David Velleman: Our next and last speaker is Reuven
Brandt. He teaches at the
University of California San Diego, works
primarily on ethical and regulatory
questions that arise in complex
reproductive arrangements, on questions
about parenthood and on reproductive
obligations. He's affiliated with the
Center for Practical Ethics at UCSD
where he's working on a project
examining the ethics of altering the
genome of mosquitoes to prevent
the transmission of malaria, 
and also on donor-conceived mosquitoes.
[Audience laughter, applause]
[Background chatter]
Reuven Brandt: Alright thank you very much.
I'm really excited to be here. I'm very
happy that so many people that are, sort of, non-academics have shown up to
give their feedback on these talks. It's
something that we don't normally get and
I think it's very valuable and it
definitely has sort of changed the way I
think about some things and how I might
frame things as I discuss them in the
future. So it's been valuable
for me for sure. Okay, so the position I'm
gonna try and defend today is maybe a
little bit more of—I guess—a kind of
middle ground position and that will
make sense as we go through. I'm
gonna argue that I think that gamete
providers—which is the terminology I
use because that doesn't talk about donation
or sale; it's sort of more encompassing—
do have inalienable obligations for their
genetic offspring but I don't think that
these are parental obligations. So I
think that sort of is, I guess, somewhat
more moderate position and hopefully it
won't be sort of too flawed and I won't
get stuff thrown at me at the end of today [laughs]. [Audience laughs.] We'll see how it goes. Okay, so what I
want to do: my talk's going to be in a
couple of main parts. So first I want to
examine two kinds of arguments that
threaten the claim that gamete providers
have ongoing responsibilities towards
those offspring. So I'm gonna present
these two argument and show why I think
they actually don't work. The first is
the claim that gamete providers—they do
have obligations—can just transfer these to
other people and this is a view that is
somewhat common in the philosophical
literature on this issue. I'm gonna argue
that these responsibilities aren't
actually transferable. Another kind
of argument that says, well, creating
people who have needs doesn't actually
generate obligations for you to provide
for those people. And so that's sort of
an argument that's put forward by Boone and
McMahon. I want argue that that argument
doesn't really succeed either. Then, with
the amount of time that's left, I'm gonna
make some brief comments about what
might and might not give rise to these
kinds of responsibilities and what these
responsibilities might look like.
Some of this last bit is not entirely
worked out because it's sort of a new
project, so I'm gonna use this as an opportunity to maybe bounce some ideas off of
people and see what people have to say.
And depending on how long it takes me to
get to the first part, I will sort of
determine how much time I have to spend
on this last bit. Okay. But first, I want
to motivate the problem a little bit. Why,
why is this question about
responsibilities in gamete donation so—I
think—complex and where are the tensions? So I think, you know, a first natural
starting point is to note that many
people have very strong intuitions that
individuals—especially men—have
responsibilities towards the offspring
that result from their gametes. And, you
know, this is—I think—evidenced by the
scorn that people have against so-called
"deadbeat dads"—who take no interest in
their offspring—and by
accidental pregnancy cases: the fact that
we have this rich legal
framework for governing child-
maintenance obligations. And we think
that these responsibilities obtain even
when precautions are taken and when there's
no intention in the part of either party
to create a child. So accidental
pregnancy cases, right: we think that
these responsibilities obtain. So, for
example, you have a use of contraception
—er, contraception failures—and one night stand cases. It's worth noting that the law
places such an importance on the role of
biological ties that men have been found
to be a child's legal parent even in
case of purloined sperm—so, cases
where there's no voluntary
action taking place. There's a few
examples. I'll just talk about one very
briefly. So there's this case, SF. There was a man
who attended a party and was intoxicated
beyond the point to be able to consent
to sexual activity. In fact, there was
strong evidence it he had sort of
blacked out. In this blacked-out state,
somebody engaged in sexual activity with
him and became pregnant, and then sued him for child support.
He argued that he should not be
obligated to pay child support because
he was a victim of a sexual assault. The
court found that that this was
irrelevant.
It found that what was important was the
interest of the child, and said that his proper avenue to address this
complaint would have been to file
criminal charges against a person that
assaulted him—but what the court is
interested in is the best interests of
child. And so the quote here is: "the
child is an innocent party and it's the
child's interest and welfare that we look
to. We know that the father could have
filed criminal charges against the
mother." Right. So this is a pretty extreme example.
And I'm not saying I agree with
this ruling—I don't.
But there's this really large
importance placed on biological ties, at
least traditionally, in the law. Right. So,
I think, both legal practice and
intuitions about one-night-stand cases
place a lot of weight on the
role of causation when determining
parenthood. It's not intentions, because in the
one night stand case there's no intention to
create a child. Same in this case, where
there was this person who was incapacitated because of excessive alcohol
consumption. So, voluntary action isn't
even necessary for obligations to arise.
So, what does this mean for gamete donors, right? We're forced to look at
what factors give rise to
responsibilities towards offspring. Why do
we treat gamete donors—or, sorry, gamete
providers—differently than we do these
other kinds of cases? One legal strategy
is to just alter the law around
parenthood when medical technology is
employed. And this is a strategy that
some states take. So: I refer to these as
"MPMIS," or Modified Parenthood by Medical
Intervention Statutes. One example of
this is the state of Virginia, where—if
medical technology is employed during conception—different rules for
parenthood obtain. And that might seem
like a reasonable way to
resolve this problem, but this results in
very counterintuitive decisions. So, in
this case,
Bruce v. Boardwine—which is a case in
Virginia—there was a this woman, Bruce, and
she wanted to have a child. And she
didn't have a partner so she approached her
friend, Boardwine, and asked if he would
provide sperm to her. He said that she
said that she would not hold him
responsible at all; he could have as much
or as little involvement in the child's
life as he wanted. But she just—and
they'd never had a romantic relationship
before, so it wasn't as if this was
some new backhanded attempt to have
a child with somebody after a
relationship had broken down or
something like that. So he provided her
with sperm. She inseminated herself. This
is done outside the auspices of a clinic.
And things went well but then he changed
his mind and decided he wanted to be
recognized as the legal parent and went
to court to ask for his status to be
recognized. So, the court decided that he
in fact was the legal parent. And the explanation they gave was that the
altered rules for parenthood only
obtained when medical technology was
employed—and in this case,
Bruce had inseminated herself by use of
a turkey baster. Now, why is this a
counterintuitive result? Well, there was
much discussion about whether the result
would have been different if she would
have used a syringe, because that's a
piece of medical technology and that
would have triggered this other
set of laws. And it seems absurd to think
that something as weighty as parenthood
is determined by [dryly] what aisle in the
grocery store you buy the implement that
you're gonna use to inseminate yourself
from [audience laughs]. That seems absurd. So I think this strategy doesn't work very well at all,
for obvious reasons. Okay. So, a
common approach in the philosophical
literature to sort of resolve this
problem is to say, well, we can avoid the
question of responsibility—of, of the problem of whether responsibilities
arise for gamete providers by saying that
if they do arise, these can just be
transferred to others. And then we avoid
this problem. So it doesn't matter what
responsibilities gamete providers have—
they just transfer these to the
intending parents, right. And the claim, or the argument, is generally made like this:
transfers of responsibilities and parenthood are
commonplace. Parents often transfer
responsibilities for their children
towards daycares, schools, babysitters,
hospitals, things like this. We shouldn't
think that transferring of
responsibility is unusual. All that's
happening in gamete provision is it's a
very large transfer of responsibility
from one party to another. I think one
good articulation of this is by the
philosopher Tim Bayne, who says, "No doubt
there's more to be said for
against the transfer principle, but I
will assume that enough has been said
here to make it—or something
analogous to it—plausible." So, he
seems to think that it's a plausible
principle and that we don't really have
to make that much effort to defend it.
