Creating the Perfect Child

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Recommended: Genetic engineering and its implications

Everyone wishes for their child to be perfect, and new measures are being taken to ensure their child is everything and more. To make sure a child has all the desired traits necessary, humans genetically modify them. In doing so, changes are being made to the DNA code of the child to take the best characteristics of the parents and pass it down to the child. The ideal traits, such as being athletic, tall, and smart are given to the child and undesirable traits, such as being colorblind and having other genetic mutations, are prevented. Although the parent feels like they are giving their child the perfect life in giving them the traits to be successful, they are going against the natural way of life. Throughout time, women have been giving birth to children without choosing them, just like every other organism has been doing. The greatest minds and most interesting individuals have been born by chance, or fate; why change that? Parents should not be allowed to “design babies,” like Jerome and Anton in the movie Gattaca, due to the divided social classes and false senses of superiority that would arise.
When people start to be genetically engineered, they are going to be thought of as the supreme race. More opportunities will be available for them only because employers want the best of the best, and according to their blood, they are. In Gattaca, Vincent and the other “invalids” worked as janitors. They were told they would never amount to anything in life, for example, “the only way [they would] see the inside of a space shuttle is if [they’re] cleaning it,” unlike the ones whose genes were selected (Gattaca). The “valids” were able to run businesses, work in the government, compete in national games, and even go int...

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...eople for the better; anyone who cannot see that has never fully developed and reached their full potential.
Although genetic engineering does have its upsides, parents should not be able to design their own children. The first people on Earth were born naturally and that trend has been followed for all of time, creating irreplaceable people. Society has become more and more complex, and genetic engineering will only make it more complicated, adding onto the social divisions and ideas of superiority between people. In today’s world, the attractive people with incredible wealth or political power are thought of as supreme to others, we do not need another class of people whose DNA now defines them. All in all, society needs to fix their original problems with judging others before any kind of genetic engineering is used on humans.

Works Cited

Gattaca
Buzzle

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