Designer Babies

Abhishek S.
Period 7

Designer Babies is an interesting controversial concept of designing babies before they are born. The concept essentially entails the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis to generate a baby with desired characteristics, instead of the randomly generated default baby. Using this process, specific traits—such as attached earlobes—can be specifically chosen. It can also prevent (or induce) certain diseases. There are large amounts of cultural controversies over this idea, relating primarily to the morality of creating babies that were never meant to exist naturally. There are also economic concerns as to whether the cost of generating designer babies outweighs the usefulness of the existence of such an enhanced baby.

Benefits

One of the first pondered and important benefits of designer babies is the prevention of certain evil diseases. Some disorders and diseases, such as Huntington’s disease, sickle cell anemia, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, etc. have increased chances of occurring just in the literal genetics of a person at birth. Now, if a the genes of future babies can be pre-edited to have these disease-causing genes disabled, they will be less likely to contract the disease, which is great.

It can also help with the generation of babies that are enhanced. Genetics can be useful, if figured out completely, in increasing muscle strength, height, or intelligence. These kinds of things can generate babies that are enhanced compared to other normal babies. This can theoretically result in the improvement of the human species in general, but is highly and obviously very controversial.

Another useful feature of designer babies is the economic aspect of having highly developed babies. With improved humans, labor forces can be changed and altered to go in different ways, and can eventually result in a much more efficient way of supplying the world with supplies, which is great.

Risks

While it may not be a risk, the controversy around designer babies is definitely a drawback on this idea. Many people believe that nature should be allowed to create its own babies the way it feels like creating them, instead of humans designing babies by themselves. Some people think paying to design a baby with increased smartness or selected gender or eye color takes away the randomness of a baby and also makes it feel more like designed and created property of its parents. Some people believe that it improves the human species as a whole and has more useful benefits in theory.

Another major issue/risk with designer babies is that human genes are not technically completely known. Many, many genes influence the tallness of a person, and they can also influence other things. The entire genetic system of humans is vast and highly complicated, which can be a problem when we decide to edit it, like editing a recipe for a complex medicine that one doesn’t fully understand. This could, not only be an obstacle for selecting traits and enhancing babies, but also create new diseases that babies would never have to do.

One highly debatable aspect of designer babies is the feature that parents are able to design their own personal babies. While this usually is good for the baby, some parents can decide to intentionally make their babies worse than they naturally would be. For example, a parent who was deaf from birth may decide that it would be unfair for his child to enjoy a normal life, and may intentionally want deafness to be a feature of the baby. This is almost child abuse in nature, which can cause issues and problems.

Interview/Survey

A vast amount of random people were interviewed upon their thoughts on designer babies, with widely varying results. Below is an example of the spectrum of responses.

If you had the opportunity, when creating a child, to alter the genes of the child to choose/guarantee certain aspects of the child, such as gender or disease probability, what would you change?

James J. Knight, age 70:

“I would not want to change any part of my child. I would want him to live just the way he is. People are perfect the way they are born. As a child, I was always well-rounded, and, for the most part, I was capable of any challenge I wanted to take on. People do not need to be changed—they are born the way they should be.”

Are Fernández Salas, age 21:

“If I was to change my baby, I would definitely … change his smarts, muscles, [that] kinda stuff. The way he is now is basically dumb and good for nothing, and it’s just really not fair to be born like that.”

Vitaly Bezrukov, age 42:

“If I were to do this, and had the ability to do something like this, I would just want some way to prevent my child from getting diabetes. It runs in our family, and is an absolute pain for the victim and everyone around him, and I’m pretty sure this sort of thing can prevent it.”

Do you think designing babies should be allowed? To what extent?

Joonas Huhtala, age 28:

“I think parents should be allowed to design [the] characteristics of their children, depending on whether or not it will benefit the child or not. I think [that] if a trait selection will be helpful, it should totally be done.”

Barnabas Kolstad, age 55:

“I honestly think that parents should freely be able to remove traits that would directly negatively affect their child, like diseases, but nothing else.

Charles H. Williams, age 49:

“I believe that nothing should be changed. We can’t necessarily ask for the babies permission at all before it is born, so we should not change any of it either.”

If you were informed that you were designed and altered by your parents, and not normally born, how would you feel? Would you view yourself or your parents differently?

Awwab Abdul-Ghafur Zogby, unknown age:

[Declined to answer]

Anonymous:

“I would feel extremely weird, and probably would suddenly feel different and strange compared to my mates. I would definitely view my parents as strange people knowing that they pre-decided what they wanted me to be.”

If the entire world knew that you were designed by your parents instead of being normally born, how would you feel?

Christelle Sciverit, age 25:

“I would honestly not feel much of a difference myself, as long as I knew before and after everyone else found out, but they would probably feel very odd and possibly hostile towards me, since I was unfairly born better than them…”

Ricarda Velázquez, age 19:

“I would really feel pretty bad, …everyone else would probably hate me or think I don’t deserve to exist the way I do.”

If you were designed by your parents, what traits would you be comfortable with allowing your parents to choose and decide?

Marcel Musil, unknown age:

“I would be fine if my parents removed genes that lower the risk of illnesses; I probably wouldn’t care if they chose my physical traits like eye color and stuff, but that’s all I would be okay with.”

Anonymous:

“I wouldn’t want my parents to choose any traits at all. I think I’m already a good enough person that I wouldn’t want to be different at all.”

Reflection

With parents being able to design their babies, they can have more control over their babies than the baby itself does. Some parents may worsen their baby intentionally, which is not beneficial for any lifeform. Some parents may decide to enhance their baby’s intelligence, but then any intellectual achievements that the baby achieves in its life give credit to the baby’s parents, for enhancing the baby’s intelligence, instead of the baby itself. This can make a baby feel owned by his parents, forcing to give credit for his every achievement to them.

I do consider myself as one of the relatively gifted persons of the world, and usually see myself as well created. I would naturally not like to see hundreds of other equally intelligent or more intelligent people around me, which is not currently the case. This would make feel non-special and non-unique. However, I am not sure whether I should be proud of being gifted with relatively superior intelligence levels or not anyway, or possessing anything gifted at all. I already feel strange at the thought that if I were born without intelligence, I would be a relatively useless person in the world, as intelligence is the only thing I actually possess in useful quantities. It is not my hard-work or effort that I was born intelligent, however--I did not try to be born as a gifted person. Therefore, all of the accomplishments I ever achieved in life are not really done by me, I am just a created bunch of atoms and happen to be awesome enough to achieve them all. This is a very discouraging thought, and it would be ridiculously amplified if I knew that I was never meant to be awesome—I was designed by my parents to not be useless, and further discouraging to see everyone around me being enhanced.

References

Macleod, C. (n.d.). Gender Selection Has Become A Multimillion-Dollar Industry. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/17/gender-selection-_n_1889991.html

Parry, W. (2013, February 18). Designing Life: Should Babies Be Genetically Engineered? Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/27206-genetic-engineering-babies-debate.html

Brennan, J. (2013, October 17). Designer Babies. Retrieved from http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2013/10/designer-babies/

Chai, C. (n.d.). Creating IVF babies from 3 parents garners public support: UK fertility regulator. Retrieved from http://globalnews.ca/news/374544/creating-ivf-babies-from-3-parents-garners-public-support-uk-fertility-regulator/