But I think that's not true. And so, in
the next chunk of my talk, I want to try
and show a few things. First: I'm going to
argue there's a very important distinction
between transfer and delegation, and that
this distinction has been ignored
largely in the literature governing
gamete provision. The second thing I want
to show is that the examples offered in
support of transfers of responsibility
are, in fact, only support the
permissibility of delegation. And, at
least under the classic understanding of
parental or reproductive obligations
more generally, the kind of
responsibilities that arise in
procreation can only be delegated and
not transferred to others. Okay. So, keep this in mind. We'll move forward. Okay. So, first:
I think the distinction between transfer
and delegation can be illustrated by
the following toy example. We can
imagine a student union that has various
jobs allocated to different people. We can
imagine this person, Mary, who's the
internal affairs officer and she's
responsible for producing the newsletter
for the student union newspaper. You can
imagine this other person, Peter, and he's
the communication officer that's in
charge of some other thing. And we could
decide that the group has a meeting and
they decide to change the structure of
responsibility amongst the officers so
that's at T1. At time 2, they shift
responsibilities around, and now they
move the responsibility for the
newsletter to the communications officer
—so, Peter. And Peter then asks his friend,
Charlie, to design the layout of the
newsletter for him, because this is
something he's not particularly good at. Okay, so, I think if we think about this
and we think about how we
would describe this, I think we'd say
that at Time 2 both a transfer and a
delegation have occurred.
So, we would say that the responsibility
to produce the newsletter has been
transferred to Peter, and the
responsibility to construct a layout was
delegated to Charlie. I think this is not
just a semantic difference—it's not just
a subtlety in how we use language. I
think this reveals a difference in the
structure of the responsibilities.
So, for one, if Peter drops the ball and
just doesn't produce the newsletter—you
know, I don't know, maybe spends the
weekend partying and doesn't get it done—we don't think that Mary, the previous
person who had this responsibility, has
any special obligation to make sure that
responsibility gets fulfilled. That's not
the case that she has to go and now make
the newsletter because Peter couldn't—
didn't—do it. However, we think if
Peter's friend drops the ball and
doesn't get the layout done on time, Peter
does have a responsibility to either do
the layout himself or find somebody else
to do it. Right. And I think it's
important to note here that—so, the
second is a case of delegation. So, I
think in the case of delegation, the fact
that responsibility is retained by the
delegator has nothing to do with blame.
It's not that we think that Peter did
something wrong by asking his friend to
produce the layout for him. He might
have had good reason to believe that
Charlie would do it on time and do it
adequately. It's just that he had the
responsibility make sure that it was
done, and it wasn't done. Right, so I think
the key difference here is that
when responsibility is transferred, the
transferer has no trace of the
responsibility. It's as if that transferer
had never had the responsibility in the
first place—like what we probably think
of the case of Mary. She has no obligation to make sure the
newsletter gets produced. In the example
of delegation, though, the delegator has
to take steps to ensure that the
obligation is fulfilled and to make up
for any failures to do so. Right, so, we
might think that if Charlie fails to
produce the layout, Peter has a
responsibility to maybe apologize to
people whose articles don't get
published that week and has to go and do
the work himself—even though maybe he's
not to blame. He did nothing wrong in
having Charlie go about doing, uh, producing the newsletter. Okay.
Alright, so this, I think, is a really
important distinction.
So now, what I want to do next to just
show that this distinction has basically
been ignored in the discussion about
responsibility in gamete provision cases.
So here's a philosopher, Giuliana Fuscaldo, talking about the transfer of
responsibilities. And she says,
"In support of the claim that parental
duties are transferable, we already
recognize and accept the transfer of at
least some of our parental duties, for
example to nannies, tennis coaches,
doctors and teachers. In fact we regard
as negligent in many cases a parent who
fails to delegate some of their
parental duties to someone who could do
a better job." So here, she slipped from
talking about "transfer" to "delegation,"
has made no clear distinction about what, uh, what are the examples of transfer
and what is delegation. It's unclear
whether she thinks this makes a
difference at all. Another example is Onora O'Neill.
She says this: "begetters and bearers have
at various times delegated or
transferred some or all of their tasks
to wet nurses, relations, tutors, servants,
foster homes, and schools including
boarding schools. Provided that they take
reasonable steps to ensure that their
children will be adequately reared, they
do not breach but transfer their
parental obligations or some part of
those obligations." Now again, Onora O'Neill starts by talking
about "transfer" and "delegation" and ends
by just talking about "transfer" and makes
no clear distinction between what's a
transfer,
what's a delegation, what the structure
of responsibility is at the end. Okay. And
I think, though, and this ... it's quite clear
that if we take a closer look at the
examples offered by Fuscaldo and O'Neill,
there are all examples of delegation and
not transfer. Right, so when somebody puts
a child in school to be educated or,
you know, employs a babysitter or a daycare service to take care of their child, they
haven't transferred their
responsibilities. They've delegated them. Why?
Because if any of these services sort of
fail to do the task appropriately the
responsibility falls back on the
delegator to make sure the job gets done
properly. Right, so I don't think that we
can point to the fact that transfers of
responsibility are just commonplace in
child-rearing to defend the transfer
responsibility in gamete provision
because in fact it's not transfer that's
going on. It's delegation that's going on
in all these cases. Right, so yeah. In each of
these cases, parents
have the obligation to make up for any
shortcomings themselves or find someone
else to fulfill these various
obligations. This is quite clear in this
babysitter example, right. So you may we
can imagine person, Jane, who leaves her
child in the care of a babysitter who's
agreed to watch the child until midnight. The babysitter then calls at 9:00 p.m.
and says he's decided to leave early to
go to a party. We don't think that the
parent—Jane, in this case—can say, "Oh,
well I've transferred the responsibility
away until midnight, so I'm off the hook.
Let the cards fall as they may." We think that
she has an obligation to either go home
or find somebody else to go and take
care of the child because, again, the
responsibility hasn't been transferred.
It's been delegated. Okay. So, I think the
key argument here is that we can't point
to the fact that transfers are
commonplace to defend transfer i
gamete provision because they just
aren't. Usually it's delegation that's going
on. Okay, okay now the fact that I've just
shown you a bunch of examples that are
examples of delegation and not transfer
doesn't itself demonstrate that
transfers of the responsibility aren't
possible. You might think they are. But I
think if we think of the kind of
responsibility that's taken to arise in,
sort of, one-night-stand type cases—this
type of responsibility does not seem to
be the kind that can be transferred. Why?
Well, consider child maintenance
obligations. These are taken to be
owed to a particular individual—namely, the
child. Right, we think that child support
is the right of the child—not the parent.
And it seems really implausible that if
some person, A, has a responsibility to
some party, B, to make sure that a
certain sort of state of affairs obtains,
that A can then sort of unilaterally alienate this responsibility by having
somebody else agree to fulfill it. Okay.
So again, I'm going to work through an
example to show why I think this seems
quite clear. So imagine the following
case: we have John, who borrows a book
from Bill and promises to return it at
the end of the week. John then lends this book to his flatmate, Jane, once he's
done with it—on the condition that Jane
takes charge of returning the book to
Bill by the end of the week. Jane forgets
to return the book before leaving for a
weekend trip but instead leaves it on
the kitchen counter. Friday evening, Bill
calls asking for his book
back. John replies that he transferred
the responsibility to Jane, so he will have to wait till she gets back. We don't
think that this is possible, right? It was
John who made the promise—who owes the
duty to Bill to make sure that Bill gets
the book back. The fact that Jane said
that she would do it does not absolve
John in any way of this obligation
whatsoever. If John can go get the book
and take it back
he clearly has to do it. Why is this? Well,
because John's agreement was with Bill
and there's no—John can't enter into
an agreement with anybody else but Bill that
could possibly absolve him of that
obligation. Right? I think. It seems quite
implausible if he thought this was the
case. [Muffled question from audience.] He did delegate, yes. Yeah, he did
delegate it, right that's correct.
Okay, so I think that this structure of
responsibly here parallels that in child
maintenance responsibilities and,
sort of, in one-night-stand type cases,
right. We think that an individual has an
obligation to the child in one-
night-stand type cases and so it seems
unclear to me how any other
agreement that person could enter into
could fully alienate that obligation to
that child. The only person that could
possibly absolve the person in the
one-night-stand case of, of the
obligation is the child themselves. And
so, unless they do that I think that
they're sort of stuck with the
obligation. Okay, so, so far I've argued
for two main claims. The first is that
there's an important distinction between
the transfer and delegation of
responsibilities and the kind of
responsibility that obtains in one-night-stand cases does not seem to be the kind
that can be transferred to other parties.
Okay. So now, I want to move on to the second part,
where we look at arguments put
forward that deny the possibility that—er,
deny that responsibility arises just because we ... sorry, in cases where we create
individuals with certain kinds of needs.
