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. This procedure is called In Vitro Fertilization to fertilize eggs with sperm in test-tubes outside the mother’s body in a laboratory (1). This process allows both the doctors and the parents to reduce the chance that a child will be born with a genetic disorder. Today, it is only legal to carry out two types of advances reproductive technologies on embryos which is know as Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis or PGD (1). PGD allows parents to determine the sex and the genes of the baby and screens embryos for any genetic diseases. It isn’t hard to imagine that someday they will select the babies based on their beauty and intelligence.
In 2000, in the United States, the Nash family made medical history by having a baby boy named Adam, who had been selected using PGD. Molly, Adams sister has Fanconi anemia and the transplant of blood from Adam’s umbilical cord raises her odds of survival by about 55% (2). Is this not ethically wrong? Adam, a newly born infant has been forced to donate his stem cells, which in some experts eyes is seen as a form of child abuse. Joel Newman, the assistant director of communications at the United Network for Organ sharing says “Most living donors are over the age of 18, but there’s a few cases of minors donating body parts such as kidneys to siblings.” Adam is not nearly old enough to understand the risks and benefits of this procedure but his parents are. How is it fair that parents would be willing to have another child and put that child in pain, just to save another one?
Work Cited List:
1.) What is a designer baby? Bionet, November 12, 2010. http://www.bionetonline.org/English/Content/db_cont1.htm
2.) Designer Babies: Ethical considerations. Agar, Nicholas, April 2006. http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html
3.) The Nash Family: Breaking New Ground in Medicine. Frankenfield, Gay, October 4, 2000. http://www.webmd.com/news/20001004/nash-family-breaking-new-ground-in-medicine
4.) Designer Babies: Panse, Sonal. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/designer-babies.html
Blogs commented on:
1.) Grace Elkhechen: Designer Babies.... the future generation
2.) Taylor Lecours: preventing disease or enhancing attributes?
Good job on your blog, there was a lot of great information. To me, it seems like there are good reasons to back up the concept of Designer Babies and there are good reasons to find the concept immoral and inhuman. Just like you, I find the reasons that direct this concept towards immorality to be more justifiable. Just as you mentioned, to have a child designed, really does take away from individuality. When a baby is designed it is not given the opportunity to fully form out of natural outcome and to me that is wrong, the same child could have been born into this world being totally different. Who knows maybe that child may have been born with an illness if it wasn't designed and even if it was, that was the natural outcome. The point is humans need to accept who they are and not strive to be different or to be perfect because you can find flaws in every single person, perfection is unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I like how you made reference to Adam Nash and used him as an example of how unfair it is that the was "selected" to cure another. It's degusting what people think about doing just to save one person's life not taking into consideration the health and safety of the donor child.
All in all, just like you, I totally disagree. Great job!
This is a great blog. I personally would never get a Designer baby, just because I don't think we as humans should decide how our child should look. We should leave that up to God. Plus it takes away from ones individuality. When that child grows up would you tell them that they were a "designed baby"? How would they react? All of this has to be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not you want to have a designer baby.
ReplyDeleteAs far as a child being designed for the sole purpose of saving another child is very unfortunate. Its not fair for that child and when they grow up it will effect them physically and mentally. Overall great blog and I agree with your position.