BABIES OF TOMMOROW?!

What comes to your mind when you hear the term "Designer Baby"? Is it new trends in baby's clothing or lifestyle? Would it ever occur to you that designer baby is indeed a new way of modifying or selecting babies' genes for desirable characteristics?

The colloquial term "designer baby" defined by wikipedia, the free encylopedia, refers to a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with vitro fertilisation to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics. The term is derived by comparison with "designer clothing". Designer babies is a term used by journalists and the media, but not a term used by scientists.

Advanced reproductive techniques involve using InVitro Fertilisation of IVF to fertilise eggs with sperm in 'test tubes' outside the mother's body in a laboratory. These techniques allow doctors and parents to reduce the chance that a child will be born with a genetic disorder. At the moment it is only legally possible to carry out two tupes of advanced reproductive technologies on humans. The first involves choosing the type of sperm of the baby. The second techique screens embryos for a genetic disease: only selected embryos are implanted back into the mother's womb. This is called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PDG).

In this short bbc documentary, commented by Princeton Professor Lee Silver, gives us a glimpse of the pros and frigthening scenario brought by new advancement in babies' genetics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN9ep4B9Hw0

Isn’t this enough for an awakening? Why would people go through beyond what is expected from having their unique baby, with mom’s eyes and dad’s height? Although PD G has some attributes for lesser diseases from genetic bloodlines, we can’t disregard the fact that it also has a greater weight of consequences. An example for this is, people nowadays are easily drawn and influence through media, and because of this they would disregard the social and ethical implications of having their babies designed. This would no longer validate the reason for preventive medicine, but solely for human’s greed of perfection.

According to Nicholas Agar, Ph.D. there are lingering complications if one would disregard the social and ethical implications of having a baby designed. And in his article he states that, “Some of the most challenging moral and ethical questions about a licence to design babies concern the societies it might lead to. The movie Gattaca depicts a future in which genetically enhanced people take the lead, viewing unenhanced people as fit only to clean up after them. Liberal democracy is a cooperative venture in which all are seen as having something to offer.17 Will genetic enhancement bring this social arrangement to an end, creating societies in which unenhanced people are viewed by their genetic superiors in much the same way that we currently view chimpanzees, suitable for drug testing and zoo exhibits but little else?” Now let this be a lesson to learn that most of the time people are uniquely beautiful regardless of imperfection and that most of the time people’s greed for perfection would only bring forth complications. Now let you be a judge of this, would you stick to God’s given gift? Or rather interfere with faith.

Source

Will genetic enhancement lead to a discriminatory society? by Nicholas Agar, Ph.D.
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

What is a designer baby?
http://www.bionetonline.org/English/Content/db_cont1.htm

Human cloning is a long way off, but bioengineered kids are already here.
By Shannon Brownlee
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0203.brownlee.html


Video Source

bbc commentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN9ep4B9Hw0

Picture Source

Genetic Screening

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/mg20127006.600/mg20127006.600-1_300.jpg

Designer Babies

img389.imageshack.us/.../nmembryo080512mnkf1.jpg

Designer Babies?

http://blogs.sch.gr/tgiakoum/files/2009/07/31designer-babies_1.jpg