Okay, so I'll start by just putting this
point forward. I won't go through all the
examples in the literature, but I think that
if you do dive in you'll find this
to be true: many people who argue the
gamete—sorry, I'm using the term "donor"
and should be "provider"—many who argue
that gamete providers have
responsibility towards
their offspring do so on the base of
something like the following principle:
when one's free actions puts others in
circumstances of extreme need, some duty
(pro tanto or otherwise) arises to ensure
that those needs are fulfilled. This is sort
of a base principle, I think. It seems
quite intuitive. If we place people, who
don't content to be at risk, be placed at
risk at risk we have to somehow make
sure that harms don't befall them. And I
think, you know, this—I think, underlies
some of our intuitions in
one-night-stand cases and perhaps
negligence cases more
generally. Right, so this will echo some of the things
that Professor Weinberg said earlier on:
you know, if I'm going down the street
with a tanker full of highly infectious
material, I have a responsibility to make
sure that that infectious material
doesn't escape and make other people
sick—and if it does, I have to make sure
that they get, you know, the proper
medical treatment of things like that, because I placed them at risk. I have to
make sure they're not harmed by the risk
that I have imposed on them. Right, okay. So
there's a few people who argue, who
try and dispute this principle. They
argue that being causally responsible
for another person's state of need
doesn't necessarily generate duties to
fulfill those needs. So I'm going to look at
two of those are these arguments and I'm
going to try and argue that they're not
particularly plausible. Okay. The first is
an argument put forward by, uh,
Silverstein and Boonin. They want to
argue that there's a very important
difference between two things: being
responsible for the fact that someone
exists or continues to exist, and being
responsible for the fact that—given that
they do exist—they are in a state of
need. Right. So, I'll call these One and Two.
They think that we only have
responsibilities in Case Two—that is,
when we're responsible for the fact that, given that somebody exists, they are in a
state of need. Another way to put
this is that cases where, but for our
intervention, the individual would exist
without being in need. If that obtains, then
we have responsibilities. But if we're
only responsible in the first sense—
Number One—we don't have responsibilities. So, woah, that [referring to onscreen text] came up
very small. Ok, so, to illustrate this,
Boonin gives us two cases,
and sorry that this formatting is so
bad. I'll read the case out. So, we're
asked to imagine this case. You're a
doctor and confronted with a patient
suffering from a severe life-threatening
disorder. You're in possession of two
drugs that can cure the disease. Drug A
cures the disease without any side
effects. Drug B cures the disease but
results in a kidney condition that will
require 9 months of blood transfusions
to cure you—or, sorry, to cure the patient.
You and the patient share the same rare
blood type so you could be the person to
provide these blood transfusions and
you negligently administer drug B—the drug
that results in this unwanted side
effect. Okay. In this case,
Boonin thinks that you do have—the
doctor has–an obligation to make sure
the patient receives a blood transfusion.
Why? Because, in this case, the doctor is
responsible for the individual in both
sense One and Two. They're responsible
that this individual continues to exist,
because they cured their disease and
also they're responsible in the sense
that—given that they do exist—they have
this need that they don't necessarily
have to have, right. If the drug, if the
doctor would have acted properly and
given the proper drug, the person would
exist without being in the state of
further need—namely, they wouldn't need
these blood transfusions. Right. That
could be contrasted with the following
kind of case, which came up formatted
more correctly: you were a hedonist who
wishes to engage in a very pleasurable
activity. The activity is such that, if
you engage in it, there's a chance that
it will cause someone, sorry, some gas to be
released that will result in adding a
few extra months of unconscious
existence to the life of some already
comatose violinist. As things now stand,
the violinist has no more conscious life
ahead of them. But if this gas is
released, and if he does have a few extra
months of unconscious life added as a
result, it will then become possible for
you to bring them out of this coma by
letting them use your kidneys. So this is
sort of a reference to the violinist
example, again, right. And in this case,
Boonin wants to argue that the hedonist
does not have an obligation to hook
themselves up to the violinist. Right, so
if you engage in this activity that just
extends the life of this, this life
of this violinist for a few more months,
and so they just remain in this comatose
state, you don't have to give them your
kidneys,
or use of your kidneys, and Boonin's
explanation for why we feel this way
about this case is that the only
alternate to this individual would
have been no existence at all.
Maybe if you wouldn't have provided, if
you wouldn't have acted such a way,
that let the gas get released this
person would just no longer exist at all.
But they couldn't exist in such a way
that they could exist and not have the
need, right. And so, that's supposed to
show that if you're responsible for
somebody existing with, with needs,
but they couldn't exist without those
needs, you don't have an obligation to
fulfill that individual's needs. Okay. Alright. So that, that is the view. Okay. And
I think that this conclusion is
incorrect. I think that we can
explain: so, the first, I think,
immediate problem with this view is if
Boonin is right about this then nobody
really owes obligations to children, ever.
Because you can never create a child that
could exist without having certain kinds
of needs. We're dependent beings, we all
rely on other people to sustain us. And
so this seems to be an argument in favor
of just reckless procreation
without any obligations for offspring,
regardless of the circumstances in which
we bring them into existence. This might
seem like a terrible reductio of the
position—it's just so precious that it
couldn't be right.
And this is a consequence that Boonin
foresaw—and his attempt to sort of
escape this, this consequence is: he
thinks that his example of the hedonist
and the comatose violinist shows that
being responsible for somebody having
certain needs—namely, in that case, a need
of blood transfusion—isn't sufficient to
acquire a duty to provide the needs that
have arisen. So there's some cases—
like in the case of children, perhaps—we
do have this obligation. But the person who
wants to make that claim has to provide
more arguments for it, right. He thinks
that he's successfully shifted the
burden up to those who think that
obligations arise when we procreate, and
I don't think that, that's actually
correct. I think what Boonin's done in
this case is actually provided us
with a special case that is disanalogous to most cases of procreation.
And so, we can't really conclude much
about procreation from this case. What's
the, what's the big difference? Well, the
big difference is that in the comatose
violinist case, nobody stands to suffer
if you don't provide them with access to
your kidney. We don't we think that
somebody who has an extra few days or
few weeks in a coma—if they're actually
comatose—suffers.
Whereas we do think that children who
are not provided with adequate care do
suffer in that case. And so, I think that
our intuitions in the, in the comatose
case do not really smoothly apply to the
normal procreation case. I think that if
we shift the analogy slightly, so that
the, so that the violinist does suffer as
a result, our intuition changes. So, if you
imagine the case where you want to
engage in this pleasurable activity—
maybe you're juggling in the hospital,
and you know it might hit some gas that
might come in and cause this person to
have more life—but they won't remain in
a coma. What will happen is they'll
wake up and they'll be in excruciating
pain, right. We might think that if you do
that, then you do have an obligation to
the comatose—or the previously comatose—
violinist. So when we shift it to be
making more analogous, I think our
intuitions change—and that gives us
reason to doubt that this distinction
that Boonin thinks, this solution that
Boonin thinks does all this work does
actually that much work at all. Really, I
think they're building too much into
this example because, again, in the case
of the comatose violinist, nobody stands
to suffer—and that's a really important
disanalogy. Okay. And I think, you
know, if we imagine sort of the case of
normal childcare, we do recognize that if
nobody takes care of a child, they stand
to suffer quite terribly. So, it's more—
the case of normal childcare is more
like the modified violinist example,
and so I think our intuitions
align there. Okay. I think there's a
second response we can give to
Silverstein and Boonin, and that's this:
[stutterign] that is, that we can, and so what—what I want to
claim is the fact that somebody couldn't
exist without being a need does not
absolve us of our responsibilities to
fulfill those needs. And I think we can
clearly see this we sort of make another fictional
example where we engineer specific needs
into an individual. So you can look at this
case: we can imagine a scientist—
I'll call them Scientist—is studying a
series of engineered gametes and
discovers that a certain combination
will result in a child that will have a
good life, so long as they regularly
receive chemical X. Scientist is able to
produce chemical X with ease. Scientist
decides to bring into existence the
child formed by these gametes. As the
dependence on chemical X will enhance
the likelihood of having a lifelong
connection with a child. So we can
imagine the scientist is worried that
this child's going to grow up and never
talk to them again—but if we make them
dependent on this chemical they can synthesize, then they'll
have to remain in contact, right. So it's
not a very good scientist, but we can imagine a scientist
who wants to do this. We can ask: does a
scientist have a duty to provide their
offspring with chemical X? And I think the
answer here is clearly, yes. Even though
we might think that this child couldn't
exist without having the need for
chemical X, right—so if they would
have used a different genetic
combination, you'd have a different child
emerge. So this distinction between
being responsible for somebody existing and
being responsible the fact that somebody
has needs given that they exist doesn't
actually do this work of absolving
people responsibilities. So I think
there's a problem with the work that
Silverstein and Boonin want this
distinction to do. Okay. Yeah, the answer
seems to be yes. And again, if we followed
Boonin's reasoning on this case, it seems
like it would be perfectly
permissible to bring children into
existence, only to lead them to perish
because they couldn't exist without
being in need—and that seems like a very
bad consequence, which I think should
make us think this the theory is
implausible. Okay.
