Gene Editing Designer Babies

Introduction

When you think of designer babies most people think of babies wearing designer clothes and playing with expensive toys but that’s not the case. Designer babies are babies that have been genetically preselected, more specifically their DNA has been modified by gene editing. The purpose of gene editing is to eliminate genes that cause diseases such as Huntington’s or Tay Sachs disease. There are tons of advantages and disadvantages to gene editing. With gene editing, diseased and carrier parents can make sure their child doesn’t inherit a life changing disease. However, will society be able to stop there or will we continue to “cure” undesirable features in hope of creating perfection?

The importance of gene editing

Gene

There are many connections between designer babies and this subject. We learned about DNA structure which geneticists need to know when they decode it to find mutations. We also learned about different type of mutations and how they can affect the protein produced. Sex linked diseases and how offspring can inherit them was also a topic we talked about. Finally the last connection is when we were determining the probability of an offspring getting a specific genotype and phenotype. That connects immensely to how if designer babies were made, scientists would have to make sure there was a high enough probability that the offspring would get a specific characteristic in order to satisfy the

So, the idea of designing your own baby and it turning into a competition to see whos kid will be the best seems very realistic and unnecessary. Designer babies will divide our society even more than it already is. The rich and upper class will have the finances to go through the designer baby procedure and once it is complete their “perfect” kids will be seen as superior to the rest. On top of that designer babies are very unethical. Modifying an embryo violates religious values and the rights of the embryo. Another problem is how would large numbers of rejected embryos be handled ethically and politically, since you can’t just throw them out in the garbage. Also gene editing is too similar eugenics. Eugenics is the science of trying to improve the human race by increasing the occurrence of attractive heritable traits. Hitler used eugenic principles to justify his cruelties and eugenics has been disapproved and frowned upon ever since. Designer babies are not needed in this day and age and scientists should stop researching the idea. but research about them can help advance gene editing and that is