When I first read this topic, I thought “Designer babies!? What a great idea!” I began to think of all the possibilities, beautiful people, and no disease. Could there really be a negative aspect to a perfect world? This was my opinion on designer babies, before I did some research and some thinking…
First of all, what is a designer baby?
A designer baby is a term used to describe children whose genetic make-up was selected by their parents before birth.
After pondering on the subject for a while, I thought about designer babies on a more global scale. I thought it wouldn’t make much of an impact if just one person were made into a tall, gorgeous, disease free person. However, it would start with one person and before we know it, our world would end up with a new generation of people all possessing what society believes to be beauty.
If gene modification were used for enhancing one’s appearances, it would come with a price. Only the wealthy would be able to afford the procedure. Bearing in mind that we are fixated on appearances so much that we would feel the need to fabricate such a procedure, people would develop a whole new level of segregation. Children born to parents who were unable to afford the gene modification would face discrimination versus wealthier parents. We have come such a long way from times such as the Holocaust and from great activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, for us to turn back and undo all their work.
Even if everyone could afford to give their children desirable characteristics, is it really their decision to make? It isn’t unheard of for parents to have some intentions for their children. They want us to be successful, go to university, get married and have a family of our own.
What are parents teaching their children by altering their appearances? That looks are everything? Parents should love their children for who they are, not what they look like.
Aside from the many ethical problems with designer babies there are also an abundance of possible risks. The testing required to perfect the procedure would involve animal testing then it would eventually need to be tested on babies.
Testing on animals
...plus
testing on babies 
equals,
a lot of unhappy protesters.
So far I’ve been talking about the future of gene modification and the possibilities of altering DNA to our preferences. However, modifying genes for cosmetic purposes is not yet possible, nor is it legal for use on humans.
There are only two types of advanced reproductive technologies that are legal for use on humans. The first involves choosing which sperm will fertilize an egg; this procedure is used to determine the gender and genes of the baby. The second technique screens the embryos for genetic diseases and only the selected healthy embryos are implanted into the mother’s womb. This is called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).
This second technique involves the termination of unhealthy embryos (in other words: abortion). PGD is already used to screen embryos for hundreds of diseases and disorders and with further research we could use this technology to screen virtually all disorders and terminate the unhealthy embryos. But who are we to decide that someone born without a disorder would live a more successful, productive and better life versus one who was born with a disorder? Think of it this way, by terminating unhealthy embryos, many of the people that are around today would never have had a chance at life. Some of our friends and family as well as people like Stevie Wonder, Nick Jonas, Beethoven (just to name a few) were all born with disorders. Can you imagine if their parents had used PGD, terminated them and instead gave birth to a healthier baby?
Having said this, I am totally against designer babies for cosmetic and medical purposes. There are too many ethical problems that come with designer babies for the idea to really take-off. We have already come too far with our efforts to accept people for who they are, for us to go back and repeat history. By creating designer babies, we are striving to create a perfect world. But what is left to do when everything is perfect already? Part of being human is about overcoming differences, battling problems and being unique if we were to live in an ideal world, none of these aspects would exist.
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. ~Harriet Braiker
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html
http://www.bionetonline.org/English/content/db_cont1.htm
