The World of Designer Children

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The World of Designer Children
The biological goal of a human is to create successful offspring passing on the parental genes, allowing the race to survive. Most people do not think of wanting a child in these biological terms but think of it as a want to create a family. Pregnancy is quite an investment costing at a minimum of about $20,000 of doctor’s appointments, vitamins, clothes, and hospital bills (Herlihy 1). Just like any normal large investment of time and money people want to be assured the outcome will be positive. With pregnancy this assurance comes from prenatal testing and consultations from esteemed doctors. In recent years scientific advancements have allowed for parents to “choose” their children. From eye color to gender the possibilities are seemingly endless. With this genetic engineering of children there are people opposed to it and people in agreement with it.
A successful pregnancy ends with a healthy child. As most things in human life there are two sides to every battle, an environmental side and a genetic side. Taking prenatal vitamins and listening to doctors advice is only half the fight. The other half is the set of genes a baby is given. One chromosome not successfully splitting during meiosis can cause Down’s Syndrome and no vitamin can change this fact. Expecting couples are more aware than ever, through the fast paced media in our society, about what can go wrong with pregnancy. Prenatal testing allows doctors to screen for diseases and conditions. However, doctors can now genetically modify children before a fetus is conceived. With newer biological enhancements parents will be able to pick eye color, height, hair color, etc. These options are seemingly harmless because they are just phenotypi...

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...whole. These two sides have the potential to reach a fair medium, however research has to be done before this can happen. The consequences of manipulating human genes are not well known. Human research has to be done in order for us to find out the exact consequences. Both sides can agree the consequences should be taken seriously and need to be addressed. Freedom is a subject always talked about in our country and both sides can add this to their own arguments and this point becomes moot. To move forward both sides need to understand how unknown the consequences are noting the fact they could be both positive and negative. There is no way to prove either side and until further research is done therefore parents should leave it to nature to decide. In a situation as delicate as the future of the human race we should play by the saying, “Better safe than sorry.”

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