The Issue Of Designer Babies

The Issue Of Designer BabiesThis research paper discusses architect babies and the science of creating a designer kid. It talks nigh in-vitro fertilization, SNPs, a success written report of crating a designer baby and shows where designer babies stand in at presents society. This paper also contains some evidence of ethnic beliefs on designer babies and truly how far some p atomic number 18nts result go to get a child that they want. It emphasizes how close we ar to successfull creating a one hundred percent designer baby as well as what hinders us from advancing forward. It also goes into how and why designer babies atomic number 18 a very polemical subject and how many parents do not want to manipulate any psychological aspect of their child, yet to a greater extent are bidly to manipulate somatogenetic traits. This paper talks about where society stands today about the topic of designer babies and give insight to what society depart think of designer babies and if it will be the newest fashion logical argument in the future.Designer Babies the Latest Fashion AccessoryScience has advanced greatly over the last 20 days. In the past twenty years science has expanded our association drastically in the medical and biological field. A great breakthrough in science is designer babies. A designer baby is when parents are able to choose the traits that their child will inherit. This includes many unhealthiness related genes as well as some characteristics, such as sex, eye air and skin color, a child whitethorn inherit. Creating a designer baby is a simple idea but a skillful and complicated process. A designer baby is created when an embryo is created through in-vitro fertilization, which is the process of taking an unfertilized egg and injecting the egg with sperm, thus fertilizing the egg outside of the body. in one case this is done, the cell begins to multiply into several embryos within the first five days, and thus each embryo is removed a nd tested for a certain trait, such as sex. Once the desired traits are chosen the rest of the embryos that do not carry the gene or may give the desired trait slight probability of showing are terminated and the remaining embryo is placed inside the m opposites womb. This process is not al focusings guaranteed but only gives ones child a higher percentage for that trait. Also, this process may pick up to be repeated incase there are complications with the embryo staying in the m some others womb. (Seibel, 2008) This is a very controversial issue because of its goals of creating a child with pre-selected genes.Since they swallow a choice of discarding the new embryo there are many controversial issues to this process. Pro-choice activists, people who are against abortion, are against creating designer babies because the embryo is living and by their definition they would be killing a child. (Tuhus-Dubrow, 2007) Many say that they want to have their child the way they are mantic to be and that no one should be able to play as God because curiosity fuels science and science fuels greed for k at one timeledge and cycling back into curiosity. Is it right for one to choose the traits that their child will inherit? What would meet to our society if everyone chose to create designer babies?The process behind creating a designer baby has opened up new doors to the future of our society. If everyone chose to have this treatment done to create a designer baby to prevent disease then our future society would have no health defects. According to Meisenberg, we are very close to finding the genes capable for stroke, coronary heart disease, asthma, Alzheimers disease, and psychosis, as well as other common diseases. (Meisenberg, 2008) This would eliminate disease from society our immune systems would be super human in a sense and would tilt dramatically. Would this be the only gain from creating designer babies? Why stop only at disease related traits? Why not chose a child that was tall, had a high IQ, and has freckles. If everyone chose their ideal traits for their child eventually there will be a split in the genome between un change humans and genetically altered humans. A theory that an interesting journal article, Genetics and the Definition of Human, states their legal opinions on designer babies, Human beings in the future will practice cloning and will manipulate the genomes of their offspring to the point where they will, in effect, produce a new stratum of society. These will be the Genrich people, as opposed to the rest of us who are content (or stuck) with the genes we inherited by normal meansThe Genrich might eventually evolve into a new species able to mate successfully with each other but not with the genetically unmanipulated. (Genetics and the Definition of Human, 2010) This would have a drastic affect on those who are not designer babies. The average normal person would be at a disadvantage in society and would not be as suc cessful in the working world. Everyone would choose the characteristics that they wanted but then the next generation would be limited to the characteristics that they would have. Eventually, everyone in our society and even the world would have the alike characteristics and no one would be unique. Yes, this is bound to happen eventually but in-vitro fertilization for creating designer babies would amplify and speed up the process dramatically so that possibly our grandchildrens grandchildren will all be the same if everyone went through with creating only designer babies.Currently, scientists tidy sum not provide these options, such as eye color, hair color, IQ etc, because there are different foundation polymorphisms or SNPs that codes or mark for different traits in different races. Naik finds that the only nucleotide polymorphisms that have been coded for are people of European Caucasian descent, because other ethnicities SNPs have not been recognized yet. (Naik, 2009) Each SN P is a mark for a circumstantial trait. in that location are thousands of SNPs embedded within the human genome. During in-vitro fertilization the embryo is testes for these circumstantial markers for the desired trait, such as specific diseases. This is done in the early stages of the embryo so that when the cells continue to replicate the desired trait is present or removed depending on if the traits goal was to be removed or not.Many parents wish to have designer babies to help with other child who has a overweight disease. Others wish to make their child indifferent(p) because both parents are deaf and they want to share the experience. Sanghavi quotes a woman who thinks differently about defects. A comprehend baby would be a blessing, Ms. Duchesneau was quoted as saying. A deaf baby would be a special blessing.