Gene Editing Designer Babies

Introduction

When you think of designer babies most people think of babies wearing designer clothes and playing with expensive toys but that’s not the case. Designer babies are babies that have been genetically preselected, more specifically their DNA has been modified by gene editing. The purpose of gene editing is to eliminate genes that cause diseases such as Huntington’s or Tay Sachs disease. There are tons of advantages and disadvantages to gene editing. With gene editing, diseased and carrier parents can make sure their child doesn’t inherit a life changing disease. However, will society be able to stop there or will we continue to “cure” undesirable features in hope of creating perfection?

The importance of gene editing

Gene

editing is very important and gives different couples new opportunities. Now, parents can ultimately save their child who are at risk of a inheriting a horrible disease. More and more children aren’t being born diseased and don’t have to suffer the consequences of that disease throughout their life thanks to gene editing. Gene editing stops the offspring from inheriting a disease and ultimately stops that disease from travelling down a bloodline. It opens doors for same sex couples too. Same sex couples, with the help of donors, can produce their own offspring but only one partner would be the biological parent. Gene editing also helps couples who can’t make their own sperm and eggs and are infertile. Gene editing is a remarkable option for couples but now the question is: how does it work?

How does it work?
The process of editing a genome is a long and intricate one. If a couple knows that they are diseased or a carrier for a disease they would got to an organization like GenePeeks company. There the company would tell the couple the probability of their offspring inheriting the disease. If the probability is high they would most likely decide to go through the gene editing process. The female would get a procedure done to remove some eggs. After the eggs go through *in vitro fertilization with the sperm cells, a few of the new embryos would be examined for the disease. During the examination a new fertility technique called CRISPR is applied. CRISPR uses an enzyme called Cas9 that cuts strands of DNA, then researchers can insert the new genes. Parents can choose one or two embryos that fit their requirements to implant. Height and size can’t be predicted by geneticists because tens of thousands of genes would have to be understood to edit them. Geneticists are able to predict physical traits such as hair colour, eye colour, and skin colour through gene editing

*in vitro fertilization: when the egg and sperm is fertilized outside the body

Connections
This year we learned a great deal about biology.

There are many connections between designer babies and this subject. We learned about DNA structure which geneticists need to know when they decode it to find mutations. We also learned about different type of mutations and how they can affect the protein produced. Sex linked diseases and how offspring can inherit them was also a topic we talked about. Finally the last connection is when we were determining the probability of an offspring getting a specific genotype and phenotype. That connects immensely to how if designer babies were made, scientists would have to make sure there was a high enough probability that the offspring would get a specific characteristic in order to satisfy the

customers.

More about CRISPR
CRISPR stands for “ clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” CRISPR can alter inherited genes in non human organisms. It can also edit human genome in normal somatic body cells and the cells that pass down genes to the offspring. Until CRISPR, to get rid of flawed DNA scientists could only delete big amounts of it. CRISPR is much more precise than PGD in getting rid of mutations. PGD stands for “preimplantation genetic diagnosis” and is an old fertility technique that has limitations and isn’t as advanced as CRISPR. CRISPR is the most successful procedure in getting rid of genetic disorders and is highly recommend to parents wanting to go through the gene editing process.

Designer Babies: A good or bad idea?
Designer babies are indubitably a bad idea. Of course it would be exciting to be able to choose what your child looked like and what traits they would have: would they have blue eyes and be athletic or how about having black hair and amazing musical abilities? How a baby turns out shouldn’t be predetermined , it should be up to fate.
Our society is insanely competitive and we are constantly trying to beat each other.

So, the idea of designing your own baby and it turning into a competition to see whos kid will be the best seems very realistic and unnecessary. Designer babies will divide our society even more than it already is. The rich and upper class will have the finances to go through the designer baby procedure and once it is complete their “perfect” kids will be seen as superior to the rest. On top of that designer babies are very unethical. Modifying an embryo violates religious values and the rights of the embryo. Another problem is how would large numbers of rejected embryos be handled ethically and politically, since you can’t just throw them out in the garbage. Also gene editing is too similar eugenics. Eugenics is the science of trying to improve the human race by increasing the occurrence of attractive heritable traits. Hitler used eugenic principles to justify his cruelties and eugenics has been disapproved and frowned upon ever since. Designer babies are not needed in this day and age and scientists should stop researching the idea. but research about them can help advance gene editing and that is

important.

Conclusion
After my research, I have come to the opinion that scientists should continue to study gene editing. My reasons are that no US or Canadian association have completely endorsed decoding full DNA so in turn designer babies aren't possible right now. Even if associations do end up endorsing full DNA decoding there wouldn't be a high demand for designer babies. The drawbacks of producing designer babies outweigh the benefits. Designer babies would be too expensive for most (except for upper class families of course) and there are too many moral consequences. Parents don’t want a perfect baby, they want a baby with their own quirks and weaknesses that havent been predetermined. Gene editing is is too important to stop studying and hopefully with more research and experiments, gene editing will be able to help even more people.