Designer Babies: Creating the First Disease Free Children

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Recommended: Pros and cons of genetic engineering

Unethical, strange, something that shouldn’t be pursued and unnatural, is how designer babies have always been regarded. Leaving such a negative tone, these things are usually enough to stop most people from researching further into the subject of designer babies. Because most people judge this book by its cover, it makes this topic instantly wrong and shunned. People don’t know about the positive effects that designer babies could have on the future, and on the families with diseases that can get passed genetically to their children. Instead of seeing the positive they just see the negative, which is hypocritical righteous, not moral and unethical. Designer babies are the next step in the evolution of humans, and its natural process, is being developed day by day through technology and techniques to create designer babies as part of our society.

The term designer babies isn’t a specific real science, instead it is a sub science and specific concentration in the science of genetic engineering. “The term was coined to denote children whose genetic characteristics have been artificially selected or modified to ensure specific intellectual and cosmetic characteristics.” (Introduction to Designer Babies: At Issue) The basic definition of genetic engineering helps explain and give background information on what it is and how it can create designer babies:

Genetic engineering is also known as gene splicing, genetic modification or manipulation (GM), and recombinant DNA technology. All refer to the same concept: the direct manipulation of genes in a laboratory setting. This is done by changing the protein sequence in a gene. A gene is a segment of DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, which carries the genetic instructions insid...

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"Genetic Engineering." Current Issues: Macmillan Social Science Library. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.

"Introduction to Designer Babies: At Issue." Designer Babies. Ed. Clayton Farris Naff. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.

"Screening Creates Disease Free Baby." Medicine, Health, and Bioethics: Essential Primary Sources. Ed. K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 477-479. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.

Stock, Gregory. "From Regenerative Medicine to Human Design: What Are We Really Afraid Of?"http://www.siumed.edu/medhum/electives/HealthPolicyMedia/wk5Stock.pdf 22.11 (2003). Rpt. in Designer Babies. Ed. Clayton Farris Naff. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.

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