they should have a deaf baby.

Intervention

Ok, so we've made a decision, though admittedly that decision depends on how strong we think Alice and Betty's desire for a deaf baby is. Now we have to decide what to do about it. And here Utilitarianism is, for me, unequivocal: Nothing.

We could create a law against choosing a sperm (or egg) donor, but this would make illegal a range of decisions that are abolutely correct from a Utilitarian perspective - like a black couple wanting a black sperm donor. Plus, this law would reduce personal choice, and that loss of freedom would generate unhappiness in itself. And there's the cost of enforcing this new law, and the danger of a black market being created, which is all bad. Indeed, that's a downside of all laws, which makes it very dangerous to introduce a law to solve a problem that has happened a mere handful of times.

We could create a law against deaf people having genetic children, or against genetically deaf people donating sperm or eggs, or even against deaf people choosing a sperm donor if their motives include having a deaf child - but that's still going to outlaw some decisions that are correct from a Utilitarian perspective - and discriminatory laws like this encourage prejudice. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that you can't realistically legislate for this.

The alternative to legislation is social pressure. I can't see that working. The people who are choosing to have deaf children are strongly entwined in the deaf community, and are going to be resistant to external pressure. In the worst case scenario you get a 'them and us' culture, resentment, prejudice, and a lot of very ugly feelings. And social pressure is a hideously blunt instrument - remember the anti-paedophile vigilantes who terrorised a paediatrician because they couldn't spell? Finally, there are just so many better things to use social pressure to do: let's try and convince the rich to donate the same proportion of their income to charity as the poor, for example.

So what else is left? Well, talking on h2g2, it looks like. Or ignoring it as not worthy of attention. Another aspect of Utilitarianism is that it doesn't seek out perfection - if you hand it a choice between a million people dying and two million people dying, it'll happilly choose the lesser of two evils without blinking. Utilitarianism rushes in where more angelic ethical theories fear to tread. So a few decisions will be made that aren't in accordance with the highest Utilitarian principles - so what? If laissez-faire means the greatest total happiness of the alternatives, then laissez-faire is the right decision - at least until someone invents mind control.

-Martin