By Benedicte Balande
‘Should We Design Our Babies?’
‘Is it right?’
‘It’s important to know the state of your baby’
Contents:
Introduction page 2-3
1. Is it a step too far?
1.1) Do we risk creating children as a medical commodity? Page 4-5
1.2) Could it eventually lead to parents demanding genetically engineered children with good looks and intelligence? Page 5-6
2. Are we fighting against nature?
2.1) Is it correct? Page 6-7
3. What are the arguments?
3.1) Arguments For Designer Babies? Page 7
3.2) Arguments Against Designer Babies? Page 8
4. Conclusion page 9-10
5. Bibliography page 11
Introduction
The term “designer baby” refers to the possibility of a baby that is created by genetic engineering that uses IVF, genetic screening, and alteration to ensure that the baby does or does not possess a particular gene or characteristic. “Designer Babies” is a term used more from the media, rather than scientists themselves. The reason why I chose this topic is simply because of all the controversial attention designer babies have been receiving within the media and also the lack of public acknowledgement about the process of the procedure.
Designer babies can be a quite controversial topic because although it can help scientists screen for embryos with genetic disorders and pick the healthy embryos to use in IVF, the advancements in genetic technologies used in designer babies may lead to parents being able to get their embryos modified and choose desirable characteristics. Some see it as the door to eugenics or perhaps even a more modern way of messing with ‘mother’ nature, while others see it as a way of eradicating diseases and improving the human race.
The Essay on Clones Other Forms Of Genetic Engineering Are All Wrong Can Never Be Justified Do You Agree
Argue a case for or against Clone is the title given to any organisms that are genetically identical. Cloning can be classified as a form of genetic engineering including AID (Artificial Insemination Donor) and AIH (Artificial Insemination Husband) and IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation). AID is the injecting of the semen of a male donor into the womans womb and AIH is the same with the difference that ...
Whether we should pursue and use this technology is the big question, which yet brings up conflicts amongst people and scientists.
Fertility Institutes recently started offering couples the opportunity to screen their embryos for complete characteristics, which involve eye colour, hair colour, and complexion. Fertility Institutes proudly claimed that this was just the icing to the cake, and therefore plan to offer pretty much any conceivable customization as technology now makes it available.
Opponents however condone the company for shattering moral and ethical boundaries. Like it or not, the era of designer babies is officially here and there is no going back.
For decades a technology called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or also known as PGD, has enabled IVF clinics to screen embryos for numerous of potentially and often deadly diseases before the embryo is implanted into the mother’s womb. A medical revolution is unfolding in front of our eyes, its enabling literally thousands of couples and their babies to escape some of the world’s most gruelling diseases. Nevertheless, why should such be the case? How has our culture become extremely fixated and suddenly interested with reproductive lives of others?
The purpose of this procedure is to eliminate numerous flaws that cause imperfections on a baby, such as diseases, odd appearances, undesirable qualities, etc. The procedure has grown more advances over the years that even the simplest thing is being altered, such as eye, hair colour and complexion.
(This Image explains roughly how genetic screening works)
Is it a step too far?
1.1) Do we risk creating children as a medical commodity?
Over the years, Scientist had found a range of solutions and ways to cure ill patients whether it was cancer, diabetes or influenza. Majority of the time a way was found, to heal those diseases by treating them the right way. However, scientists discovered that a lot of diseases could not be cured by describing some drugs some illnesses and/or diseases needed to be cured differently. There are many parents out there who were fortunate enough to have healthy and fit kids what else could they wish for? Giving birth to a healthy baby has not always been the case for some, in order for them to keep their ill babies alive and happy they would need to find a genetically perfect embryo, which would be a near perfect match to their life, threatened babies. The question to be asked is “Is this going to be a wanted child or is it a child that’s only being made to be a donor to its older brother or sister?” If it were the matter, then the baby would be being treated as a commodity.
The Essay on Mad Cow Disease Brain Tissue
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or Mad Cow Disease (BSE), degenerative brain disorder of cattle. Symptoms in cows include loss of coordination and a typical staggering gait. Affected animals also show signs of senility, for example, lack of interest in their surroundings, the abandonment of routine habits, disinterest in feed and water, or unpredictable behavior. Affected cattle show symptoms ...
To see how wrong it may be to some let’s invent an extreme case: If a child was being created just to provide a cure and was going to be sent off for adoption after the treatment was complete, that would clearly be classified as very wrong.
However, in other cases the child is going to be a much-loved member of the family. The new baby will be loved for its own sake, and the special techniques being used are being used to bring additional benefits from the birth. A procedure like this does not happen as often within the UK as it is firmly not legal whiles it is in the United States. However, currently the case of women conceiving a designer baby within the UK is a 2 out of 10 rate.
