The Ethics Of Designer Babies

Bring your partner, grab a seat, pick up your baby catalog and start choosing. Will you go for the brown hair or blond? Would you prefer tall or short? Funny or clever? Girl or boy? And do you want them to be a muscle-bound sports hero? Or a slender and intelligent bookworm? Imagine a perfect world, were everyone was perfect and designed a certain way. Designed how your parents wanted you to be like. Imagine the feeling once finding out you were made into the child your parents thought was “the perfect” child. Technology has had a tremendous effect on how we live our lives ranging from how we find information to the way we travel across the country. Technology is also changing the life of some new children. A new system of genetic engineering, …show more content…
New technologies have been made to combat autism, Down syndrome and other genetic diseases that are diagnosed before a child is born (The Ethics of "Designer Babies"). This is also useful for preventing heredity linked diseases. Genetically modifying an unborn baby’s genes has also been praised by parents for allowing them to be able to “design” their child. This includes being able to choose gender, hair and eye colour, and other physical appearances. Designer babies could lead to new discoveries, but is it right for parents to …show more content…
If the parents are able to choose what their child looks like, they are expecting the child to already look a certain way. This is setting up the parents’ expectations of what their child will be. If the child does not meet their expectations, the parents may neglect them more so than they would of a naturally created child. A parent should love their child no matter what they look like, even if it is not what they especially want. Also, a naturally born child may become more neglected compared to the designer baby because parents may think that child is more special. This type of genetic modification creates an opportunity for countries “such as China and India where boys are favoured over girls, this technology could be used so that every set of parents that wants a baby boy will get one.” (Ahmad). This could ultimately harm society because if there is a lack in one gender, the ability to reproduce would be diminished. Also, the more genetically modified children are found throughout society, it would lead to a lack of individuality. This could have detrimental effects of not only social atmospheres, but also in the genetic gene pool and could complicate reproduction in the human population. Genetically modifying children’s genes may also lead to social problems. It could create a “race or class” of genetically