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Designer Babies Analysis

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Designer Babies Analysis
Analysis of the Ethical Issues of Designer Babies
By: Isabelle Nemeh
Dr. Ranjan
Genetics
BIOL 2210_21
December 3, 2015

Abstract People strive for progression in order to move forward with the changing times. As scientific technology progresses, people begin to move towards the bright idea of perfection. This could be seen in the concept of designer babies. A designer baby is a baby that has its genes specifically chosen in order to ensure that a certain gene is or is not present. This concept brings about many questions regarding the safety and the ethics of choosing specific traits for a child. The articles “The art of medicine: Designer babies: Choosing our children's genes,” by Bonnie Steinbock and “Children to …show more content…
This technique is called cytoplasmic transfer and the concept was to take the egg of an infertile woman and inject it with the cytoplasm of fertile women. In 1997, the first baby conceived through cytoplasmic transfer was born, but there was much controversy over the issue once his paper was published. The resulting child had three parents, the mother, the father, and the mitochondrial DNA, mtDNA, donor (Brownlee 2002). Although this topic is not very new, the controversy over the it still remains.
When the topic of designer babies is presented, there is a multitude of ethical reasons that arise; one important concept is the questioning of how safe it is. The side effects of such a process are still unknown. Although the transfer of the DNA could be successful, there is a great possibility of a reshuffling of the entire genome. Assuming that the transfer and selectivity is completely safe, can it truly be considered …show more content…
Ghose argues that being able to determine the sex of the baby could potentially lead to a sex-discrimination against women in society. This article also brings up the idea that if a parent was able to choose the traits of the child, this can worsen the relationship between the parent and the child, due to the fact that this can parents could be presented with tyrannical expectations (Ghose 2014). If a parent is able to dictate the traits of the child, this could hypothetically put pressure on the child that should also have the rest of his life
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