Engineering the Perfect Human

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For centuries, mankind has been fascinated by the idea of perfection. In recent decades, the issue has been raised regarding the perfect human and whether scientists are able to engineer and create this. Attempts have been made in the past to engineer this said “perfect” human, through eugenics and scientific racism, but until now, these attempts have been ineffective. Only now, with modern technology, are scientists able to make more significant progress in altering the human genome to the produce desired characteristics of perfection.

History has shown the attempts made to create a perfect, pure race of humans. Eugenics (the science of improving a human population by controlled or selective breeding to produce desirable heritable characteristics) has played a large role in this, with government campaigns launched in countries such as Germany, South Africa, the USA, Australia and Sweden, to segregate the population and breed a pure, unmixed race.

Adolf Hitler launched such a campaign in Germany in the early 1900s. His idea of the perfect human was the Aryan “Master Race” – a population of white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Nordic people. He wished to breed this race of physically perfect humans to be, in his own words.

With the idea that non-Aryans, especially Jews, were inferior to Aryans, he introduced the Nuremberg Laws, which classified the German population into Aryans and non-Aryans. This chart shows how the Nuremberg Laws used a rudimentary form of genetics to determine if a German was, in fact, German, Jewish or Mischling (“mixed-blood”) by looking at their ancestors and inheritance.

Once classified, the Aryan and non-Aryan races were kept strictly apart through laws like the “Law for the Protection of German Bl...

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...sed 6 July 2011. http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/pbgh.html

• Nazi eugenics. Author: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 2011. Accessed: 6 July 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics

• “The Pioneering Operation.” From the Mail Online article by Sam Greenhill, Jenny Hope and Nick Mcdermott, 11 January 2009. Taken from the Daily Mail website 2011. Accessed 7 July 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1110244/Britains-cancer-free-designer-baby-born-screened-deadly-gene.html

• Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) Author: Dr Andrew J. Levi, 2011. Park Avenue Fertility and Reproductive Medicine website. Accessed: 7 July 2011.

http://www.parkavefertility.com/pre-implantation_genetic_diagnosis.html

• What is a designer baby? Author: Bionet 2002. Accessed: 6 July 2011 http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_cont1.htm

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