Designer Babies
December 7, 2015 The prospect of designer babies, like many of the ethical dilemmas presented by the genetic revolution, is confronting the world so rapidly that doctors, ethicists, religious leaders and politicians are just starting to face with the implications, and trying to decide how they feel about it. Deciding the babies gender is just one of the many possibilities available with gene alteration. What must be considered though is the idea that this new development goes against our human nature. We are choosing how a human will look like and how his body will react to certain things before this person is even born, just like GMO’s in our food, an alteration of an organism so that it is better or even “perfect”. The ethical issues brought by this technique from the genetics labs are likely to be very complicated. What if parents can use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to avoid having kids with attention-deficit disorder or those predestined to be short or predisposed to homosexuality? Will they feel pressure from friends and relations to do so? And will kids who are allowed to be born with these characteristics be made to feel even more like second-class citizens than they do now? This technique is beginning to be more popular by the hour, and it is important that it is controlled in the correct way. This new development is incredibly powerful to the human race because it is capable of altering every little defect a human has or may have in the future. People ask themselves if this is something good, but most of them hesitate when they try to look for an explanation of how they feel about this, on one side we can prevent deathly diseases like HIV and Cancer, but on the other side, the abuse of this technique, when altering how the person will look like physically, or how intelligent he/she will be, is greatly possible. The kinds of genetic alteration parents might be willing to elect to enhance already healthy children is the question now. Gene therapy can be used to add genes for HIV resistance, give a child an attractive face or a pleasing personality. No one is certain when these techniques will be available, and many professionals protest that they're not interested in perfecting them. The issue is too delicate for doctors and for the families. Is it wrong to want a perfect baby? Or should this technology be banned for good? I think that this topic is extremely relevant, especially to our new generations. We have all of this new technology right on the palm of out hands, and we have the privilege of doing whatever we want with it. The problem is when we don’t know the limits, when we are unable to separate what is appropriate or not and we don’t consider the consequences. Designer babies are brought to us by new medical developments, and it is crucial that we do the right thing with it, or the outcome could result in societies trying to create the “perfect human” by altering every baby. This would not only be inhumane, but it would also reduce our gene pool drastically. Sex selection will undoubtedly raise complicated issues as well. Societies that value boys more highly than girls, including China and India, are already out of balance; this could tip the scales even further. Such an outcome is unlikely in the U.S., where surveys show that equal numbers of parents want girls as boys. But the same polls report that Americans believe an ideal family has a boy as the oldest child. Boys often end up being more assertive and more dominant than girls, as do firstborn children, this would result in a twist in the population toward doubly dominant firstborns, making it even harder it to get rid of a society strong with gender-role stereotypes. The Designer Baby technique should replace the GMO’s topic in this course . I believe that designer babies are much more of an issue in our present than GMO’s, even if we don't hear about it that much, it is definitely a big step for genetic development. There is a great difference between altering our food and altering our baby’s genes. With GMO’s the concerns are if this food is harmful for us to eat, but with designer babies the concerns are much greater. Our whole world could change if we start altering our babies. Countries like China, in which families prefer having a son, this technique would be overused, and their population could end up critically unbalanced with the possibility of ending their race. But also, in this same country, the technique could be use to balance their ratio of women to men, which is already unbalanced now. Two possibilities are always present when it comes to designer babies; we have to be capable of choosing the correct one. This is why this topic should be included in this course, so that in the near future, when we decide to have a family and the possibility to alter the genes of our baby comes, we know to do the correct thing. We need to be educated enough to know the consequences of this procedure and use it in the most ethical and efficient way possible, not let anyone try to tell us erroneous theories that could change our minds in the wrong direction. Designer babies can lead the way into a world without terminal diseases, and although the result could be disturbing, trying to stop it might cause even more disturbing choices.

Works Cited
Friedman, Lauren F. "These Are the Countries Where It's 'legal' to Edit Human Embryos (hint: The US Is One)." Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 23 Apr. 2015. Web. 07 Dec. 2015
James Gallagher. "'Designer Babies' Debate Should Start, Scientists Say - BBC News." BBC News. BBC News, 19 Jan. 2015. Web. 07 Dec. 2015.