Designer Babies By : Crystal G. Amber J.

Designer Babies The colloquial term "designer baby" refers to a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics

History Adam Nash was the world's first known designer baby born by the revolutionary pre-implantation process in the year 2000. Scientists genetically selected his embryo so that he would possess the right cells to save his dying sister's life. His sister suffered from Franconia's anemia (blood disorder), and mostly the chances of Adam getting that disorder was also very high. An embryo was chosen, which did not have Franconia's anemia. Adam became a donor to his sister, which doubled her chances of survival. Same was the case with Charlie Whitaker, who suffered from Diamond Blackfan Anemia. His parents wanted to have a designer baby to save Charlie's life. Since they were denied the right in UK, they went to US to have their baby. In 2003, Charlie's baby brother was born and the stem cells from his umbilical cord would be used to treat Charlie.

Pros It allows parents to choose how they want there child to look. Reduces your babies chances of being born with several diseases. It can make the child have more intelligence.

Cons There's a chance you’re baby will come out the way you wasn’t expecting. Reduces genetic variability, which, ironically, might actually increase the chance of genetic diseases for the children of these designer babies May skew the gender balance, this is already happening in china where parents will often abort a pregnancy if the fetus is female.

Current Use The Fertility Institute is calling this new technology "cosmetic medicine". Do you want your daughter to look like Barbie? Done. Just order up a tall, light-skinned, green-eyed, daughter with blonde hair and the clinic will do the rest.

Designer Babies Future The idea of the perfect human has been around a long time. From Tao Te Ching to Nietsche and Galton, many great minds have described certain desirable and non-desirable qualities of man. Until recently, all human reproduction resulted from sexual intercourse, and couples had to be prepared for the luck of the natural lottery. Now powerful new technologies are changing the reproductive landscape and challenging basic notions about procreation, parenthood, family, and children. Recent scientific discoveries within the field of human genetics and reproductive technologies have revitalized many timeless thoughts about human perfection.

Ethical Issues Adolph Hitler (one of the most notoriously evil men of the 20th century) and his Nazi party set out to design the perfect human race- the Aryan race. To do this they would eliminate all undesirable people. The first of  these "undesirables were the Jews (they believed them to be the lowest class of people in existence), followed by all people who were diseased or disabled, and later the Nazis would also include many other races and classes of people. Both Hitler and the Nazis believed that they could achieve their goal through the use of mass sterilization, horrific experimentation, and genocide. When we look back at this time in history, we do so with horror. One man's desire to create the perfect race led to the death of millions of people. Yet, when it comes to the concept of designer babies have we really come that far? Or have we just made the thought of genetic engineering more palatable because we do our experimentation on cells and embryos instead of live human beings?

MULA The cost of a “Designer Baby” is about 18,000 to 19,000 dollars.

Opinion We the Society of Blue Life think that Designer Babies are bad because you should love your yourself as god made you and your parents shouldn’t change you because they don’t like how there child looks.

Bibliography http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=8953 http://www.prochoiceforum.org.uk/ocrreliss7.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designer_baby