“Designer” Babies
March 9, 2011 by Michael Pagan
A recent trend today with parents is the ability to choose the gender of their offspring. It will only be a matter of time before more traits will be customizable as well, such as hair and eye color. Along with this ability to choose, people can choose whether or not they want to keep a baby once a defect of some sort has been detected during the pregnancy. This practice is considered by some to be unethical and unnatural. While the unethical part is entirely up to the individual to decide, it is obvious that this is unnatural.
One might argue that using this practice takes out Darwin’s theory of Survival of the Fittest. This theory explains in a nutshell that the species who naturally adapts and adjusts to his or her own environment the best will be the most fit to survive. In regards to society today, I respectfully disagree. With designer babies, we are not simply just taking nature out of it. Darwin’s theory will still apply to all of those who successfully pass the selection process. The practice only involves selecting gender thus far and probably only aesthetic traits in the not so distant future. Personality and behaviors are unaffected and now we avoid people having to try having the perfect baby over and over again. In China, people used to try having babies over and over again until they finally had a son. In addition, babies that would most likely have trouble surviving in this world anyway because of defects are eliminated from the start. This will help the world as there will be no need to bring more people into a world that is already starting to show signs of overpopulating in the future. Resources will not deplete as quickly as there are less people to keep track of. As a species, we are finding a way to select the most physically fit to succeed us so that they may give as a chance to survive as long as possible. Nature will take care of the rest to see if these people really are the right heirs to the throne.
The problem with designer babies is the potential people see in the future to completely determine the outcome of the baby. This is definitely an alarm because some people will take nature out of it and choose a personality which ultimately determines the life of that baby without knowing what his or her preferences would have been. Some people will design babies that will be the perfect heir to a dynasty and will continue and the endless cycle of their ’empire’ which under normal circumstances will not survive on its own. Designer babies have their advantages but hopefully there will be a limit to what you can customize.