If the new baby cannot provide suitable cells for the treatment, the parents will be disappointed that there will not be a cure; they will not be disappointed in their new child. And please do consider the fact that: Parents often have mixed motives for having a child – maybe they want to provide company for an existing child, or to improve their own relationship, or satisfy the in-laws, and while we might raise an eyebrow we wouldn’t say that their action was morally wrong.
According to critics, the wrongness of tissue-typing PGD stems is from the fact that it is a procedure undertaken simply for the benefit of another. The embryo is subjected to PGD not to ensure the birth of a healthy child, but in order to serve the need of a sibling for a tissue-matched donor. Conceiving a child in order to harvest bone marrow or cord blood stem cells is unethical when it treats the child solely as a means to the end of saving a sibling’s life.
The Essay on Unwanted Children Baby Parents Problems
Due to recent discussions in my religion class I have been able to reflect more upon the issues of unwanted children and the affects of many different situations. My personal reaction to the problems of unwanted children in our society in the light of the need to treat everyone as created in God's image is that we simply need to realize how devastating the lack of love to children can be. It is a ...
Although the use of tissue-typing PGD cannot provide absolute certainty that parents will view their future child with the same love and respect as they do towards their existing child (ren), neither can it prove the complete opposite.
As tissue-matched siblings serve as the best possible donors for any kind of tissue of organ transplant, the fear about the future or exploitation on one child for the benefit of another firmly expressed. Movies such as My Sisters Keeper express such exploitation on one child for the benefit of another.
However, at the end of the case there is a chance of having a cure as well as a healthy baby that helps saves its sibling as well as its saves its family’s fate. Furthermore, in laws can rejoice as the family expands.
1.2) Could it eventually lead to parents demanding genetically engineered children with good looks and intelligence?
It’s easy to imagine the possibilities for making genetically modified people, using artificial chromosomes or some other technology. A double helping of genes that could create more intelligence or strength could be on the menu soon. That might seem scary to us. Nevertheless, will it seem scary to our children?
This procedure is very expensive, and very gruelling on the parents involved. It’s hard to imagine anyone willingly going through it for fun. (Baring in mind all the cost it involves)
On the negative side it would become the worry that some cultures prefer one sex over another, thus leading to a decline in population etc. (For example the traditional Indian culture see daughters as bad breed because they were sold off to another family with a son to marry. This was costly and so therefore the male gender is vastly more preferred as the payment would be made to the parents of the male.) One major issue to consider is that in some countries like China, would all choose males over females, which would lead to a great imbalance rate etc. On the other hand it would decrease the amount of abortions being carried out or the killing of the females conceived or even having to hide female off spring.
The Essay on Is Daycare Beneficial For Children And Parents?
When you are a child, who takes care of you? Now, the cost of living is so high that many people under age twenty-five are moving back in with their parents. Young people are getting married later now than they used to. The average age for a woman to get married is about twenty-four, and for a man twenty-six. Newly married couples often postpone having children while they are establishing careers. ...
Some may wonder if we would be trying to recreate the idea of the “perfect race” again. Moreover some think we should reject genetic enhancement because of its connection with the eugenics programs promoted by the Nazis leading up to the Second World War. The scientific minions of Adolph Hitler sought to shape the German population by murdering those judged inferior and encouraging those, they saw as their betters to reproduce.
We already have parents making choices about which schools are suitable for their children, how to feed them, who count as a suitable after-school companion, whether children are to be given religious instruction, and if so of what type. In effect, they manipulate their children’s environments to improve or enhance them for not only their child’s benefit but also their own. So by manipulating their looks, intelligence etc. it may cause “natural” children to be considered as inferior as they have not been pre-screened to check for any potential health issues later in life.
This technology would only be available to the very wealthy, but they already have so much more compared to an average, middle-class person. Their children already can have the best education and the stylists to make them look perfect at nearly all times. Designer babies would only make the child’s intelligence, memory and physical appearance guaranteed.
However, now, this technology is used for therapeutic purposes only and is kept in this position by strict laws and even if they did, the probability of them receiving permission from the HFEA to use the procedure is certainly restricted. However, this could become a worry in a country where regulation of such techniques is less rigorous.
Are we fighting against nature?
2.1) Is designing a baby correct?
At this moment of time the technology isn’t yet available, nevertheless the fact that people are considering the procedure about only suggests that various laboratories around are willing to make the effort to make such mission possible, no matter what the ethical costs may be. At this point of the game, we have just begun to understand how sex is determined in an embryo or the epigenetic controls that cause one gene to be viewed over another during blastocyst development. This kind of knowledge could only be applied on test tube babies; fortunately, we are a long way from that.
