In today's world, many people are interested in perfections, be it themselves or their children. With genetic research and experiments becoming increasingly successful, many options are opening up to people in terms of changing their genetic sequence, for cosmetic reasons, or to prevent certain genetic diseases. With the recent upgrades in technology and scientific advances, we are now able to "design" our babies to a certain extent. Advanced reproductive technologies allow parents and doctors to screen
embryos for
genetic disorders and select healthy embryos. However, these advanced reproductive technologies prevent normal childbirth and conception. These embryos are basically "test tube babies", and are treated like science experiments.At the moment it is only legally possible to carry out two kinds of advanced reproductive technologies on humans. The first involves choosing the type of sperm that will fertilize an egg. This is used to determine the sex and the
genes of the baby. The second technique screens embryos for a genetic disease: only selected embryos are implanted back into the mother's womb. This is called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis or (PGD).
The current utilization of ARTs (advanced reproductive technologies) is strictly for medical use, which is understandable because all parents want healthy babies. However sooner or later the fear is that we may be able to use genetic modification technologies to modify embryos and choose cosmetic characteristics. This is something that I cannot agree. Of course just as parents don't want their children to have diseases, they don't want them to be ugly, but for them to be able to choose everything down to the colour of their eyes is going to far. If this happens Mendelian Genetics and heredity will be obsolete. No longer will anyone be created in God's image. People will be born in test tubes, not in their mother's womb. In the future there may be social problems for people not born with certain traits. One day there might be a race of super humans who look down on people that don't share their special traits. On top of all this, the Church does not support any scientific modifications to embryos. People should just be born the same way they were since the beginning of time. Who knows, maybe one day these genetic enhancements will have greater problems in terms of health than normally born babies.
Sources: http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_cont1.htm
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989987,00.html
Blogs Commented On:
http://chrismbioblog.blogspot.com/
http://melissasbioblog.blogspot.com/
Great blog Daniel, nice research, and I understand how you think that eventually it will get out of hand and we'll have people with super human traits. But I think that advanced reproductive technology should be legal when it is proven safe for humans. I believe this because I think that it is the parents decision whether they want a child the old fashion way, or through genetic modification. If they want to have a baby with blue eyes that's their business, but something as decisive as this should only be taken to certain limits. Knowing that there are irresponsible people out there I know that they would do something stupid with their baby which is why it should be legalized, but to a certain extent. Limiting things that are outrageous or are harmful to the baby and others.
ReplyDeleteAs the above poster said, I think that certain limitations will keep the severity of imbalances caused by different social classes to a minimum. Such restrictions could include limited numbers of options for the superficial self and a way of regulating babies for their intellectual capabilities. I could see this based around the existing Apgar scoring system, with 10 being the highest legal score.
ReplyDeleteHowever, most of the people who will be able to access these services are first-world countries. Their consumerist-oriented cultures may lead to people paying under-the-counter for additional services, therefore rendering these restrictions useless. It would take a global effort to see through with standardized procedures for genetically modifying babies.