“Designer” Babies
March 8, 2011 by Jessica Huff
The advancement of medical technology has made it possible for parents to design their babies. By manipulating the genes in our DNA, mothers and fathers can choose the traits they want their children to have. This new process could be either beneficial or detrimental to the babies and their parents. For example, if the offspring has a chance of having a genetic disorder such as, mental retardation or Down syndrome, manipulating DNA could be beneficial. By simply removing the gene that could cause these genetic disorders the offspring could have a better life. http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_cont1.htm
The process of a “designer” baby begs the question, what happens when parents and doctors start going overboard designing these babies? What if parents want super babies that have no flaws? The manipulation of that child’s DNA would we extreme. How ethical could these practices be if a doctor is allowed to play with creation of a life? In my opinion, designing a baby for purposes other than removing genes that cause genetic disorders should not be allowed. Perfection is so important to many people in the world today that to perfectionists this would be an awesome opportunity. Creating a perfect child would be an ultimate goal of a perfectionist. How safe both physically and mentally could this be?
Manipulating creation limits the uniqueness of a person. Our textbook states that there is a one in 64 trillion chance that siblings could have the same exact genes as their parents. This statistic makes it easy for each individual to be unique in some way. When parents start altering the physical characteristics of their children, it not only takes the surprise and anticipation out of seeing your baby for the first time, but also, hinders your child from being unique. On the other hand, “Designer” babies could be beneficial for older mothers that have higher risk pregnancies. Take out the mutated genes and you have a healthy baby.