The second argument I want to look at
is an argument put forward by Jeff
McMahan. His argument is slightly
different.
He argues that we have special reason or
obligation to provide for the needs of
others only when failing to fulfill
these needs will make it such that our
prior action rendered somebody worse off than they otherwise would be.
Okay, so what does Jeff McMahon have in
mind here? He gives us this example of
the accidental nudge to illustrate this
point. So imagine that you're standing on
a dock. You're at a party on a dock and
you accidentally nudge somebody and they
fall into the water. They're not a very
good swimmer, but you're a very good
swimmer. He thinks you have an obligation
to go dive into the water and save them.
Why? Well, because if you don't do that
then it's the case that a previous
action of yours has rendered somebody
worse off than they otherwise would be.
Right–you've made them, you put them, in a
worse state. And so we might think
that—and so he thinks that this explains
why—that this might ground the fact that
gamete providers (well, he doesn't ... well,
where he stands on gamete provision is a
bit complicated) ... he
think that this can insulate us against
certain cases where we have obligations
towards other people. So on his view,
then, if you bring somebody into existence
but bringing them into existence hasn't made
them worse off than they otherwise would
be, you have no obligations to them.
And so he says: at least so long as they
have a life that's worth living—a life
that isn't so full of suffering that
it's worse than no existence at all. So
he thinks that this might get people off
the hook
in many cases where they act in such a
way that results in people
having needs. So one thing to note
though, at least on Jeff McMahon's view,
is it doesn't get gamete providers
completely off the hook. It means
that in cases where their offspring
might risk having a life not worth
living, and they could intervene to
prevent that, they have an obligation to
then intervene. Otherwise, they've
act in such a way, uh—a previous action of
theirs has rendered somebody worse off
than they otherwise would be. So here's, uh,
I guess what falls from his view is a
very minimal view of what obligations
gamete providers have: namely, just to make 
sure that their offspring have life
that's minimally worth living. And I
think other philosophers have similar
kinds of views. They will say, well in the
case of reproduction in general, so long
as you've produced more good than bad, then you're fine. You're off the
hook. You don't have to do any
more. But I think that this is also
very wrong. I think that McMahon offers
an implausibly impoverished view of our
obligations to other people. I think that
we can have an obligation to prevent
avoidable suffering brought about by our
previous actions, even when that
suffering does not make somebody worse
off overall. And so, I'll give you—I think
this is the last fictional case I'll
talk about. We can imagine a case where
you've taken a group of kids camping. And you tend, you know there's
certain risks with camping: you might end
up, you know, with a bee sting, and
certain kinds of pain, and things like
that. But you also might be very
convinced that this experience of going
camping is overall really good, right. It
build, it's good builds confidence and
life skills and all sorts of things that
outdoors people like—I used to work at a
summer camp, so I kind of subscribe to
some of this [laughs]. It's very good to take
people, you know, kids, out into the
wilderness and things like that. You can
imagine a case where you're leading these
kids out into the wilderness and
there's a child that is very susceptible
to bee stings. They get in terrible pain
if they get stung by a bee. You have an
antidote that you could administer, right,
that could, that could cease this pain
from arising. Well, not cease from arising but make it end earlier, and so you're out there. This kid
gets stung by a bee, right. You think to
yourself, well, you know, even if we
include the pain of this bee sting, right,
this trip still overall will be good for
them. The experience will still be
overall good for them. So therefore, I
have no obligation—maybe it's a hassle. I
have to run back to, you know, where the
car was and run forward again. I think
I'm just not gonna do it. Because again,
on McMahon's view, you only have an
obligation if your action makes the
case that the previous one of your acts ... 
if a failure to act makes it so that a
previous act of yours has made somebody
worse off the otherwise would be. And
that wouldn't be the case here, right,
because overall the child has still
benefited from this trip—even if you
don't run back and get the medication to
make the pain stop. But I think that this
is, uh, but I think we think that's
implausible. I think we still have this
obligation, because you could act in such
a way to sort of reduce their suffering
and you're the one who put them at risk
of the suffering in the first place.
And so that gives you this obligation in
this case. Now, you might think that this
is just a variety of, uh, sort of a general
duty for easy rescue. But I think that's not
the case. You can imagine a case, uh, alter
this case slightly, where there's the
child that you, the child that you took
out on this camping trip and another
child, and both are in need of this
medication and you can only help one. I
think it's quite clear, at least to me,
that your obligation is the child that
you took out, right—because you put that
particular child at risk of this harm.
And so you have to, now you have the
obligation to provide them the
medication—even though failing to do
that hasn't made it the fact that going
out on this camping trip was worse for
them, overall. So yeah, okay. So that's why
I think McMahon's view is problematic.
It's too impoverished a view of what our
obligations are to other people. Okay, so
I think neither Boonin nor McMahon's
arguments conclusively show that
responsibility does not arise in gamete
provision cases. Why? Because I, well, I think
Boonin's distinction between the two
kinds of ways you can be responsible for
people just doesn't hold up. It doesn't
insulate people from having obligations.
And McMahon's view is too impoverished.
We can be responsible for filling
someone's needs, even if they could not
exist without having those needs. And
ensuring that our action to not make
others worse off is not exhaustive of
the special obligations we have when we
place other people in harm's way. So I
think none of these arguments are fully
successful. Okay. So, so far—oh, I'm almost out
of time. Okay, so, so far I've mostly
provided sort of negative arguments. I've
explained why some arguments some philosophers
 put forward for why responsibilities
don't arise in fact, I think, don't
succeed. But that leaves a whole bunch of
other unresolved questions. So, I haven't
said much about why we ought to think that
responsibilities arise in this case.
Sorry—in cases, in gamete provision cases.
I think one way to do this is to, again,
return to the one-night-stand case. And
the claim I want to make is sort of
an augmented parity, um,
augmented parity argument. So I want to
say that, you know, if we're convinced, or
we think it's plausible that parents in
one-night-stand cases have
responsibilities towards their offspring,
we should think that the case for gamete
providers is even stronger, right. Why is
this? Well, [aside] I'm gonna skip talking about
the Thompson stuff. You know, even if we
accept there are problems with drawing
exactly where to draw the line in the
causal chain where we're gonna attribute
responsibility—which is something that
Professor Brake mentioned earlier on—
there's a factor in gamete provision
that, I think, augments our responsibility:
and that is that the creation of a child
isn't an accident. It's not the case that
creation of a child is some unintended
consequence—something that we might, that
there's a minute chance that might happen
that we try to avoid. You've actively
engaged in a process to help bring about
a new life that's going to be dependent
on all sorts of things for that life to
go well. And the fact that you've done
that augments your responsibility. Normally, 
we think that people are have increased
responsibility in cases where they work,
where they act with intention, than in
cases they do things by accident. And so,
I think this the case for responsibility
in the gamete donation case—uh, the gamete
provision case—is stronger. So that's sort
of an augmented parity argument. Ok, the next
thing which I'll go through also
kind of briefly: what kind of
responsibilities are we talking about? So
the first thing I want to say—I don't
think that these responsibilities are
necessary parental. Right. I think that
it's, though children require parenting,
this does not necessarily have to be
provided by the genetic parents. I
think that individuals who engage in
gamete provision have to make sure that
their biological offspring have decent
lives. That's what they're obligated to
do. And that can, and that can result in a
whole bunch of other different kinds of
obligations, other than parenthood. So, for
example, making sure that they have
access to medical information that might
be important for their health interests,
being open to, for, it might be the case
that gamete providers have an obligation
to be open to
forming relationships with their
offspring—because, you know, even if not
everybody feels this way, some people
definitely feel very distressed by not
knowing anything about their genetic
progenitors. And individuals should know
this, going into donating, providing
gametes. And so this is one place where
they should be willing to step up and
help somebody's life go better if
they're suffering as a result of, sort of,
lacking this kind of information or
these kinds of relationship. Though I do want
to say that I think, it's sort of, being
open to forming a relation doesn't mean
that you have an absolute duty to form a
relation. I think it's, you have to be at
least prepared to consider it and take
it seriously, and determine
whether or not you're going to pursue
this based on, you know, the particular
circumstances and interests of the
particular individuals, and what they
might need in order to, sort of, feel
whole. And I think that in certain kinds
of extreme cases, gamete providers might
have an obligation to provide resources
to the families of the individuals who
are raising their biological offspring.
