The rapid development of technology has tremendous effects on changing the life of us, and possibly some of our children. Thanks to the immense progress of bio-techniques, creating a new individual with enhancement of selected traits has been partially realized on animals. For instance, some geneticists have introduced an additional gene NR2B into mouse genomes. Consequently, these genetic-modified mice learned things significantly faster from the environment and retained knowledge longer than other mice (Saenz, 2009). More importantly, some experts claim that similar technologies are within reach of creating designer babies in decades (Tokar, 2001). The term of “Designer Baby” is defined as the genetic modification of embryos in order to artificially …show more content…
Due to its exorbitant expense, “Designer Baby” may limit its accessibility to the rich, who can afford the gene clinics to select favourable genes for their offspring. Nonetheless, the eugenic vision is dangerous, and it encourages a “grotesque consumerist mentality toward children” (Tokar, 2001). Fostering the concept that only "Designer Baby" with particular traits is worth living will perpetuate standards of perfection that caters to political and economic elites, and threaten our solidarity with those underprivileged. In a few notorious cases, some prerequisite technologies of “Designer Baby”, like prenatal and pre-implantation screening, have been abused in some parts of India and China to select and abort babies of undesirable gender (Ravitsky, 2011). It can be reasonably speculated that, as feared by many human rights activists, the widespread "Designer Baby" technology will potentially expand the social gap between the privileged and the underprivileged, exacerbate social injustice, and intensify discrimination against anyone perceived as having genetic “imperfection". More frighteningly, in the long run, as embryos are elaborately manipulated to formulate anticipated intellectual, physical and mental advantages, transhumanists will likely to breed a genetically superior race of super-humans. They undermine the equality of humans, and will perhaps pose a potential threat on ethical principles of equality. Consequently, these super-humans may bring in new social arrangement, stigmatize peers without genetic enhancements as genetic inferiors, much similar to our current view on chimpanzees, suitable for zoo exhibits and drug testing (Agar, 2006). In particular, those who are not genetically engineered may experience an inevitable loss of working opportunity because of their latent defective genes. Therefore, in