The Controversy of Designer Babies

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Genetically engineered babies also known as “Designer Babies” are children that are modified to your wants and desirer in what you want your child to look like. Typically women only use this procedure if they are infertile. The women decide what hair, eye color, or gender the baby is by doing this procedure. In this essay, I will explain how they’re made, the different religious debates about it, and why you shouldn’t do it. Genetic engineering allows infertile women with genetic defects in their mitochondria to have children. How are they made? The procedure known as Oplasmic transfer, is used to inject the mitochondria from the donor's egg into the egg of the infertile woman, in which vitro fertilization is performed on the egg. Healthy eggs from a second mother are used and the first mother then contributes the 23 chromosomes, which contain the majority of the child's genetic information. While the second mother contributes the mitochondrial genome; the child produced this way has genetic information from two mothers (the donor and the regular mother) and the one donor father. Researchers have already connected the genes in the striped zebra fish, which control the color of the fish to genes in humans that determine skin color. This is how they figured out they can engineer humans. “Designer Babies” use genetic engineering techniques to create desired traits of a child, such as disease resistance, sex, hair color, height and other cosmetic traits, athletic ability, or intelligence. So in other words, if you want a little girl that’s 6”7 with red hair and highly intelligent or highly athletic or even both you can use genetic engineering to do so. Genetic engineering has also helped stop family diseases and unwanted family ... ... middle of paper ... ...be the only ones left with the diseases that genetic engineering has helped to eliminate. Lastly I believe in the Christian views that are against genetic engineering. I agree with the views that believe that you are trying to pay God by doing this, “Only God has the right to interfere with our genes.” So in my final conclusion, I think it’s wrong to use genetic engineering but in some way it does have it’s advantages. We should only use it to help with curing diseases but not just for the ones that can afford it but also for everyone. I think your trying to play God in all honesty. I don’t think you should tamper with ones genetic make up. Works Cited "100% Gender Selection Sex Selection Program." 100% Gender Selection Sex Selection Program. The Fertility Institutes, 2001. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. "Designer Baby." Dow Jones & Company, 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

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