'Cause again, they have an obligation to make
sure that their children's lives go
reasonably well. And so that means that
in cases where social parents become
destitute or cases like that, you
might have, the genetic progenitor might
have an obligation to provide resources.
Because again, I think that at most
they're able to delegate their
responsibilities to take care of these
children—not transfer them. And, there's a
case in California, which I think was
mentioned in the last talk, which is 
RE: M.C., which kind of illustrates cases where,
you—I'm not gonna go to the details of
that because we're short on time. Am I
right about being short on time? [Audience laughs.] 
So, but, there are cases where you have
extreme, tragic breakdowns in family life
and it makes sense that the gamete provider
is the best-placed person to help take
care of this child. And I think that
follows from the obligations when you 
donate gametes, because you have to make sure
that this person's life goes reasonably
well. Okay, so: the last set of, sort of,
unresolved questions—
and this is sort of an area where my
research is sort of heading right now—
which is what sort of ultimately
underlies or gives rise to these kinds
of responsibilities? And this is a
question I haven't sort of directly
answered yet. One common model is the
compensation model. So—and I think Seana 
Shiffrin is probably the most notable
defender of this kind of view. Here, the
idea is that parental obligations are a
kind of compensation for exposing
offspring to potential harms. And, I think
that that's not really the strongest way
to, sort of, conceptualize parental
obligations or procreative
responsibilities more generally. My main
reason for this is I think that accepting that
justification leads to antinatalism—or
otherwise, the view that
reproduction in general is impermissible.
Why is this? Well, we normally only have
to compensate other people for harms
we cause when we've harmed that
individual and the harm that we, we
caused was wrongful. Right, if you think
about it, we harm people all the time in
ways that don't generate a requirement
to compensate. So, for example, and this is
gonna rest a little bit on what our
conception of harming is, but normally we
say that we harm somebody when we made
them worse off than they otherwise would
be. But if we think about this, we harm
people all the time [drinks water]. Sorry, so if you
think about it, you know, if you apply for
a job and you get the job and somebody
else doesn't, you've made them worse off
than they would otherwise be, but you don't owe
them any compensation because that kind
of wrongdoing—sorry, that kind of harm—
wasn't wrongful. If we think that, if we
base procreative obligations on
compensation, it means that we have to
think that there's something ... it's not
only were the risks imposed harmful, but
they were also wrong. And if they're
wrong, then why should we permit
reproduction at all, right? Because it's
wrong. So I think that's why we slip into
antinatalism. One way to get around this
is to appeal to something like strict
liability, which is concept where we
think that sometimes people have
obligations as a result of harm even
though that harm wasn't wrongful. And
there's certain cases in the law that
recognize this. So, for instance, blasting:
if you're, if you're, you know, putting,
using dynamite to make a hole in the
side of a mountain. If you're engaged in
this activity, you have obligations to
whoever gets injured, regardless of what
precautions you take—even if we think
that engaging this activity wasn't
wrongful. That's one way we might try and
get around this problem of compensation
leading to antinatalism. But I think that
strict liability as a concept is really
theoretically fraught and there are
scholars who think that actually strict
liabilities are undefensible, or
doesn't actually exist in the law at all.
And so I think there's sort of problems
looking to that principle to help us
resolve the problem. The way I suggest we
try and move forward is by thinking that
procreated responsibilities are grounded
in beneficence. So beneficence is the
idea, is the term philosophers generally
use, to refer to, I think, the intuition we
generally share that we have an
obligation to take interest and improve
the well-being of people around us, right.
So regardless of whether we've wronged
them or harmed them. And I think that in
certain circumstances—so normally,
beneficence is considered an "imperfect duty."
So you don't, you are not obligated to be
beneficent to everybody all the time.
It's not the case that everybody you
possibly could help you have to help. But
at least you have to help some people
some of the time. I think in constrained
cases, the duty of beneficence
becomes a "perfect duty"—meaning that you
have no, you have no choice but to act in
a beneficent manner. One, I think,
clear case of this is the duty of easy
rescue. So again, the case if you're
walking by a pond and you see somebody
that's drowning and you can easily save them, 
you have an obligation to save that
individual. And many people try to
defend this by appeal to the principle of
beneficence. So, and often the idea of beneficence
 is grounded in the idea that we
recognize other people as having a kind
of fundamental value. And if we recognize
other people as having a sort of
fundamental value, that means that we
have to have a certain attitude towards them. We have to see them as valuable and
promote their interest in certain kinds
of ways.
So how, I think, this relates to the
question of procreative responsibilities
and gamete provision is: I think that if
you go to the effort of helping bring
into existence an individual, but then
don't take any further interest in their
well-being,
you haven't really fully taken seriously
the ethical magnitude of what you've
done, right. I think that if you create an
individual and then just, you know, maybe
take some initial steps to make sure
things go okay but then step back and
sort of take no further interest, you
have not properly taken to
consideration the value of the
individual that you created and the
moral, and the moral importance that, you
know, their suffering might have. And so,
I think that, that might be a case—
I don't have a fully worked out argument
for this; this is where I'm trying to go—
but I want to argue that procreation is
somewhat similar to the pawn case, right.
That to fail to recognize, or to fail to
take a further interest in the
individuals you intentionally create is
to fail to recognize the value of the
humanity of other people. Okay I'm over
time. I'll stop there. Thank you. [Applause.]
[Applause continues]
Person 1: Thanks very much, Reuven, that was super interesting. I have a question about your
distinction between transfer and
delegation, and then how that intersects
with the four responsibilities that you
identified. So: two of the
responsibilities—providing medical
information and being open to forming a
relationship—seem like they can't even
be delegated. So the distinction between
transfer and delegation seems like you
don't, you don't need that to get those
two. If gamete donors have those, you know,
it can't be that someone else, [changes voice] "Oh, you
know, you go provide your medical
information." [Normal voice.] Like that, that's not helpful.
It's got to be, it's got to be my medical
information. It's got to be me, and so
that can't be transferred or delegated.
The two others look like they could be
transferred—so providing resources in
extreme need and taking on the parental
role in extreme circumstances. And so my
question is: how do we think about
whether these are cases where transfer
can happen, or not. And I guess I want to
know what you think about someone, you
know, if we have a view like, like Sally
Haslanger, who says we should take, like,
an ameliorative approach to these
questions and ask, well what are we going
for right? It's not, there's not a
metaphysical fact behind the question,
"Are these responsibilities that can be
transferred or merely delegated?" We have
to ask what, you know, what are the
interests involved,
what are the outcomes (I know you don't
like this) what are the outcomes that
we're interested in with respect to
equality, and the competing interests and
independent considerations of justice.
And so you've got to get into those
thorny issues to figure out whether
these are, whether we decide, whether
these are cases where transfer is going
to happen—or whether we're, or whether
you say, "No, the best you can get is
delegation."
Brandt: Okay, so good question. So first, I think
it's true that some obligations are not,
are neither transferable nor delegate-able,
or delegate-able [different pronunciation] or however you
would pronounce that, I'm not sure. [Laughs]
So that, so that's true. I disagree that the
the other two—so, providing assistance in
case of extreme need ... well yeah, I'll
use that as an example. I disagree
that that is transferable.
