Designer Babies and Nature

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Recommended: Modify humans through genetic engineering

Designer Babies and Nature

Improving on nature is basically when we, as a society, interfere with

the natural process of nature e.g. plant growth. A present day example

of when we have been trying to improve on nature is Genetically

Modified Foods, a topic that is currently the subject of a lot of

debate. The people who are entrusted to improve on nature, the

scientists, do it with the intention of giving us a better quality of

life.

The latest major idea to come from the world of science on how we can

improve on nature is the concept of genetically modified embryos, or

so-called "designer babies". It is reported that scientists are coming

very close to having the technology to manipulate and screen embryos

so that any diseases could be eliminated or immunised against. The

technology could even be used to manipulate eye colour and other

characteristics of an embryo, even gender.

When we began our class debating and research of designer babies, I

immediately took an extremely conservative and one-sided outlook on

the topic. I believed that any thought of genetically engineering

babies was sick and that there was no way we could put our future

generations at risk by making them into some mad scientist's warped

experiment, no matter how good were the intentions about wiping out

disease were. If we left any loopholes in the use of the technology,

it would be exploited and then it would be no time before we ended up

having mass human genetic engineering laboratories, like those in

"Brave New World" by Aldus Huxley or failed experiments such as

Frankenstein in Mary Shelly's novel of the same name.

However, as we delved deeper ...

... middle of paper ...

...d that

detailed, informed debate takes place immediately otherwise we could

end up with a human spare parts industry or a warped Utopia, like

Brave New World.

The voice of history and literature should not be ignored as they can

serve as warnings to the governments today. The attempted Swedish

eugenics of the 1970's is only today fully coming to light and Brave

New World is so frighteningly accurate it chills my spine thinking

about it.

I believe strongly that depending on the choices of our governments

now, we are either on the verge of a discovery so great it could

change human life for the better like never before, or, if the wrong

choices over legislation and the extent to which genetic engineering

can go are made, then we could, over an amazingly short period of

time, initiate our own self destruction.

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