The Essay on Positive environments for children and young people
Positive environment A positive environment is one that supports all aspects of the child’s development; staff members/carers can provide the children different ways to extend their developments. By doing activities and guiding the children through their learning, this creates a positive environment for them. Example: Reading and writing activities will help the child or young person’s cognitive ...
A designer baby brings up many arguments to the table whether or not this is ethically correct. The problem with ‘helping out’; with the genes in sperm and the egg cell is that we give someone the ability to pass on new genes that have never been present in human beings and pass it on for generations to come and who knows what the future may uphold for human revolution. This gives us the power to change the human race. Although, there is no guarantee that a child will be happy and successful in the future, this technology gives them that increased probability. But if you think about how much money our parents are willing to spend for increased success and happiness in the future, they will be willing to spend a fraction of that money to increase their child’s success and happiness in the future by using genetic engineering. However, with the expense of genetic engineering means only the higher brow can buy disease free super babies, while the lower brow are stuck with the diseases and abnormalities. This difference can totally split the human race into two separate breeds, which in my opinion is unacceptable.
Here could be a possible scenario in the future; a boss has two job applications, one applicant is a super modified human and the other applicant is a regular non-modified person, which would you hire? Obviously, this would brew conflict amongst people; as a result, mixed responses will erupt.
There has also been a case where genetic engineering was used to create a baby with hearing problems for a deaf homosexual couple who were in desperate of an offspring with the same disability as them as a result the couple chose a male sperm donor with deafness in his family history. Who would ever want to be born deaf? This technology is ethical to some extent, but the only way to protect our societies from the ability of genetic engineering is public awareness and drawing the line on how far we want to go. Nevertheless, the question is, is our society truly ready for that? What will the impact of such be to our society?
The Term Paper on Understanding children and young people 2
Parenting is a most challenging yet rewarding experience. Baumrind, who studied parenting styles during the early 1960s, concluded that they differ in four important areas: parents’ warmth/nurturance, discipline strategy, communication skills, and expectations of maturity. She posited three types of parenting styles: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative (Berger 2001). Parents are the ...
What Are The Arguments?
3.1) The arguments for designer babies?
There are numerous arguments for as well as against designer babies until this day the argument goes on with no agreement.
One of the first argument pro designer baby that pops up in many people’s mind when the subject is brought up is ‘they can be used to cure that siblings they have’. Neglecting the fact that they have to use the baby’s stem cell from its umbilical cord or bone narrow in order to help the ill sibling. The second child is usually born through embryo screening to ensure that the gene is not present and they grow to be healthy. Then, considering their genetic make-up is as near perfect to their siblings, help can be offered usually in the form of surgery. Most parents want the best for their children if that is the only way save one and gain another than it is a good procedure. Most parents have a second child for the benefit of the first child because they feel it is better for the child not to grow up alone.
On one hand even if many people may oppose to this particular point, the procedure does have its benefits embryo selection is not genetic engineering by any means. If anything, surely a child who was the key to curing their sibling would be more valued, not less.
On the other argument to consider, it gives parents a wider choice resulting in a higher chance of them being happy as a result they are more likely to bond with the child.
To design a baby is to design every characteristic, which can be helpful in one particular area, families with a history of obesity or other health related issues coming from birth. If you design your baby, rather than risk its chances of developing these health issues, you will be granting it a healthier life. Who can say who can and who cannot decide for their own child, especially if it is possibly the right option! A parent makes the choices for a child right through to the end of adolescence (often beyond), who is to say these choices should not begin within the womb?
One other moral argument for designer babies would be creating better people. Reproduction is the key of creation of new people. Why not try to make them the healthiest, happiest and most productive possible? That is good for the babies, good for the parents and good for society as a whole. According for pro designer babies activists it is called positive eugenics.
What Are The Arguments?
3.2) The arguments against designer babies?
Compared to the arguments for designer babies the arguments against are higher. There are a large number of reasons; both ethical and scientific many people disagree with designer babies due to the fact if people start selecting too much by trait it could arguably change the balance in society. Because of that it could possibly cause inequality in gender balance if that happened a lot.
Baring in my mind if the procedure does go wrong parents could get rather frustrated that their presumably hard earned money goes to waste what would happen to the child? Is anybody considering what would possibly happen to that embryo? Even if the procedure was to go right, what if the parents decided they were not mentally stable to be parents or perhaps they do not like the way they newborn child looks? They cannot just give the child away like that. That is considered as morally wrong but people argue adoption would be another option referring to my earlier point parents some people are fortunate enough to bare healthy kids whereas some are completely incapable.
However if babies can be genetically modified to produce a “super race” of people, immune from disease, stronger, more intelligent, etc. Then there are raising concerns that people who cannot afford the treatment will be seriously disadvantaged and therefore leading to a greater gap between the wealthy and the poor. Whereas then you have the fact that you are taking away the some sort of choice from the baby it should have in process of growing up. Shouldn’t the baby have the right to choose whether to be genetically altered or not?
