Designer Babies Controversy

In this paper I will analyze the controversy of designer babies and the possible effects on children and society. I will begin by describing preimplantation genetic diagnosis and the term “designer babies.” Then, I will explain the controversy of babies designed for certain traits and how a child could be affected by being designed. Further, I will provide arguments that support selected traits for children, then I will provide arguments that analyze the concerns of children “designed” for specific traits. Next, I will explain how autonomy and utilitarianism applies to the children that are designed for specific traits and the decision making of the parents. Following this, I will explain my point of view on the controversy of designer babies …show more content…
In Gattaca, a person was designed to have six fingers on each hand to be an incredible pianist. He was very successful and created music that could only be played with twelve fingers. His parents wanted to have a child who was an excellent piano player and through this procedure, their son became very successful(Gattaca). Although this may seem like parental pressure, this may be no different from the pressure parents already put on their children. For example, even if someone was not genetically altered to become a good piano player, but their parents really wanted their child to be a good piano player, they could still pressure their child to go to hours of practices for most days of the week and be an excellent piano player. In other words, the genetic altering of the genome would not necessarily result in any more parental pressure than …show more content…
If a considerably less amount of people knows anyone with or have a predisposition to these diseases, there will be significantly less of a push to conduct research on the disease or to work towards a cure. Consider a disease with a heritable disposition like Alzheimer’s, assume there are young adults who have had several grandparents pass away from forms of Alzheimer’s and knew they were very likely to have inherited the predisposition for the disease. In this case, the young adults would be more likely to care about the disease and either help fundraise or get involved in the research themselves. The more people that are affected by something, the more likely studies and research will be conducted because there is almost a guarantee they will be able to make their money back in selling a cure. With this in mind, if people were able to prevent these inherited diseases, less people would care about the diseases that now would only affect a small fraction of people: most likely the poorest fraction of people because genetic engineering is so