All of this is done through In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) where the embryo is ‘conceived’ in a little test tube or Petri dish in a nice, sterilized lab. The little embryo, along with a few other of its ‘siblings’ sit in optimal conditions until a cell can be extracted and screened for the eventual traits of the future child. Based on what the parents want, a suitable embryo is then selected and placed into the mother, where it develops like a normal embryo would. And voilà! You’ve got yourself your ‘dream child’.
I’m sure it sounds tempting. Being able to choose almost exactly how your child turns out, ensuring that they won’t be born into a diseased future from the genes they have, and being sure that they’ll be able to excel at anything they want to try. Plus, what’s one genetically modified child in a world of over 6.7 billion people? It’s like a cup of water being poured into the ocean. No one is going to notice it, so what could possibly go wrong? While genetically choosing your child might give you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside knowing that you’ve made its life a lot easier, it’s probably going to have horrible repercussions on the rest of the world, not to mention the ethical issues that go along with it.
One large problem is the future of children if genetically engineered children become widespread and favoured over natural children. It has already begun to become popular around the world in the form of gender selection. “Dr. Steinberg, Director at The Fertility Institutes, claims that they are performing on the order of 10 gender selection fertilizations every week, each for a fee of $18,400.” (singularityhub.com) It seems like a lot of money just to choose the gender of the child. What happens when children can be customized in every single way? The price tag would be huge.
Even in the present day, parents can be disappointed that their children don’t turn out the way they expected. With a fee so large, it seems like these designer babies would be investments that parents make to ensure perfection. Can you imagine being told you should be what your parents want you to be because they paid thousands of dollars for you? If genetically engineered children become popular, and they probably will, it seems that parenting will begin to lose the warmth and love that is supposed to go along with it, and become a competition of the best child, along with giving parents a mindset of ‘I paid a lot of money for you, so you better turn out the way I planned.’
From an ethical standpoint, genetically engineering babies is close to crossing the line. Using IVF creates many embryos, from which only one is selected. The fertilization clinic is then responsible for the rest of the unused embryos. More often than not, they’re just discarded as if they were unimportant. This brings up the debate of whether or not an embryo is considered ‘living’ and has a right to remain so, even if the parents don’t want it. Using these methods to engineer babies would result in hundreds of unused embryos that would be simply discarded because they’re deemed useless.
Is it right to have these future children being thrown away simply because they don’t have traits desired by the parents? Some bioethicists state that genetic screening was supposed to be used to deter life-threatening illnesses from taking hold on future generations, but see engineering children to avoid certain characteristics is a bad use of the technology.“I’m totally against this. My goal is to screen embryos to help couples have healthy babies free of genetic diseases. Traits are not diseases,” as said by William Kearns, a medical geneticist. (hplusmagazing.com) Some embryos are not allowed to develop because they don’t meet someone else’s standards, which from many people’s views, is ethically and morally wrong.
As I heard earlier this week on the radio, more and more children are being born prematurely or in multiples each year. The two main reasons for this are older mothers, who are causing children to be born earlier, and multiples, which often force doctors to remove the children by means of a caesarean section. Multiples are a common effect of IVF, because more than one embryo is usually transferred over, to increase likeliness of getting pregnant. This also increases the risk of having children die early, or missing important development during the last few weeks as a fetus. Genetically modified babies may have ‘ideal traits’, but if we get carried away, it could result in different issues.
Another issue is linked to the last bio-blog topic of biodiversity. We’re already so enchanted by the media and its concept of ‘real beauty’ that cosmetic surgery is on the rise. Now we would be able to save our children the hassle of doing this later by choosing the best cosmetic traits before they’re even born. Not only will this decrease the biodiversity and the genetic pool of the human race, but eventually, everyone may begin to look extremely similar. In a society where some traits are more desired than others, one can only imagine what everyone would look like if we could predetermine the outcome. We’re fighting natural selection and making it become unnatural. What trait will be ‘special’ when everyone has it? Genetically engineering babies seems like unnatural selection and goes completely against biodiversity.
As Dr. Steinberg, the leading geneticist of a Los Angeles clinic, says, “[Trait selection] is a service [and] we intend to offer it soon.” (online.wsj.com) At the moment, this technology is part of an industry that brings in huge profits annually. Geneticists such as Steinberg may be thinking about the parents and the children, but they’re also probably driven by the ‘rewards’ of such a popular industry. Soon, babies won’t be left up to chance, but carefully selected to meet the parents’ every whim. Our society prizes aesthetics so much that this technology will definitely be used by people around the world, by more than the many people that use it right now to choose the gender of their children.