From a religious point of view designer babies is playing ‘God’ the God of the bible is the God you have either take it or leave it but you are not encouraged to redesign him and works.
To some they seem unethical. However, designer babies have a definite advantage over the rest of our society, they don`t get to choose how they will turn out. What if they don`t like themselves, then they can only blame their parents and because designer babies have an advantage, they make other people jealous. Some parents may just design their baby in order to fit in with their time not considering how times change and their child’s appearance possibly being a cause of them suffering from depression and bullying whiles growing up.
Conclusion
The controversial argument of designer babies can never be completely answered their will always be some sort backlash from either religious point of view, scientific or perhaps even from the media.
In my opinion, the complete designer baby case is not right I strongly believe that children are not a commodity, neither are they a right. They are individual human beings, and are not alive to simply satisfy their parent’s wants or needs. Neither are they a spare nor repair part factory. There are always hard cases, but the rights of the “designer” baby fundamentally must come first, not the needs of parents or siblings even if genetically modifying a child may save another.
I do indeed consider that many parents decide to expand their family because they feel it is better for the child not to grow up alone. But having the child being conceived naturally in my opinion has always got a better effect upon the mother and the child and the child and its older siblings relationship as a whole. The child will not feel as if it was an outcast.
For instance if we look at the movie my sisters keeper which features actress Cameron Diaz it is a story about a girl with leukaemia. Her parents, through PGD and IVF, conceive yet another girl so that she may be a bone marrow donor for her older sibling. It certainly did affect my choice of topic and yet what I might do if I was in that exact same position. My sense is that I would want to do whatever I could but how far is too far? The movie does raise this question quite a lot. The donor sister is only eleven years old when she fights her parents for medical emancipation. Although the ill sister wanted to die without telling her mother, I could understand if some people may think conceiving an eleven year old and putting her through being a donor as acceptable as she is saving their families fate. I personally oppose.
Everything starts of small and harmless but when it evolves, the original intentions begin to change slowly but surely. Through allowing designer babies, parents will be able to chose hair colour, eye colour and perhaps even IQs. I think that we should draw a line, as it is unacceptable, unethical and dangerous. Everybody knows that the stereo type of beauty is blue eyes, blonde hair and exceptional height. I feel by allowing designing babies we teleporting back to the Nazi era. Then without noticing, it we will demand for pedigree babies and the key to survive in this world would be to create perfection.
But, the real problem is that the embryos are deliberately created and then destroyed and discarded as if they were medical trash. They too are little human beings. The future of designer babies is still unsure, but we need to be very cautious and consider the consequences of our actions before it changes our society forever.
I carried out a survey to find out if people preferred having the ability to design their off spring or not and the results speak for themselves but it does clearly express that people prefer not to design their children for various reasons.
“Of course it should be allowed. I have seen my daughter dying of thalassaemia major. No one can understand what parents goes through, seeing the child dying slowly and we can’t do anything for them.”
“Science for many is a religion with no limits concerning, morality, ethics and spirituality. Unfortunately history has proven long term affects of science can be disastrous.”
“I don’t agree with creating a “designer baby” because it is messing with genetics and nature. In the past nature was left alone and there was no need for designer babies and now because scientists have started messing with genetics, there is now the need for designer babies to put right the mess they have made.
Bibliography…
http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_eth.htm – For and Against Arguments- Reliable
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&hl=en&biw=1241&bih=640&tbm=isch&tbnid=BZIT-PrwIRbMjM:&imgrefurl=http://www.hookedongolfblog.com/gallery2/v/TigerWoods/TigerWoodsBaby3.jpg.html&docid=gkTrIEfPO8gUYM&imgurl=http://www.hookedongolfblog.com/gallery2/d/10669-2/TigerWoodsBaby3.jpg&w=235&h=350&ei=wHFzT9DEBIOl0QXZ0tUU&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=429&vpy=244&dur=2099&hovh=274&hovw=184&tx=99&ty=226&sig=100415139954484058056&page=1&tbnh=136&tbnw=91&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:0 – Tiger woods + baby http://biologicalsicence.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/all-about-designer-babies.html – General Info http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/End%20of%20the%20World/Genetics%20Nightmare/designer_babies.htm – Reliable General Info
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123439771603075099.html
http://www.web-books.com/eLibrary/ON/B0/B16/14MB16.html – a clinical match picture
http://biotech.about.com/od/stemcellresear2/i/designerbaby.htm Reliable info
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/edexcel_pre_2011/genes/genesrev4.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3913053.stm – General info
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7918296.stm Facts and Info
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/4885836/Designer-baby-row-over-clinic-that-offers-eye-skin-and-hair-colour.html
