Designer Babies?

"These 'sickos,' who cannot think beyond insane profits, have also turned pregnancy (a natural phenomenon) into a disease."

Designer babies is allowing people the opportunity with the ethics of cloning and stem cell creation to create their own infant with attributes of their own choice. Is this ethical? Having the power to modify our children's genes for desirable characteristics both medically and cosmetically. This matter can be investigated through both ethical and social implications of research and technologies that have been developed from it.

 Ethically: While there are many that accept this procedure of "designer babies", there are many European countries that will not allow the practice and involvement of screening embryos. However, there definitely will be be parents that do want the best available options for their kids and won't mind taking advantage of this opportunity of changing genes that they wish to be passed on. There are some positives that can be brought out from this invention as it allows people a chance to discover different ailments before the child is conceived, and precautions could be made to prevent diseases as well. There would be heavy discrimination and controversy over fertility rights and regulations that are to be implied globally. Parents in society would definitely want to have the best options for their children and they would take into consideration the adding and removal of genes. Of course as all of this comes into action there would be many complications as doctors, ethicists, religious leaders, and politicians try to grasp the implications of this matter and give their personal opinions on it. I personally find that this whole situation is disturbing and would provide individuals with wrong choices that will inevitably cause problems. I don't agree with the fact that families can choose the outcome of their next children from a catalogue.

Socially: This matter of "Designer babies" will affect the way couples face the option of choosing specific genetic traits such as eye, and hair colour and/or even height. It seems as it is just as likely for humans to be genetically engineered to apply techinques, just as we do with food. Statistics show that in "2006, countries that grew 97% of the global transgenic crops were the United States (53%), Argentina (17%), Brazil (11%), Canada (6%), India (4%), China (3%), Paraguay (2%) and South Africa (1%)" - [ORNL]. With that in mind why wouldn't people agree to Designer Babies as an option to pick a child's sex and screen for genetic illness, one day? Even if it were just for the brains and beauties. The opportunity to screen their embryos' for diseases and also alter the customization of different characteristics that include eye colour, hair colour, and even complexion would cause conceivable customization simple as science makes this possible. That would make the world have the choice of having a child designed before conception. Personally, I find that utterly disgusting that the will of God can be altered beyond imagine knowing this would provide individuals with the opportunity to take advantage of selecting their body types, hair and eye colour, resistance to specific illnesses, and even their IQ and personality. This would cause an uprise in society that would change people's perspective on reproduction.  

I believe that this shouldn't be allowed because of the fact that individuals would take this advantage of power way too far, and extreme measures leading to the misuse of this power and authority over the natural reproduction of humans. On the other hand it may be used for a positive thing as they can choose to allow this alternative with restrictions that provide users the ability to only approach this way of change for medical purposes. Having the possibilities to alter a babies eye colour, or anything that man cannot prevent should not be allowed. Each child born through the natural way of reproduction is a gift of God, nothing should be taken for granted and abused in the image of man.

This leads to the conclusion that if we take matter and life into our own hands, chaos will occur. Nothing made not of a man should be altered to benefit and please generational changes. Everyone is created differently for a purpose, nothing and no one was an accident everything happened and happens for a reason.

References:

Lemonlick, Michael. "Designer Babies". TIME. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989987-1,00.html

"Design a Baby?". BIONET. < http://www.bionetonline.org/English/content/db_cont1.htm

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