We, as a society, should always be moving forward and bettering ourselves, but is genetic manipulation the best way to do it? Gene editing can help cure fatal diseases in children however it could be possible for parents to choose their children’s personality traits. Science should be used to better a person’s life, not determine it. It is not a moral obligation of a parent to screen out “personality flaws” but it is a parent’s moral obligation if they want to cure their child of sickle cell disease and save the child from a painful and possibly shortened life. It is wrong for parents and scientists to play God, except in the instance it could save the child from suffering.
Now that scientists have successfully modified human embryos, the debates is on if human germline editing, changing the genetic code of future descendants, is an ethical thing to do. People say it is unnatural, but so are antibiotics and modern medicine. Another argument against gene editing is that it is changing the next generation without their consent, which is an awful argument because they cannot consent if they do not exist. The more time …show more content…
Another thing is that they believe it will be abused to make “the perfect” child. However, it is important to think about how many lives it will save and how much better the overall health of society would be. It would be used to save living breathing people for slow deaths such a huntington’s disease, which activates around age 40 and slowly eats at the brain until the patient is brain dead. Genetic manipulation would also have to be done by a qualified doctor so parents could not just go and ask for their child to have all these traits and none of these traits because it would have to be a regulated procedure and gene manipulation has only been used to fix single genetic mutations and not multiple gene
Now that scientists have successfully modified human embryos, the debates is on if human germline editing, changing the genetic code of future descendants, is an ethical thing to do. People say it is unnatural, but so are antibiotics and modern medicine. Another argument against gene editing is that it is changing the next generation without their consent, which is an awful argument because they cannot consent if they do not exist. The more time …show more content…
Another thing is that they believe it will be abused to make “the perfect” child. However, it is important to think about how many lives it will save and how much better the overall health of society would be. It would be used to save living breathing people for slow deaths such a huntington’s disease, which activates around age 40 and slowly eats at the brain until the patient is brain dead. Genetic manipulation would also have to be done by a qualified doctor so parents could not just go and ask for their child to have all these traits and none of these traits because it would have to be a regulated procedure and gene manipulation has only been used to fix single genetic mutations and not multiple gene