This technology originated to help find genetic disorders, and help stop them from ever occurring. This newfound industry is moving away from what was originally intended, and things have definitely gotten out of hand. Artificial intelligence was supposed to be able to create perfect ‘humans’ that would fit into society. With genetic engineering, who needs to build robots when you can just build a baby? This inevitable future is going to take the depth of parenting and turn it into a competition that is going to homogenize society, along with throwing everything out of balance not, to mention the embryos that are being thrown away like trash. Compliment someone’s child sometime in the near future and you might just hear, “Thanks. I picked the parts myself.”
Sources:
"A Baby, Please. Blond, Freckles -- Hold the Colic" - The Wall Street Journal
"Designer Babies" - Time Magazine
"'Designer Babies' Ethical?" - CBS News
"Designer Babies - Like It Or Not, Here They Come" - Singularityhub.com
"Designer baby row over US clinic" - BBC News
"Designer Babies: A Right to choose?" - Wired.com
"The Great Designer Baby Controversy of '09" - h+ Magazine
Commented on:
Yulenka Rebello - Prada Children: Designer Babies
Christina Chong - No one can be perfect? Think again
I liked your post. It was really interesting. I didn’t even think about the whole issue of our biodiversity changing, and it’s pretty frightening. I don’t think that people realize what this kind of genetic advancement could do to our world. We could end up living in a world full of live Barbies (and Kens of course)!
ReplyDeleteYou talked about the discarded embryos, and I believe that it’s a pretty important detail of the process that many parents don’t know about, or tend to overlook. Maybe if people knew about all those embryos that were just thrown away, they might reconsider what they are doing.
What you said about parenting changing was some pretty intense stuff. I don’t think that parenting will necessarily begin to lose its ‘warmth and love’ but, I agree - it will definitely change a lot. I mean, your parents are supposed to be the people who love you for who you are, not for what they ‘designed’ you to be.
It was a great post and I liked reading it!
Wow, what a brilliant blog!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading it and I LOVE the title. How clever of you!
Anyways, you're blog is very insightful. It's interesting how different scientists have different intentions for this practice. This is something that has the potential to help parents and children who may have genetic disorders, but if in the wrong hands, will do not much good.
The one thing that I would have to disagree with is that I don't think people will necessarily look the same, because one parents' preferences will be a different from another, and maybe one set of parents will not have the genes to pass on compared to another set of parents. But you are definitely right on about changes in parenting styles. I liked how Yulenka put it, "I mean, your parents are supposed to be the people who love you for who you are, not for what they ‘designed’ you to be. "
And I really agree with you. I think that people will just make this a competition of making the best child. But if the child is not good enough, people will just move on to the next child and leave the child neglected. To design a child for our own needs is pretty heartless, if you ask me.
Thanks for your post Anthony ! : )
"If genetically engineered children become popular, and they probably will, it seems that parenting will begin to lose the warmth and love."
ReplyDelete‘I paid a lot of money for you, so you better turn out the way I planned.’
Parents not loving their children because they expect them to be perfect? That is so sad. It reminds me of those robot creation movies where they make massive swarms because if you are choosing how you want your baby to look like, it's just not natural. It's as if the baby has been manufactured instead of given birth to.
"Traits are not diseases,” as said by William Kearns, a medical geneticist
That is so true! The point at first of creating these genetic modification processes at first was to take away or make sure that no diseases would harm grow upon the baby but now, people are taking advantage and misuing the processes. I personally think that it is okay to use these processes only for medical purposes. Using them for physical and mental attributes just because some parents PREFER their child to be one way is taking it too far. Even gender choosing is unnecessary.
Btw you are a very good writer (:
ReplyDeleteHey Anthony,
ReplyDeleteYour blog was a great read and was definately interesting. I agree with your point on what happens to embryo's that get thrown away. This is one of the most unethical parts of genetic alteration as unwanted babies are discarded of and no one really thinks of the life that they are killing.
The point you made on biodiversity was something I hadn't thought about when i was researching and writing my bioblog. It really would be odd if there were numerous people that had the same appearance and there was nothing unique about them anymore.
Science has done great things in the past, including advancements that allow to screen for heredity disorders/diseases that may be passed on. There are ofcourse lines that don't need to be crossed when it comes to choosing the appearance and strenghts of babies. Your blog post effectively described both the pros and cons of modifying and selecting our children's genes.
