“Designer babies” is the term being used by the media to describe the future of modifying or selecting our children’s genes for desirable characteristics (medical and cosmetic). Are things getting out of hand with our research into genetic processes? In this blog investigate social and ethical implications of this research and technologies that have been developed from it.
The makeup of a child’s genetic profile is one of the few miracles of life and should not be tampered or altered with because of somebody’s wants and needs for their “perfect” child. Every baby is perfect in their own way, and if we alter with them we really take away all their individuality and replace it with our own ideal image. Our children’s unique qualities are what truly make them special; they are a gift from God which we need to embrace.
All the pleasant or even funny surprises that come with a child growing up are thrown out of the window swapped for preconceived artificial characteristics. In a way, these children became children of science rather than our own children. Thrown away are the little stubby nose or butt chin that allowed people to see the similarities between the children and the parents, people are no longer able to say “oh yeah she definitely gets that from her mother” or “he looks so much like his father”. This engineering poses many ethical problems begging the question of whether or not we are playing God.
If a couple was meant to have a girl, and they sorted the sperm in order to have a male, we would be messing with what should have been. Now whether or not you believe in fate, you can see why there is a concern for this experimenting to stop.
A world where a couple will be able to look at a catalogue and design their perfect baby is not as far away as we think, and we need to decide if it’s ethical to make it possible before it actually happens. Let’s talk a little bit first about the embryos that aren’t found to be perfect by the prospective parents. Well if they’re not being born you can guess what’s happening with them. That’s right; they’re discarded because they weren’t perfect. Now there are a whole bunch of reasons that having an abortion is wrong, but sometimes they can be excused. An unfit teenage mother or a couple who is just not ready to have a child will have an abortion, and yes there are other options. This though, is not having an abortion because of a difficult situation, but rather discarding away an embryo because it does not fit the ideal characteristics that potential parents were looking for.
All in all, the makeup of a baby's genetic profile cannot ethically be altered because of a couple's need for perfection, tampering anything in this process would be playing God and therefore, wrong. Although this opinion doesn't mean very much, since genetic cataloging is a thing of the not so distant future, it's still my opinion of Designer Babies.
Check it out
http://www.humansfuture.org/genetic_engineering_designer_babies.php.htm
0 comments:
Post a Comment