Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

Nature/Nurture: Genes and culture

“Designer Babies”

What is truly amazing about nature is that although, it is random, its randomization of creatures makes each living organism beautiful and unique in its own special way.  When people are given the idea that we can design our own babies, it sounds wonderful, but there exists complications in the long run for mankind.  For example, there are certain cultures where it is preferred to have a male child.  It is not an unknown fact that certain cultures, like China prefer to have male babies than females.  Even so today, certain areas in China believe that when they have a son, that son will carry on the family name and be apart of future ancestry, but a daughter will get married and be apart of someone else’s family.  In this case, more people in China would be overpopulated by males than females, creating a gender deficit.  This would create complications for mankind as a whole.

Looking at this issue from an ethical standpoint, many people object to the idea of “designer babies” because it involves the termination of embryos.  Embryos that had a chance at life, but stripped of that chance because had a certain gene or characteristic that the parents did not want.  This is extremely unfair to the future child because it never had a choice.  For example, if two people wanted to have children that had blue eyes, but the embryo turns out to have the genetic combinations for brown eyes, then the doctor would kill that embryo.  This child could have become president, Social activist, or Nobel Prize winner, but we would never know because it didn’t have a certain characteristic to the parent’s preference.

We would be able to breed humans into humans that become way more advanced and more powerful than how we are today.  What I took from the movie “Frankenstein” is that you shouldn’t play God and if you do then can create a group of super humans that can wipe out the existing race of humans.  There is also a chance of damaging the Gene pool.  When humans reproduce offspring, we pass down genetic information, and that genetic information is a variety of the gene pool.  When people decide what genes they want, it makes the gene pool smaller because there are certain genes that people might not want.

However, there are positive outtakes on “designer babies”, simply because it can take out certain genetic disorders and diseases from mankind.  For example, there are genetic disorders like Sickle-cell anemia, Down syndrome, and Hemophilia.  With designer babies, we can examine the genetic code for these disorders and save the child from a life of having to take medicine or endure pain or being an outcast in society.  My take on “designer babies” is that although it sounds like a great idea, we must look at the bigger picture and realize that mankind needs to look at other solutions in solving the problem of genetic disorders and we should leave nature as it is because nature makes each child and living person unique.