I loved reading this and learning more about this topic! Good job! :)
Hey Anthony,
ReplyDeleteI love how you touched on the debate of wether or not an embryo is living or not.
"Geneticists such as Steinberg may be thinking about the parents and the children, but they’re also probably driven by the ‘rewards’ of such a popular industry."
This brings up a good point. Because it is illigal to genetically experiment on humans, but then why would the government still be paying for this research to be done? Although it is not clearly stated, for me, I take it your against genetically inhanced embryos. And well i would have to agree with you, particually about this being morally and ethically wrong. The designer of babies, and the destroying of "useless" or "imperfect" embryos. Do they deserve to live less than the "perfect" ones? I know this is from a more science prospective, but as a believer in God this is so wrong, in everyway. Well sure try to eliminate genetic disorders and chromosome disorders, but some genes are made to function the way the embryo is, and by us pulling and picking at it we threaten that natural balance.
Also i must say, i love how you related this bio-blog topic to the preview bio-blog topics.
"Genetically engineering babies seems like unnatural selection and goes completely against biodiversity."
Hi Anthony,
ReplyDeleteA designed baby with no problems at all. The child you dream of having. That would be great in an imaginary world. But seriously, designer babies won’t become an option, not anytime soon.
“I paid a lot of money for you, so you better turn out the way I planned.”
If my parents said that to me, I would cry. To have that sort of statement stuck inside my mind every single day would probably kill. Imagine yourself as a “designed baby”. Every single day, you think that you’re paid, you’re a “toy”, not “natural”, etc. Imagine if everyone around you knows that you are a designed baby. What a depressing life. If any possible side effects of genetic modification don’t kill me, I would just kill myself.
“Build a Baby”. Sounds like a game you can find on the internet. Why continue to play the game, when you know there is a game over? We cannot live forever, even without any sickness. Eventually there will be a game over for us. Just live life perfectly and naturally, right?
-Jenny
(Very interesting blog. “The more the merrier”. Haha, really cute penguins.)
Hey Anthony,
ReplyDeleteWhen you mentioned the potential competition between children; who has the best child, I felt as though I couldn't agree more; it would truly become a beauty contest.
Furthermore, what I found the most interesting was when you said:
"Can you imagine being told you should be what your parents want you to be because they paid thousands of dollars for you?"
I thought your point came across very clearly in that sentence. It also brought up a point I hadn't thought about before. If parents are willing to alter their children, they must be quite "shallow" (so to speak). Who's to say they won't be as shallow when there child enjoys reading when he/she was MADE/SUPPOSED to like sports?
I would also like to comment on your question of whether embryos are living or not. When we think about it from a technical view point, any living human cell is "human life", that being said, they should not be discarded of, and the only way to prevent that from happening is to simply not use IVF. At the same time IVF can also be used to help make a seriously sick child healthy. I strongly believe those cases can be considered exceptions.
To finish off, I just wanted to congratulate you on a great blog, i really enjoyed reading it:)
Hi Anthony Vu!
ReplyDeleteI like how you explained how the steps on creating a designer baby, and how you have several pictures. I especially like the penguins. :)
"This technology originated to help find genetic disorders, and help stop them from ever occurring"
I like this comment because, Designer babies started off with trying to help perserve life, then it changed into designing life which is out of bounds.
I'm surprised with your reserach. You've gone far enough to get a doctor's (Dr. Steinberg) research and get his opinion when it started.
"One large problem is the future of children if genetically engineered children become widespread and favoured over natural children"
I think that these children that arn't natural will become out-casts in life, and tehy will be treated differently from the other children.
You have alot of nice research and even a video. I like :)
First of all your title is hilarious. But it is quite accurate. It is scary to think that in the future there is a possibility that just like the store "Build-a-bear", we will be able to walk in and line up to chose the baby of our dreams.
ReplyDelete"Is it right to have these future children being thrown away simply because they don’t have traits desired by the parents?"
and well the answer to that is "of course not". What kind of parents follow society's perspective of beauty to create a child? I thought that parents were supposed to want and love their child simply because it's theirs. since when did a child with brown hair become less desirable than a child with red hair? it seems very shallow to me, and it takes away from the value and beauty of life itself.
Then that makes you wonder if science is taking it too far, or if it's the people that are mis-using it.
There is probably no right answer to that, but personally I just think scientists should just back-off when it comes to modifying humans. leave it to tomatoes.