The Pros And Cons Of Genetic Engineered Babies

Surfing the net every day, I sometimes stumble upon new technology that might be interesting to know a little about. One of them is genetic engineering of babies. From the little knowledge of mine, that genetic engineered babies can be modify to be immune to certain unwanted genetic disease or given certain traits that allows them to be more intelligent or taller. The modification of traits could be good or bad, depending on how the scientist want it to be. It could be good in a way to have the baby to be immune to genetic disease and bad if the scientist modify the baby with superhuman powers to turn them into a monster or a weapon. There are also many ethical issue in the religious problems of creating or modifying a human, “playing God”, that it’s the God’s job to create us and how they want us to be.
This all started

back when a scientist in Sun Yat-sen University in China first modify the genes of a human embryo. Instead of publishing the study, it has caused the research to be stopped due to the ethical issues involved with it. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) quoted that the study as “A live that should not be crossed.”(Gyngell, 2015) Genetic engineering has been around for a while now, modifying the DNA of animals and plants, but not to humans. Even though some people called for a ban on this research, there are other people that continued with the research. A new technology was developed for editing DNA, CRISPER-Cas9, it made editing the DNA way much easier, “it’s like upgrading ‘rusty scissors’ for a computer-controlled scalpel that slices open a DNA strand” quoted by Amy Maxmen. (Rinkunas, 2015). With that technology, they can edit out any parts of a DNA and replace it with any other parts of DNA. Keep in mind that you can remove the unwanted genetic disease from a DNA but also can add any DNA from animals or plants into it. This could be used a cure for incurable disease or to make a mutation of something and use it as a research species or a zombie apocalypse.
The problem with this technology is how we use it and how far some scientists are willing to take for their own research purposes.

When asked, 83% of the U.S. adults disagree with using this technology to make the baby more intelligent, but only 50% of them disagree when it comes to making the baby immune to serious diseases (Regalado, 2016). If they use it for good to save someone’s life, then its ok, on the other hand, if it were to use in making superhuman, most of them dislike that idea. There has been research done on modifying genes on animal in the past. In the late 1990s, three mice where engineered to have increased muscle growth and strength, to study muscle disease. In another experiment, a Belgian blue cow was modified to that its muscle never stops growing (Simmons, 2016). These were just two of the past experiments of modifying genes. There are other worries that these modification were only available to the rich due to the procedure cost. That an average person couldn’t afford it. It would start a caste system that the rich people could produce intelligent babies while the poor would have to work their way up there (Bess,

2015).
There are scientists that are afraid of this technology, while there are those who out there that support it. Professor Julian Savulescu said that it should be “considered a ‘moral obligation’ as it makes them grow up into ‘ethically better children.”(Alleyne, 2012). By removing the bad traits in the DNA, could have a positive influence on their personality. It could make the future society more intelligent and less violent (Alleyne, 2012).
As a bystander, I do see the main points and their worries of this problem. On the religious side, I do understand that it is the God’s role to make us and that humans should not try to be God or play its role and its God’s decision on our life of how we die or how we live. Then on the other hand, as long as this technology is used to remove unwanted genetic disease from babies to make their life better and not to create superhuman, then I am fine with this use. In the end if I have to stick with a side, it would be to ban this technology. Religion has been with us for decades while this technology is still fairly new to us, we don’t know the long term effects it has in the future. If something does go wrong with the modification or a mutation happened, it could lead into a major disaster. Plus in the future as the population increase, and more people are living longer due to this technology, the Earth might run out of resources for us to survive. Until some other technology arrives that can guarantee that the genetic engineering in humans can be 100% safe and not be used in the wrong way, I believe that this technology should be stopped.