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A Brave New World Of Designer Babies

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On July 25, 1978, Louise Brown was the first baby ever to not be produced inside the womb naturally (Baird 12). She was referred to as the “test tube baby” (Baird 12). Today this process is called in vitro fertilization or IVF. This process is “often the choice for tens of thousands of infertile couples” (Baird 12). IVF is quite expensive and not always covered by insurance. It can take quite a few failed pregnancies before a successful pregnancy occurs through IVF. Designer babies are taking IVF a step future, and they are designed to be what the parents want it to be. They can pick the gender and appearance of the baby before it’s even conceived. They can also make sure the baby is in perfect health before the process begins. If parents are …show more content…
Sonia M. Suter, writer of the article, “A Brave New World Of Designer Babies?” says, “Gene transfer…improving births, rather than preventing undesirable births…used to enhance certain desirable qualities” (Suter 933). This is done by manipulating the DNA from the parents and using only the desired traits to make the baby they want. By doing so, parents will have a child that will look exactly how they pictured it will look like. If both parents have a big nose and want their children to have a smaller nose, they can get this process done to alter the DNA of the nose to make the nose smaller. If parents are of average height and want their children to be tall, this can be done as well to make their children taller. They can also modify the DNA to make sure their child is more intelligent if they wish, but it’s hard to tell if the final outcome of the child will be more intelligent or not (Baird 14). Baird says, “Whereas…PGD affects only the immediate offspring, germline engineering seeks to affect the genes…thus eliminating the disease or disorder from all future generations, making it no longer inheritable” (Baird 14). This will help the children be healthier and live longer. It can assure parents that their children will not be carrying any disease or disorder, and therefore none of that can be passed on to their children’s …show more content…
Many people feel that “we can get carried away ‘correcting’ perfectly healthy babies” (Baird 16). People will start liking certain characteristics. What’s going to prevent parents from picking what their child will look like? Children will all have similar skin color, same size nose, same eye color and shape, and have the same colored hair. Everyone will essentially look the same and no one will have their own individual look to them. Creating designer babies with germline engineering or gene transfer is so that the child’s appearance will only be enhanced. Their parents probably didn’t have the best features on themselves, so they are helping their own children look better and to prevent being teased or bully in the future. Another argument is that children who aren’t designed, will be social outcasts. Since their parents couldn’t afford to have them genetically enhanced, they could be teased and bullied for not looking like everyone else. It can go the other way as well. Children who are designed could get teased and bullied for looking like everyone else and not having their own distinct look. With germline engineering and gene transfer, the parents are simply refining their child’s look so how they appear won’t hinder them in any way. They aren’t doing it so their child will look like everyone else. An issue that comes from designing babies is that the gene pool will be damaged.

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