The Issue Of Designer Babies

The Issue Of Designer BabiesThis question paper discusses antecedent babies and the attainment of creating a antecedent baby. It talks virtually in-vitro impregnation, SNPs, a success story of crating a couturier baby and shows where agent babies stand in todays troupe. This paper also contains both(prenominal) evidence of pagan beliefs on designer babies and truly how far some p atomic number 18nts will go to get a boor that they want. It emphasizes how close we are to success fully creating a one hundred part designer baby as rise as what hinders us from advancing forward. It also goes into how and why designer babies are a very controversial subject and how umteen parents do non want to forge any psychological aspect of their shaver, yet to a greater extent are likely to manipulate visible qualitys. This paper talks active where gild stands today about the topic of designer babies and give sixth sense to what society will think of designer babies and if i t will be the newest look statement in the future.Designer Babies the Latest Fashion Accessory perception has pass on greatly over the last twenty years. In the past twenty years science has expanded our cognition drastically in the medical and biological field. A great break finished in science is designer babies. A designer baby is when parents are able to lead the characteristics that their pip-squeak will get. This includes many disease related constituents as thoroughly as some characteristics, such as sex, bosom color and discase color, a child may inherit. Creating a designer baby is a simple idea but a precise and complicated treat. A designer baby is created when an fertilized egg 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. Once this is done, the cellphone begins to multiply into several embryos within the first five days, and the n individually embryo is aloof and tested for a certain trait, such as sex. Once the desired traits are chosen the rest of the embryos that do non carry the gene or may give the desired trait less probability of showing are terminated and the remaining embryo is placed inside the m early(a)s womb. This process is non always guaranteed but yet gives ones child a higher percentage for that trait. Also, this process may exigency to be repeated incase there are complications with the embryo staying in the mothers womb. (Seibel, 2008) This is a very controversial love because of its goals of creating a child with pre-selected genes.Since they stool a choice of discarding the new embryo there are many controversial reappearances 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 a(prenominal) assert that they wan t to scram their child the way they are hypothetic to be and that no one should be able to renovate as God because curiosity fuels science and science fuels greed for knowledge and pass back into curiosity. Is it right for one to choose the traits that their child will inherit? What would happen 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 beget this treatment done to create a designer baby to keep disease then our future society would put up 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 hap disease from society our immune systems would be super human in a sense and would change dramatically. Would this be the sole(prenominal) gain from creating designer bab ies? why stop lone(prenominal) 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 at long last there will be a split in the genome between unaltered humans and inheritableally altered humans. A theory that an interesting journal article, Genetics and the Definition of serviceman, states their thoughts 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 year of society. These will be the Genrich people, as hostile to the rest of us who are content (or stuck) with the genes we inherited by prevalent destinesThe 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 babie s. The average normal person would be at a disadvantage in society and would not be as successful 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 same 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 croupe not provide these options, such as eye color, hair color, IQ etc, because there are different bag 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 SNP is a mark for a specific trait. thither are thousands of SNPs embedded within the human genome. During in-vitro fertilization the embryo is testes for these exact 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 threatening disease. Others wish to behave their child indifferent(p) because both parents are deaf and they want to share the experience. Sanghavi quotes a char who thinks differently about defects. A hearing baby would be a blessing, Ms. Duchesneau was quoted as saying. A deaf baby would be a surplus blessing.(Sanghavi, 2006) This event has been followed through with. The child is intimatelyly deaf and his parents d o not spare hearing aids. One may say that that is not plumb 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, doable even the sex of the child because they want the child to look like them. Any salmagundi of manipulation of genes requires going again ones ethics to some extent, some much 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 generaten 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 zero to cardinal, zero being the lowest priority four being the highest, to rank each attr ibute of priority and/or wants for their own child.Each questions pertained to one product and/or subject. Product 1 A deoxyribonucleic acid chip 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 physical 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 sheer 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 bug line and is not transmitted to ones children. (Meisenberg, 20 08)Meisenbergs results showed that Products 1 and 2 (prevention of champion-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. severally products 5 and 6, got somewhat lower 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 covering (products 1 to 4) and material cell genetic engineering in adults (product 6). Principal components analysis showed that 56.8 percent of the total variance was overdue to the unrotated first principal component, which represents a virtuoso factor of general acceptance. (Meisenberg, 2008) Meisenberg is stating results from a poll that he has given. It seems the results lean toward in general health related enhancements rather than physical and psychological enhancements, many of the students do decisions in hopes that their child would be widely genuine rather than genetically superior.Our views and feelings toward manipulation of specific genes are interfered by ones ethics, thus interfering with nurture 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 person-to-person beliefs and limits. Every parent wants what is best for their child but is manipulating their childs genetics authentically whats best for them? Or is it just 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 head 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 offer it soon. (Nai k, 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 still 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 get on 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 reputation traits within the next twenty years? The knowledge we currently have is not vast enough to single out specific traits in all ethniciti es. Of the traits that are known for specific diseases, it is not guaranteed for success, there is only a high percentage that the chosen trait will be present and/or eliminated if that is the objective. There is also still a ironlike barrier between creating designer babies and playing God that keeps science from recess 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 multivariates 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 high ly frowned upon for choosing luxury traits such as psychological and physical appearance unlike today where both of the two 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 real m 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 touch the new technology and new ways of understanding the designer baby. There is no doubt that as technology advances designer babies will go bad 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 flip out. One can only hope that ethics with always get the hang science because without ethics science would destroy society and life as we know it.