Poll result and moderator's report card

Ladies and Gentlemen,since I have been granted the privilege of addressing this report speech, please allow me to greet all the debaters, and thank them for the extraordinary speeches they delivered on this difficult motion. After a quite long tie period, the poll gave for a moment a spark of hope to the proposers, who led by one vote, but suddenly a surge of “Nays!” came up and pitilessly crushed them as they were fighting their last stand. I will now try, with your permission, to add a little flavor to this judgment by outlining the best points of each argumentation. (Continues below the fold.)

 
by EN

Faced with the indeed difficult task of defending this daring motion, the proposing team begun with a quite dazzling and attractive advertising campaign for the PGD technique, the solution most likely to be used for screening undesirable traits in embryos. 

Then, in a commendable attempt to prevent them from direct hits of the opposition, they narrowed down their definition of the subject to a “morally acceptable” reading. In fact, they tried to screen for undesirable traits in the motion, if I may say so, by pinning it down to the precise case of genetic diseases, and thoughtfully proposing an implementation.

However, this proved not to be exactly to the taste of the first opposing speaker. As a matter of fact, the effect was opposite as that intended. CN simply overruled this definition, and, after having brought the debate back to plain old “baby designing”, went to great lengths to criticize on every possible side, and even a few impossible ones, like cloning humans! I humbly submit that, as colorful and witty as the argumentation was, it may have been wiser to just mention, as a commenter did, that even a genetic disease could not account for PGD.

This could have led to a degradation of the quality of the debate, since the scope was not too clear at this point. The second opposing speaker went on with his predecessor’s strategy, giving a very touching testimony on afflicted children. Even if the arguments did not bear an obvious relation to the subject, I found them quite effective as they had a certain taste of sincerity.

Thankfully, the second opposing speaker did in my opinion a really good job: without falling into exaggeration, she addressed some very shrewd points about PGD and undertook a demonstration that the risk of designer babies should be considered. By this artifact, she achieved to restore a bit of credibility to her colleague’s speech, and could then recycle his arguments at the risk of sounding redundant but not quite as eccentric, especially given the example of China. Yet, if the two opposing speakers had traded places, I think their victory would have been event greater.

Then, we had the privilege to be illuminated by our learned friend HC, who, in his noticeable grand fashion, analyzed very accurately the situation. I must say that he managed to locate the front line of the debate, but enticed us deeper and deeper into metaphysical considerations as the speech got longer. I find it a pity that such eloquence should be tarnished by lengthy paragraphs which tend to make the floor lose the focus. Had it been a few hundred words shorter, it probably would have won the case to the defense. However, the clash points were extremely well identified and illustrated by examples which contributed to strengthen the proposing team’s position, as well as some new last minute arguments.

The last speaker summarized well the stand of his team, and saw this as an opportunity to rebut mainly the implementation suggested by the proposing speakers. It appeared to me that Mr. Hawking was taken advantage of several times in the debate. As impressive as the example may have been, I cannot help feeling a bit queer about using like this a disabled person for argument’s sake.

Generally speaking, the summary speeches respected more or less the spirits of the clashing argumentations. On one side, we witnessed a methodic dismantle of the motion in an effort to bend it to the proposing team’s will, and on the other side, they rather relied on the existing moral structures, and tried to mend here and there the degradations caused by the latter. That is the main reason why, in spite of the floor’s election, I am tempted to grant victory to the proposing team.

I now weigh more than ever the burden of my responsibility to write this report. I hope I did justice to the speakers, and if not, please feel free to debate on this. Congratulations to everybody! I wish you well for the coming debates. 

Thank you and read the FRIDAY DEBATE BLOG,

E.N.