Designer Babies

Genetic engineering, although it sounds like something from science fiction, affects all of us every day. There are genetically modified crops that are made to be resistant to disease, allowing for a larger harvest and more food. Medicine can be genetically engineered, which makes for large-scale, inexpensive production of basic drugs. Animals have been cloned, for experimentation and for meat. Unsurprisingly, people have also applied genetic engineering to humans.

Checking the genes of an embryo isn’t a new concept. Something as simple as determining the gender of the baby involves examining DNA. Nowadays, it is a common procedure to look for genetic diseases as  well. For example, doctors can let parents know if their baby will have Down’s Syndrome or Tay Sachs. Along with this is the development of reproductive science. A woman can become pregnant by artificial or in vitro insemination, allowing the choice for gender and physical features a baby will have.  Why not take it a step further and genetically modify the embryo for desirable traits? You could choose physical traits, such as hair and eye color, height, and facial features. Even more, qualities like intelligence and athletic ability would be fair game as well. Even personality traits could be genetically changed.

Some people argue that this would lead to ideas of “a perfect race,” like the ideas of Hitler with the Aryan race. But others argue that ethically, parents should try to give the best for their children, and if that includes hand-picking desirable traits, then so be it. Personally, I think designer babies are intriguing. If I was a parent, being able to make your child beautiful, smart, athletic, with a good disposition to boot, is very appealing. But there is also a part of me that feels like it would be would be wrong, or inhuman.

Other problems could develop as well. Obviously, any designer babies would be extremely expensive to make. When these babies have obvious advantages over others, it is likely they’ll become successful. I can see this being a huge problem for widening the gap between wealthy and poor. In addition, there are other unknown problems that could occur. What if genetically modifying the human race created other dilemmas we never thought of?

Although I think these issues won’t exist for a while, it will be interesting to see that when that time comes, whether or not humans will let the idea of “perfect design” affect our own race.

Twilight Zone episode, “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”

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One Response to Designer Babies

  1. Richard says:

    great blog topic. It has been worked over a bit already. Most think genetic engineering for therapy is fine but designer babies not so much. Would you like to be one?

    I think you raise the most important issue and that is can it be stopped? As it becomes more and more obvious how to do it, how you could you possibly stop the rich from doing it, and even countries. If cheap, we might get super people vs the un-super people -largely religious fundamentalists.

    If intellectual property rights are involved who owns the designer baby?

    Functioning /50 ok

    Three good, used, references, proper quotes/20 18 integrate your refs in the text

    Design focus /15 13 it is a design topic get into it more. How is it done etc

    Good writing, coherent, & no typos/15 ok

    96

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