(Sanghavi, 2006) This event has been followed through with. The child is mostly deaf and his parents do not allow hearing aids. One may say that that is not fair to the child and it is the childs life but then that opens up another issue of parenting and ethics. Some would only choose things like eye color, hair color, possible even the sex of the child because they want the child to look like them. Any kind of manipulation of genes requires going again ones ethics to some extent, some more than others. There are many different attitudes toward creating designer babies.There was a study at Ross University, Medical School on the Caribbean island of Dominica interpreted by Meisenberg that expressed different first year students attitudes towards designer babies. This study was taken to see what the educated decisions of the medical students were on designer babies. Meisenberg created a survey determining different attributes that could be changed and it asked the students on a scale of zipper to four, zero being the lowest priority four being the highest, to rank each attribute of priority and/or wants for their own child.Each questions pertain ed to one product and/or subject. fruit 1 A DNA mo that tests for 5000 recessive disease-causing mutations. Product 2 A DNA chip that tests for 5000 genetic risk factors for common diseases. Product 3 A DNA chip that tests for 5000 genetic variants causing normal variation in physiologic traits. Product 4 A DNA chip that tests for 5000 genetic variants causing normal variation in psychological traits. Product 5 A human artificial chromosome with extra copies of tumor suppressor genes to overcome the cancer risk, and genes that extends the life span and delay age-related degenerative diseases such as Alzheimers. The chromosome cannot be used in adults but can be injected in the fertilized egg. It can be transmitted to ones children. Product 6 The same chromosome as product 5, but for use in adults. This product cannot enter the germ line and is not transmitted to ones children. (Meisenberg, 2008)Meisenbergs results showed that Products 1 and 2 (prevention of single-gene disorders and polygenic diseases) were most acceptable with scores of 2.88 and 2.83 Products 3 and 4 got low scores of 1.41 and 1.66. Respectively products 5 and 6, got somewhat note scores of 2.27 and 2.35. Also, the respondents seemed no more opposed to the introduction of heritable genetic modifications (product 5) than to embryo screening (products 1 to 4) and somatic cell genetic engineering in adults (product 6). Principal components analysis showed that 56.8 percent of the total variance was due to the unrotated first principal component, which represents a single factor of general acceptance. (Meisenberg, 2008) Meisenberg is stating results from a poll that he has given. It seems the results lean toward mainly health related enhancements kinda than physical and psychological enhancements, many of the students made decisions in hopes that their child would be astray accepted rather than genetically superior.Our views and feelings toward manipulation of specific genes are interfered by ones ethics, thus interfering with further experimentation. Some may have chosen not to change the childs physical or psychological appearance because they do not wish to play God, but in any sense when you manipulate any gene you are playing God even if it is to eliminate disease. This then snowballs into ones personal beliefs and limits. Every parent wants what is best for their child but is manipulating their childs genetics really whats best for them? Or is it dear what the parents want. These very thoughts influence scientists to testing their limits and beliefs. Im not going to do designer babiesI wont sell my soul for a dollar. (Naik, 2009) Some scientists, as Naik has quoted, take a stand on where they will draw the line due to their beliefs of what is too far. Trait selection in babies is a service, says Dr. Steinberg. We intend to run it soon. (Naik, 2009) Others see it as a scientific gain and it is the parents choice to do what they want to as long as they pay the money needed. This is dummy up a controversial issue even between scientists.Currently, we do not have the knowledge to single out specific traits such as eye color due to the fact that eye color is determined by multiple genes not just being dominant or recessive. The process however is fully understood and the only thing that could go wrong in the process is if there are complications with the embryo and the mother. Our knowledge of designer babies was thought to take at least twenty to fifty years to gain the knowledge we have now. It has only taken ten years into the significant progress to understand what was supposed to take twenty to fifty years whos to say that we can not have these traits such as eye color, IQ, and personality traits within the next twenty years? The knowledge we currently have is not vast enough to single out specific traits in all ethnicities. Of the traits that are known for specific diseases, it is not guaranteed for success, there is only a high perce ntage that the chosen trait will be present and/or eliminated if that is the objective. There is also still a strong barrier between creating designer babies and playing God that keeps science from breaking through into full understanding of designer babies.The price for just screening an embryo for determining its sex was $12,400 in 2006. (Snow, 2006) The price for choosing specific traits would be drastically higher because there are so many other variables and markers to identify. In designer babies current state it is more widely accepted for parents to want their child to be healthy and to live without any kind of disease that may run in the family but to find someone who is going through the process is extremely rare. In the future, it will be more widely accepted and more popular that parents go through in-vitro fertilization to eliminate disease but highly frowned upon for choosing luxury traits such as psychological and physical appearance unlike today where either of the t wo are hard to come by. If an average family had the choice of customizing their child with todays knowledge, there would be no need to do so. The procedure would be expensive and, as some people may think of it, the child may not be who they are meant to be. This is a great variable to the success of designer babies because every parent wants their child to be who they are meant to be and to grow into their own person. Also, not many countries may allow this procedure to take place due to the advancement in technology and how it may hinder society. There will probably be more designer babies in the future but not enough to drastically hinder society due to the cost, personal beliefs and the accessibility of creating designer babies.To make this thought from science fiction into reality we would need more advanced technology to advance our knowledge in the realm of designer babies because the technology that we have now can only take us so far. We have already done as much as we can with the technology we have today to understand and experiment with designer babies. This would mean more experiments are required to fuel the research needed to achieve the new technology and new shipway of understanding the designer baby. There is no doubt that as technology advances designer babies will become the newest fashion accessories in the future. But is this what our society will allow, is this really what our society wants? There is no way to predict how the future will turn out. One can only hope that ethics with ever overcome science because without ethics science would destroy society and life as we know it.