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| Figure 1: These baby dolls are able to look different each and everyday all because their caretaker has control over them. |
Medical technology is growing at a rapid rate and the type we are talking about today has only been around and studied for about 6 years (2), thats a little less than half your age! I am talking about designer babies. Designer babies are important to you because this technology is not made available to everyone yet since the medicine itself is not sorted out, but with that being said, your generation may be the one to take the information and idea of a designer baby and make it the real deal.
In creation of a designer baby, let's compare the doctors creating a real baby to the way that you played dress up with your toys. Step 1, deciding the baby dolls hair and eye color when you picked it out at the store so that it looked as perfect as you wantd it to. That is part of what could happen when the doctors develop a child in the future (3). Step 2, picking out their clothes to dress them as fancy beautiful people. In relation to that, picking out the clothes of your baby doll or action figure can be compared to the doctor giving the baby different traits like intelligence and athletic ability. Step 3, which probably happened each day, changing the outfit of your toy. This sort of step is comparable to doctors editing the different genes that makes up a baby by deleting those bad ones that cause the baby to be sick and not live a healthy life(1).
Now that question you may be asking yourselves is why is it not ok to create a real-life baby like we would a baby doll or action figure? The answer to that is that the technology to do this procedure is not exactly safe yet (1). The picture to your right, although not the real way designer babies are made, the comparison works. Sewing something together can sometimes go wrong and the stitching may not be perfect. This relates to the doctors desiging the baby who may mess up and correct the wrong things which can lead to a harmful life for the baby. Another reason this can be dangerous is something called eugenics. Think about all the baby dolls and action figures you have had in the past. I am sure a majority of your collection looked the same and were perfect for the way you liked them. Well, that is the same idea of eugenics. Through creating your own baby, can lead to creating the perfect baby (good looks, intelligence, athletic ability) which will lead more people to create the perfect baby and if that continues, it could harm the human population by making everyone the same, which is something the world wants to avoid. A quick overview of designer babies is as follows: A Discussion of Designer Babies
You, you who are reading this are going to do great things in the future and with technology and medicine. But you must also make conscious choices when it comes to your personal life. With that being said, keep in mind that dressing up your baby dolls and action figures to look how you want, should not necessarily be what you do in the future for your own baby, unless you are using it for purley medical purposes to help your child from having an unfortunate life in the future. The medicine may not be here now, but designer babies may soon be ok the market to "buy" and therefore, it is decent to know a few things about it before this phenomenon exploads!
(1)Das, J., Dey, P., & Banerjee, P. (2017). Redesigning nature: To be or not to be? Current Science, 112(7), 1346-1350. doi: 10.18520/cs/v112/i07/1346-1350
(2)Hrouda, B. E. (2016). "Playing God": An examination of the legality of CRISPR germline editing technology under the current international regulatory scheme and the universal declaration on the human genome and hum rights. Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law, 45(1), 221-241.
In creation of a designer baby, let's compare the doctors creating a real baby to the way that you played dress up with your toys. Step 1, deciding the baby dolls hair and eye color when you picked it out at the store so that it looked as perfect as you wantd it to. That is part of what could happen when the doctors develop a child in the future (3). Step 2, picking out their clothes to dress them as fancy beautiful people. In relation to that, picking out the clothes of your baby doll or action figure can be compared to the doctor giving the baby different traits like intelligence and athletic ability. Step 3, which probably happened each day, changing the outfit of your toy. This sort of step is comparable to doctors editing the different genes that makes up a baby by deleting those bad ones that cause the baby to be sick and not live a healthy life(1).
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| Figure: 2 A doctor "sewing" a baby together to compare desiging a baby. |
Now that question you may be asking yourselves is why is it not ok to create a real-life baby like we would a baby doll or action figure? The answer to that is that the technology to do this procedure is not exactly safe yet (1). The picture to your right, although not the real way designer babies are made, the comparison works. Sewing something together can sometimes go wrong and the stitching may not be perfect. This relates to the doctors desiging the baby who may mess up and correct the wrong things which can lead to a harmful life for the baby. Another reason this can be dangerous is something called eugenics. Think about all the baby dolls and action figures you have had in the past. I am sure a majority of your collection looked the same and were perfect for the way you liked them. Well, that is the same idea of eugenics. Through creating your own baby, can lead to creating the perfect baby (good looks, intelligence, athletic ability) which will lead more people to create the perfect baby and if that continues, it could harm the human population by making everyone the same, which is something the world wants to avoid. A quick overview of designer babies is as follows: A Discussion of Designer Babies
You, you who are reading this are going to do great things in the future and with technology and medicine. But you must also make conscious choices when it comes to your personal life. With that being said, keep in mind that dressing up your baby dolls and action figures to look how you want, should not necessarily be what you do in the future for your own baby, unless you are using it for purley medical purposes to help your child from having an unfortunate life in the future. The medicine may not be here now, but designer babies may soon be ok the market to "buy" and therefore, it is decent to know a few things about it before this phenomenon exploads!
(1)Das, J., Dey, P., & Banerjee, P. (2017). Redesigning nature: To be or not to be? Current Science, 112(7), 1346-1350. doi: 10.18520/cs/v112/i07/1346-1350
(2)Hrouda, B. E. (2016). "Playing God": An examination of the legality of CRISPR germline editing technology under the current international regulatory scheme and the universal declaration on the human genome and hum rights. Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law, 45(1), 221-241.
(3) Ossareh, T. (2017). Would you like blue eyes with that? A fundamental right to genetic modification of embryos. Columbia Law Review, 117(3), 729-766.
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