Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

Technology is definitely growing. But is it for the better? There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the possibilities of where technology can take us. This idea of the “designer” babies has been a growing concern for many years. The thought of a “perfect” world is triggering the lives of every new born. Wouldn’t the world be such a perfect place if we had the choice to design the future of our generation? First we were able to choose certain genes for the newborn but now there are new possibilities of even choosing the baby’s eye and hair color, even the IQ of the baby and many others. There are many controversies with the thought of designing your own baby.  Some people think that it is perfectly fine with creating your own baby, as long as this doesn’t bring harm to anyone. In one article transhumanist author—James Hughes claims that “It’s in the same category as abortion. If you think women have the right to control their own bodies, then they should be able to make this choice,” he said. “There should be no law restricting the kind of kids people have, unless there’s gross evidence that they’re going to harm that kid, or harm society.”  Others believe that this practice is just totally outrageous and unethical.

First of all, what is a “designer” baby? In this article defines “designer” babies as an advanced reproductive technology that allows parents and doctors to screen embryos for genetic disorders and select only the healthy embryos.  How are we able to produce a “designer” baby? According to this article it states that one way to make a designer baby begins with an embryo created by in vitro fertilization (IVF). Genetic engineers modify the embryo’s DNA and then introduce it into a womb. This may sound all good and beneficial to the world but in my opinion if this is used improperly, it may go over board and people may just be changing the lives of their babies just for the benefit of themselves. This practice goes against the law of natural selection because the traits of our babies will have already been selected by the parents. There won’t be any surprise as to how our new born babies will look like and the world will just be perfect. However living in our imperfect world there has to be some defects that lies around this idea of “Designer” babies.

I think that this practice of the designer baby should only be used in situations where parents find out that their baby is one of many that will be born with a mental disability or has a disease and will not have much time to live. The textbook states, it is estimated that about 3.5 percent of all babies are born with some kind of genetic abnormality. Although this percentage seems trivial to the human mind, it does affect the growing number of people with disabilities in this world. This practice should be used wisely and on health purposes only. People who think otherwise are going against nature. As technology grows we will just have to wait and see and just hope for the best.