Imagine a world where you can cure cancer by choosing which genes to erase out of your babies body, not having to worry about your child growing up fighting a disease that ends its life even after all that fighting. What a wonderful world that would be, full of eliminated terror. Then on the news you see where a scientist is talking about designing a new race of humans to mix in with the old, to cleanse the undesirable genes from all mankind. To make a super race.
A designer baby is a term used to describe a cloned embryo that has had it genes chosen. Right now the only thing you can do with this are choose what color eyes and hair your baby will have, or what sex it will be. In the future scientists want to be able to pick and choose exactly which genes your child will have, meaning removing some and replacing those with genes engineered in a lab. This could be all the difference in having a child with a great personality and a child with a gloomy personality. Scientists are extremely excited about controlling the outcome of a new era in humanity, but are they thinking about the drawbacks? Why do they believe these experiments on humans will do well when the experimentation on animals hasn’t gone well at all? When making a pro and con list scientists are faced with less good effects than bad effects. Is this an ethically correct way to improve the human race?
Animal experimentation has gone quite well in some cases dealing with cloning, but those are the only times you hear about cloning. These scientists doing the experiments don’t want to talk about when something goes wrong. In most experiments both the cloned baby and its host mother dies, other times the baby is stillborn, the rarities are alive. These rarities are the ones shown on the news world wide, showing a onesided experiment. When faced with these high chances of having a stillborn child a mother would not want to be included in that. It is emotionally damaging and quite possibly physically damaging to the mother.
When scientists are faced with writing a pro con list on designer babies, even they have to admit that the effects things that could happen are far greater than that of the good effects. The good effects consist of preventing genetic diseases such as cancer, helping infertile parents have children, parents wont spend as much money for the childs healthcare in the future, and less stress for parents. All great things to want your child to have but what if the chances of that really happening are slimmed down? When embryos are taken from a mother or a host there is a minimum of 4 taken, out of four maybe 1 will become the baby. The others are thrown away. Genetic engeneering could lead to parents chooseing exactly how their child will act and how it will look. Adding this up seems to subtract unique qualities from the child. Many are born to make someone else happy not the child.
Is this moral behavior? Do the scientists believe they are god? A quote from a scientists states ” even people who might welcome the growth of genetic knowledge and technology are worried about the power of geneticists, genetic engineers, and any governmental authority armed with genetic technology…” Dr. Leon Kass. With the very scientists who are working on this project know exactly what the people are thinking, why do they not quench our fears? Ethical is being consistent with agreed principles of correct moral conduct. Are these experiments ethical when not everyone has agreed that they are?
When these babies are grown and told of how they were conceived, unlike any other child, what will they think? Will they believe themselves to be abominations, built in the lab and tested on such as a lab rat? When experiments on animals are failing and these experiments were meant for humans why would we act upon such experiments? While scientists agree that there are still more terrible effects than the respectable effects, why are we still pushing for these experiments to be performed on humans? Why do we believe ourselves ethically right when not everyone agrees upon this being ethical? Is designing your baby really the way to go?
Information found at:
www.howard-winn.k12.ia.us/profects/ind_stdy06/ac/desbab/procon.html
www.ifgene.org/proscons.htm
www.scienceprogress.org