Why? Um, so, if you know, if, if you think
that you have an obligation to make sure
that somebody's life attains a certain
level of well-being and you say, "Okay I'm
gonna have my brother, you know, make sure
that, that, you know, my offspring have
enough to eat and have proper access
education—all that kind of stuff," and
then I find out that he's failed, right–
he's taken the money I gave him to do
that, or he, you know, he promised he'd do that and
he didn't do it. I'm not off the hook,
just like in the library case, 'cause I owe
that obligation to the child, right. And
so if I have an obligation to a specific
individual nothing—nobody—but that
particular individual can absolve me of
that obligation. Because that, that's what it
means to have an obligation to somebody,
right. Just like if I, um, you know, if I, if
I promised you that, I borrowed something—
again the library case. If I borrowed
something from you, and then I had
somebody else promise to return it. And
then you came to me and said, "I want that
thing back," you wouldn't accept it as
excuse, my claim that, "Well I said that, uh,
somebody else promised they'd do it so
you can't hold me responsible anymore." So,
this does assume a certain model of
responsibility, right. So, but I think
that this assumes sort of the classic
way we conceive of responsibility in the
one-night-stand case. So what this
argument's supposed to show is that people
who think they can get around the
problem whether the same kind of
responsibilities arise in gamete
provision cases as do in one-night-stand cases can't
appeal so the transfer of responsibility
to just side-step that problem. Right, so
that's, that's what that argument's
supposed to show. Um, yeah.
[Audience talk; indecipherable]
Person 2: Yeah so just to follow up on this. I
think with respect to the promising
case, you're, you know, it's because the
promisee has a right against you, right.
And so the parallel with the children's
cases—you're assuming that the child has
a right against the biological parent to
be, to be parented by the biological
parent. Or, you know, or the gamete provider, 
et cetera, et cetera. And that's
exactly what's at issue, right? Because
some people—I mean I think you only talk
about the responsibilities of the gamete
providers, but I think you also need to
bring in the equation of the rights of
the gamete providers, right. And so in the
case of the, so there's a live issue
about whether they have the right to, as
it were, cede their, you know, sort of ...
you know, can they give up their gametes,
right, and can they, can they
waive their rights to certain things.
Can they, you know, cede to other
people, et cetera, et cetera. And let me
just say one thing: like, take
adoption cases, where someone might say,
you know, "I'm not in the position to take
care of the child, so I'm gonna give up
my child for adoption." And so, you know,
there are, sort of, all these legal things
that go into it, where you waive your
right. And once you waive your right, it's
absolute, right. You don't have ... you cannot, 
sort of, later on say, "Oh, I want, you know,
when I come back and, you know, do this
and that, et cetera, et cetera." Right, once
you've waived your right. And then it's,
it's also the case that if those, if the
parents of the, you know, the adoptive
parents—if they were to be diseased, it
doesn't go back to you, right. There's a
further, you know, there are other
procedures for that, so.
Brandt: OK, there's a whole bunch of questions there
and I hope I can remember them all. So, I'll
start with the first one, which is that,
in a certain sense, I beg—you accuse
me of begging the question. And I don't
think I'm doing that. So, I think what my
distinction between transfer and
delegation is supposed to show is that
people who think that they can avoid the
question of whether the same kinds of
responsibilities that arise in
one-night-stand cases arise in gamete
provision cases by saying, "Well, even if
they did, these could just be transferred
away." They're wrong—
because the kind of responsibilities that
we think arise in one-night-stand cases are
responsibilities towards a certain
individual. You normally think that in
the case of one-night stand case, we
normally think that the child has a
particular right against an individual
for support, right. So you can't avoid
that question by saying, "Well, if that did
happen, they could just be transferred,"
because that kind of responsibility—at
least on my view—isn't transferable,
based on this distinction. Now, we can
dispute whether that kind of
responsibility arises—that's a
separate question. But all, all my ...
Oh sorry I closed the lid and I [to tech support] Do you want me to do
this? [Background laugh]
Should I just leave it down or ...? Okay.
Okay. So, so that's what example's supposed
to show: you can't avoid the question of
whether responsibilities initially arise,
which is what the transfer argument is
often done: we can just avoid this
question entirely. And I want to argue
that you can't avoid the question
entirely because certain kinds of
responsibilities can't be transferred.
Okay. The second question was: what about
the rights—is that right? What about the
rights of gamete providers?
Person 2: Yes. 
Brandt: So, I think that
we can, we can separate obligations
and rights. You can think that you have
an obligation to ensure that somebody's
life goes a certain way, and to take
steps to ensure that—without necessarily
having the right to interfere in the,
sort of, daily running of that
individual's life or even make important
decisions for them. We can separate these
two things. So you can have individuals
who have child maintenance obligations,
but don't have any parental standing,
right. They have no right to make
decisions for the child. That is, you know,
that is perfectly possible. And so, I
think, so I want to distinguish between
parental obligations and procreative
obligations. And I think that parental
obligations—so, the, and parental rights, 
for that matter—arise out of the actual
practice of parenting. So I have a sort
of relationship view. They arise out of
actually taking care of somebody—and
that's what gives you standing to make
decisions on behalf of a child and have
the kind of rights and responsibilities
that we think parents do. And that's
separate from what, I think, the kind of
obligations that gamete providers would
have, which is sort of more removed. And
so I don't think that the obligation to,
you know, help make sure somebody's life
goes a certain way necessarily gives you
any right whatsoever to intervene in it.
So to give an example: if we're driving
down the street and you crash into me,
right, and so now I need medical
treatment—I might have, uh, you might have an
obligation towards me to cover my
medical costs but you have no right to
decide what doctor I go to, what hospital
I go to. You can have obligations without
corresponding rights. So I don't think
that that is that absurd an idea. Was a
third question in there, or?
Person 3: Thanks, thanks.
Thanks for your talk; I really enjoyed it.
I was a little bit confused at the end—
and maybe it was just because you were
rushing—where you said that the person
who, uh, gamete provider who doesn't
take some responsibilities similar to
what somebody walking by a child in a
pond and failing to recognize their
humanity—but that makes it seem like
anyone would be equally responsible. So
it's more like someone who threw a kid
into a pond, than someone who's just walking by a pond
because— 
Brandt: Yes. [Audience laughter.]
Person 3: —the way you put it makes it
sound like we would all have that
responsibility. I don't think that's what
you meant, or maybe I didn't understand.
Thank you. 
Brandt: No, yes. I think you're right,
yeah. I was rushing a bit, so I
want to argue that in certain cases when
we act in certain ways that gives a
special a special obligation of
beneficence to an individual to promote
their well-being. And that arises when we
place those individuals in circumstances
where they face certain kinds of risks
without their consent. So sort of like
the camp example, again, right. Um, even if I think that this trip will
be overall beneficial—even if I don't
help stop this person from suffering
from the bee sting—because I
took them there, I still have this
special obligation that isn't grounded
in the fact that I've made them worse
off overall, yeah.
Person 3: [Inaudible]
Brandt: Yeah, yeah.
Person 4: Thank you for your talk; that was really interesting. So I have a question and a comment, and my
question actually follows up on Rivka's. So
why wouldn't the lab techs and the
fertility doctors also be in the
position of throwing the kid in the pond?
Or why wouldn't they also have the same
duties of beneficence that the gamete
donor has? 
Brandt: Yeah, so I bite the bullet on
this—gallantly—and I say that they do. 
[Laughter.] Um, I
think that, I think that if you are in
the business of making people, you have
an obligation to make sure those
people's lives go reasonably well. And so
I think that the view that fertility
companies can just, we're just helping
people and that's all that matters—I
think that that's false. You're do something
much more morally weighty. [Applause]
I think it's not unusual for us 
to feel that way. So, I
think, you know, we normally hold arms
companies for instance responsible for
the way their products are used—even
though they're just selling things on
the market. And so the fact that we're
involved in this, sort of, commercial
enterprise, where other people are gonna be
making use of, you know, your services
doesn't insulate you from responsibility.
