Should Parents Use Genetic Technologies to Choose their Children´s Characteristics?

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Should parents be allowed to use genetic technologies to choose some of their children’s characteristics? What limits should aply to their selection?

If genetic technologies were available to the general public, would you do it? Would you accept the option of altering the DNA of your unborn child to fit your every whim and desire? Would you only change certain characteristics, or completely 'design' a new born being? Would you really consider that morally ethical or plausible? In this essay I will explore the idea of whether or not parents should be allowed to use genetic technologies to choose some of their children's characteristics and if yes, what limits should apply to their selection.

First of all, to understand the debate at hand here, it is important to have a thorough understanding of what it means for an organism to be genetically modified. A term that is commonly used to describe this process is that of 'genetic engineering'. To genetically engineer something is to manually change the genetic makeup of an organism by adding or removing DNA. This allows us to add any new, desired traits into the organism that were not present or expressed before. In theory, genetic engineering has a lot more advantages in comparison to traditional breeding. Each individual organism can only possess a certain set of traits. Since traditional breeding relies on the mating of two organisms, the offspring is also limited only to what traits already existed between their parents. On the other hand, because genetic engineering involves physically removing the gene from one organism into the other, the list of potential traits an offspring could possess is virtually unlimited. When it comes to genetically modifying human beings, a lot of c...

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...s would refer to the parents as having no harmful hereditary diseases or mutations that could be passed down to the child. If genetic engineering was allowed for any purpose other than that, then all we are doing is then altering human beings simply because we desire so. Is it really that necessary for your child to have certain coloured features? Is it really that desirable to have your child possess an IQ of 190 or to never tire physically? I think that it is important to remember that desire is a significant part of human nature. We will always desire what we cannot attain, but if that desire was attainable, it would only result in more far-fetched desires. Society as we know it would cease to exist, but instead consumed by a world obsessed with desire; a determination and a need to reach perfection, a perfection that should otherwise be naturally unattainable.

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