Questions for the Candidates Tonight

"Serious questions about serious issues are often among the first casualties of a presidential campaign." - R. Albert Mohler

Tonight's town-meeting-style debate between Barack Obama and John McCain is another great opportunity for American voters. Here are some questions that I'd like to hear asked tonight:

For Barack Obama: Democrats have long argued for greater reproductive freedom. Do you think that should include the right to choose the sex of your child? The same genetic tests that screen for terrible diseases could in theory target many other predispositions. What if prospective parents could screen for short or shy or gay or blond? This is a largely unregulated universe of treatment; should it be?

For John McCain: About 8,000 people may die this year waiting for organ transplants. Do you think the free market should include kidneys? You've said human rights begin at conception. But fertility clinics create excess embryos that are frozen and often discarded, which you've favored using for research. So are some embryos more equal than others?

And for both: Would you forcibly quarantine people during a pandemic? Should police at a crime scene be allowed to ask everyone in the area for a DNA sample? Scientists around the world are building robots with real brain tissue; inserting a fish gene for cold tolerance into tomatoes; breeding bacteria that can eat oil spills. Should we be worried that we often learn what is happening in the labs only when the results come out of them?

What questions would you like to hear asked of the candidates tonight?

SOURCE OF THESE QUESTIONS: Nancy Gibbs, "Life and Death," TIME, posted September 18, 2008.