Person 4: Thanks. And then I just had a comment, and
I think this is, like, a friendly
amendment—it's not, it's not meant
to be critical at all. But when we talk
about moral responsibility and causal
responsibility in the context of sex, I
think it's important to think about the
context. So I agreed with your point at
the end that the gamete donor is more
morally responsible than the person who
accidentally impregnates a woman in a
one-night stand—you know, the person who
accidentally gets pregnant in a
one-night stand because the gamete donor
is intending to be part of this causal
process where they create a child. So
there's more moral responsibility. And
just in thinking about the differences
in responsibility there, I think I
always—and this is sort of a criticism,
not in principle, but of the way that the
causal account often gets applied,
particularly in our intuitions. You know,
when we think about the moral
responsibility of people who
accidentally procreate in a one-night
stand, when we're assigning moral
responsibility, it's important to
recognize that, you know, this is in a
society where there is systematic
misinformation about sexuality and
procreation and abstinence-only
education, where there's limited access to
abortion and contraception, and where
there's widespread sexual assault of
women. And so all of those things, I think,
often affect moral responsibility of, you
know, people who become accidentally
pregnant. And so I think that just adds
to your point, that actually the gamete
donor is it often more morally
responsible.
Brandt: Yeah, so I, I entirely agree.
So I think there are many cases where
individuals who become pregnant by
accident might not have responsibilities.
Whereas I think that's highly unlikely
in the case of gamete provision cases,
unless someone who maybe was. sort of
forced into gamete provision or
something. But yeah, so I actually I don't
have a firm stance on the way
obligations arise in one-night-stand type
cases. I'm much less certain about that. I
think there might be a strong case to be
made that responsibilities don't always
arise, depending on the particular
circumstances. But I think that gamete
provision is not a case like that, so
yeah, I agree.
Person 5: Thank you, I, so I think, so I'm totally
sympathetic to your claims and totally
sympathetic to the idea that people are
way too cavalier about creating people,
okay. But I wonder whether it is a
problem for you, for your delegation
rather than transference, because one of
the differences between transfer and
delegation in your case is that in the
delegation case, the person who delegates
can always get the thing back. So if I
delegate to you to take care of my child,
you know, as a babysitter, I can, you know,
at any time say, you know, I I'm gonna do
that. Or if I delegate to you, as Charlie,
you know, to do the webpage, I can say, "You
know what, I ultimately think I'm gonna
do it myself." Which seems to then imply
that the donor provider can at any point
actually claim that, that those
responsibilities that
they have delegated.
Brandt: Okay, yes that's,
that's, that's a good question. So, so the
argument is: normally when we think about
delegation, we're able to sort of rescind
our delegation, right. So I think that
doesn't arise in this case because I
think that what's delegated isn't your
parental duties. It's other kinds of
duties: to make sure that somebody has a
certain kind of life that goes
particularly, that goes well, to a certain
extent—I mean there's sort of vagueness—and
part of that is to make sure that
somebody is parented. But I think that
once somebody is, but I think that
parenthood arises separately. That arises
from a sort of relationship interaction.
And once a parenthood bond has been
formed, the gamete donor can't take, uh,
the gamete provider can't take that back
because they're not in position to
parent. That's now become a task
they cannot fulfill themselves, because
they have not formed the requisite
relationship to make parenting possible.
Person 5: [Muffled] Couldn't they do it? Just so, 
so one might actually say that they
have the bond in a similar way, [inaudible],
 wanting to take back those responsibilities.
But couldn't that be the case,
like, you haven't formed any bond yet. Sorry.
Brandt: So are you thinking about a case where 
you've provided gametes and then, you know, at
eight months or something, you suddenly
decide ...? Yeah, okay, that's good. That,
that's a tricky question, and that is,
that is something that I don't have a
firmly worked out view on. That's
something I really, I really should
should try and work out. I think it's
complicated. So, at least in some cases,
in the case of gestation,
I think, they, so if somebody's, you have a
woman serving as surrogate, I think
it's quite clear that the surrogate's
claim to be the parent is the strongest
because that person has done a lot of, I
mean, you know, has already shown
commitment. I think that you do start
forming a bond with a child before
they're born—all these kinds of things.
So I think that gives primacy to, in the
case of surrogacy. In cases of gamete
provision, it's more complicated. And so I
think, depending on the circumstances,
there might be cases where a gamete
provider might be able to rescind. I'm— [audience talk]
I'm not sure though, as it would be
context dependent. And I haven't, I have
not actually, I don't have a firmly
worked out position. But I think it's a
good place to push and something I
should think about.
Person 6: So I have a slightly
different perspective, just to lend to
some complexity to the conversation. So
I'm a psychologist and I have worked in
fertility clinics for years—for decades—
and one of the things I have done is
screen egg donors and sperm donors. And, I
personally am of the view that the
business of fertility is more to be
blamed than the donors, in many cases. The
donors that I have met with for, you know,
decades, for the most part—and I mostly
screened egg donors because for a long
time they didn't really do psychological
screening of sperm donors—so most of
them were with young women who truly and
deeply were motivated to help. And they
believed the way that they could be the
most helpful
was to hand over their gametes and walk
away and let the child and the family
have as close to normal a life as
possible. Like they believed that was
what was best for the child and the
family. They weren't trying to be
derelict in their duties. They were
trying to do something good. And they're
young women who are led by the agencies
and the clinics and the business to
believe, "Oh my gosh, you're doing the
greatest thing by doing this."
Nobody's counselling them at all about
what you're, what the truth of what
they're getting involved in is. They're
really quite young and naive. And I think
as I sit here, and you know for this
weekend—and it's been so moving, really, I
mean amazingly moving for me—I feel so
sad because I think that donors who
heard your perspective and who probably
now have done it and are hearing your
perspectives probably feel so badly that
they participated in something that
ended up hurting people, because that's
not where most of them are coming from. I
mean even egg donors would say to us, "Oh
you don't need to pay me." I mean they're
going through IVFs and they're saying, "You
don't need to pay me. I just want to help
someone." You know, so it's they're really
not as—they're not callous in what
they're doing. They actually think
they're doing something really helpful
and wonderful, so. I think it's the
agencies and I think that one of the big
problems is that the agencies are afraid
to let the donors know, you know, really
how complicated it is because then not
as many people would donate. And also,
they're afraid, they're afraid of future
contact because in a way by not having
there be future contact, the agencies
don't ever end up being, you know,
responsible for when things went wrong.
And lastly, the agencies lead the donors
to believe that the parents—the intended
parents—have been have been screened.
They all say, "Well, I know the parents
have been really well screened, and they
are going to such lengths, you know, to
have a baby, so they're gonna be
wonderful parents." And
fact is the parents aren't being
screened. They're not being screened at
all. [Audience comment] Yeah, yeah. So the donors are
actually being misled about, you know,
this idea of handing over their eggs, you
know, like "Oh, they're being handed over
to someone who's in good hands."
Brandt: So, I think I'll just say [audience applause] one thing quickly— [applause continues]
I think one thing, that one plus for my
view is that it doesn't imply that, that
in most or many—in most or many
circumstances, gamete providers have
really weighty, ongoing obligations that
they have somehow failed to do. In some
cases, that might be the case. But in many
cases where people are happy and their
lives have gone well, then, you know, the
gamete providers don't owe anything more
in those cases.
Person 7: I just wanted to clarify that there are
some cases in which, in history,
intended parents have been screened—
particularly when, we're talking about like
a disability or sexual orientation, when
there's then a concern that's come about
about their fitness. So there have been
times where that has happened.
Audience member: [muffled] For the wrong reasons 
Audience: [muffled] Yeah. [Muffled cross talk]
Person 8: Yeah, I mean just so, I have a separate question but, but on this: I mean I do think
we don't screen people who are
forming families with children through
heterosexual sexual intercourse and
there are ways in which we have a long
history of checking people's ability to
be parents based on characteristics that,
I think, those of us in the room would
think are illegitimate characteristics.
So, we should be careful what we ask for.
So I just want to follow up on a Nima's
point, which: so I want, I guess I wanted
to know what your, what your account of
the parenting is, then. Because I could
imagine—so it sounded like in response,
you were saying,
"Well, they haven't formed that
relationship with the child, so, so they
can't come in." So that sounds like partly
what you're saying is: what matters is
the attachment-relationship that the
parent forms with the child. So the
child's perspective on this relationship—
which would then
mean, for purposes of those who study
this, at what point does the child have
an attachment relationship. Which would
seem to suggest that gestation actually
might not matter, and that what matters
is the child's experience with this
person who's parenting. But then would
suggest that the person, the gamete
provider, as well as the person who did,
who placed the child for adoption,
would be able to come back in at a
particular point if it's before the
attachment-relation has formed and say, "I'm
perfectly capable of doing this." So I
don't understand what the account is in
which they're not able to do the thing
that you're saying they can't do.
