Designer Babies?

Designer Babies

Parents can now pick a kid's sex and screen for genetic illness. Will

they someday select brains and beauty too?

In the ever- advancing technological world, scientists discover new and efficient ways to advance society each and every single day. Imagine being able to choose your child's body type, or personality, or IQ. It is not as farfetched as it sounds. It's a process called "Gene Therapy", and is being perfected right now. This process rules out any unknown's in childbirth. It will not only allow us to determine the child's sex, but also his future.

In natural child conception, the mother provides the the two X chromosomes and the father provides the X and Y chromosomes. The balance of genetic make up is determined by the father since he is the only one that has the diversity of genes. With all this, the genetic combinations are completely random, allowing much room for fault. With science controlling the joining of such chromosomes, many of the fatal or physically impairing infant diseases will disappear. Scientist' say they can pick out disease causing genes in the pre-natal stage before they grow.

Controlling infant disease is only one aspect of the new technology.

Determining a child's sex is also under discussion. As a very controversial topic, determining a child's sex will also reflect on society's views of gender rolls in the world today. Many societies value men over women immensely, so will this reflect on the diversity of sex in future generations? A society predominately male populated will soon overlook the need for women, and with the technology advancements in the past years, women may truthful become obsolete (child bearing wise). Babies manufactured in test tubes would eliminate the need for women, and since most country's do indeed favor men over women, the world may very well be run by males.

ETHICAL ISSUES

Who is to say it is right to deprive a child of it's natural existence?

The child, born and created through genetic manipulation, will still be human, but will live in a synthetically altered reality. A human, born or unborn, has the right to have his/her own identity, naturally created by a mother or father, not a scientist.

What right do we (science) have assuming that we can step in and

"takeover" mother nature and the natural process? If something is natural, that is the it is supposed to be, the way it has always been.

Complications thus far in the natural human life, consist of infant

disease and death. It seems the humane thing to do to try to save these children from this unpleasant fate, but that is reality. If we alter reality we are altering our world, and who we are.

Who Gets the Good Genes?

In Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel "Brave New World", childbirth is

controlled by science