Brandt: Okay, good questions. So let me think for one
sec. It's always good to think before
speaking, though I often don't do that [laughs].
So, I, so exactly when the right kind of
attachment happens—that's, that's a
difficult question that's gonna be
largely empirical and something that I
don't have a fully worked-out view on.
And so yeah, I do accept that there's a
problem with my view about that. There
might be a window in time, in which the
gamete provider may be able to rescind
their the delegation, prior to that
relationship arising. And that may or may
not be problematic. I mean often in
adoption arrangements, there's sort of a
cooling-off period—a period of time— 
Audience member: Like 72 hours
Brandt: —so, [audience laugher] so ...[muffled question from audience] Hm.
[Pauses]
Person 9: [muffled] ... so like, under state law in many states once she's actually waived the rights for
purposes of that 72-hour window, if she has
chosen to waive her rights, then she
can't rescind on that waiver. [Muffled crosstalk] Right, right, but in his view the 72 hours—
[Audience crosstalk]
Brandt: I've not given
time frame [laughs]. 
[Audience laughter; crosstalk continues.]
Brandt: Um, let me keep on going. [Background laugher] So, so that might that might be a worry.
I think it is a worry. It's something that I,
that my view needs to work out more. Sorry,
there was a ... Oh, oh,
so yeah. Um, what relationship
matters. So, I don't think that, and so I
think this is a partial response to the
first question, too—I don't think that the, 
the only thing that matters is the child's
perspective on the relationship. So I
know that the law likes to say things
like, "We're only interested in the best
interests of the child," and things like
that. But I think that that's not a
particularly useful principle because I
think it's incredibly big and, and not
true. So, for example: if you had a
neonatal abduction, right, that gets
discovered 10 years later, right. So you
have an individual who has really only
been parented by this one person. Maybe
they did it perfectly good job of parenting,
right. Are we gonna say that
well, so this individual is now the
legitimate parent and there's no redress
to be had, and in fact no wrong happened;
nobody was deprived of a parent-child
relationship because there was no
parent-child relationship between the
person who, you know, the intending
parents and the child to begin with? So,
so, I think, I think
that for us to make sense of our
intuitions about these kinds of cases, we
do have to think that, you know, the
interest of the parents also matter. And
have, so I think, so this is another
thing I have not worked out perfectly
well. But I think, I think that certain
people have a claim to become a parent,
right. And that's different from actually
being a parent. And part of this problem
rests on working out which individuals
have the strongest claim to form the
kind of relationship that is meaningful.
And I think that the law might have an
interest in protecting a certain
individual's claim to become a parent,
even if we think that its relationship
that matters. Otherwise we end up with
this problem of abduction cases, right,
where we think that no ... you know, so I
mean, I, and I think that that might be a
concern for the view that you proposed
earlier as well—which is if you have
this purely functional view, right, what
do you do about these kinds of cases as
well. You have to fall back on some other
kind of principle that might not be
looking solely at the interest of the
child involved.
Person 10: I'll just add that some
years ago in Michigan, there was a very
famous case of the sort you're
describing. I believe the Court did
return the child to the biological
parents, but many, many people thought
that this was wrong. So you, you might
want to look up— 
Brandt: Well yes, so I think this is a case where
what we desire from the
law and what morality requires come
apart. Because I think that the law might
have an interest in preventing people
from engaging in neonatal abduction. And
so, that might ground—[aside] ugh, philosophy [laughs]—so that would ground this kind of
practice of not recognizing parenthood
that's arisen in this, in these kind of
nefarious ways—even though we might
think that, morally speaking, that it, that
individual is in fact, the person who
abducted him is, in fact, the parent. So
this is where I think the questions get
much more complex, yeah.
Person 11: Thank you for your talk. My question ... as you were going through the distinction between transfer
and delegation, I think you really hit on
a systemic problem with the industry and
where this all falls down is that the
donor is responsible for, in some way,
providing family medical history, having
some sort of relationship—and he's
attempting to delegate the
responsibility of deciding how many of
these relationships there are going to be—
how many children are going to be born
with their gametes—when the
establishment that he's delegating these
responsibilities to doesn't have enough
information to make those decisions
effectively for him, and
also holds a conflict-of-interest that
prevents them from objectively making
those decisions. And by the way, I have
over fifty siblings.
Brandt: Yeah, so I think that
an alternate route to looking at where
we should place donor limits is to look
at this obligation, right. And we might
think that, given the fact that there are
some people who feel very strongly that
they are harmed by not having some kind
of, any kind of relationship with their
biological parents, and that's something
that's predictable
that might give us reason to limit the
amount of offspring people have—just
because we might think that these
individuals might have an obligation to
at least form some kind of
responsibility—uh, form some kind of
relationship in cases where individuals
are very troubled by the fact that they
don't have this kind of relationship. And
that might, might be another way we can
and sort of look at that question of
donor limits—aside from questions about
unintentional consanguinity and things
like that, which is, sort of, normally the
way this is discussed.
Person 11: [muffled] and the responsibility is being attempted to be delegated and that's not possible,
it seems that it comes into the third category and that's abandonment of responsibility.
Brandt: Yes, so I, so I
think it's morally problematic to put
you, to knowingly put yourself in
circumstances where you will not be able
to fulfill the obligations that you know
are likely to occur. Yeah.
David Velleman: So, in the last few minutes
I'm going to take uh, [laughs]
the, the luxury
of adding something and that is: I would
be interested in knowing whether part of
what we find objectionable in cases
where you have 50 siblings—it strikes me
as, it reminds me of our intuitive
objections to human cloning. And that is
that each of us has an interest in being
unique. And now, of course, you are still
unique despite having half-siblings—and
yet, well if there are too many children
of this father running around [chuckle],
I have been in a way devalued so
I—at some point I'd be interested in, in
whether your objections are related to
that. 
Brandt: Other questions? [Pause] Yes?
Person 12: So I know you guys keep talking
about the the industry and everything,
but I was just wondering if the panel
and the speakers and the people that
counsel—I'm just curious if you know
that there are people out there in
Facebook, um, basically offering their seeds
to people. And they use terms like
"natural insemination," "partial
insemination." Are you aware of these
things out there in Facebook—the Joe
donors that do it in the back of a van?
Brandt: So yes, so I'm aware that there's sort of
this practice of gamete provision that
happens through outside of a medical
context. And some places have actually
explicitly enacted laws that recognize
gamete provision and, and, its sort of
intentional parenthood of these cases
even in the absence of these procedures
happening within a clinical context. So
one example: there's a few provinces in
Canada, some—pretty sure British Columbia—
now recognizes gamete provision
arrangements written on the back of a
napkin, for example. And so, yeah, so I am
aware. Yeah. [muffled question from audience]
Do I feel it's ethical?
Uh, well, I, so I don't think that anything
magic happens
when you donate gametes through use of a
clinic. I don't think that medical
context somehow fundamentally changes
the moral, the, the moral requirements of
any parties whatsoever. I think, you know,
if this is happening without any, with,
without proper information about what
the obligations are
and, you know, understanding what, what
legal ramifications might exist, then you
have—then that raises questions about
proper consent and whether people fully
understand what they're getting
themselves into. But I think that it
doesn't change—and so, for me, that's what
raises problems. But I think that, you
know, like the case that I mentioned I
think, I don't think that the method of
insemination has any importance on the
resulting, um, resulting responsibilities
that arise. So I think that a turkey
baster is no different than a syringe
and I also think that you know vaginal
sex is no difference than a turkey
baster and the syringe either.
Person 12: [muffled] ... strangers ... [muffled] on Facebook, to have his children and he
prefers natural insemination. 
Brandt: So, uh, so the
the fact [muffled comment from Person 12]—so the fact that, so the fact that somebody is advertising
this in an open way—I'm not, it's gonna
be context dependent, I think, whether
it's predatory or not. Um.
[Muffled response from audience; inaudible]
David Velleman: I'm sorry, I'm going to have to cut off
the discussion. We need a few minutes to
rearrange things for the panel of the
speakers, which I mentioned before. So,
just give us a couple of minutes to set
up some chairs and change some lighting
and we will move on from there. Thank you,
Reuven. [Applause].
 
