Designed to Live for the Sake of Someone Else's Life?

What is a designer baby? A baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilisation to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics. reproductive techniques involve using in vitro fertilisation to fertilise eggs with sperm in test-tubes outside the mother's body in a laboratory.

Are things getting out of hand with our research into genetic processes?

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Why is it done? First, it all depends on the mother and the father. Maybe they both have a recessive gene for cancer, and they do not want their child to get that chance. Sometimes it is done to genetically modify your child. People want to decide on the gender of their child, or their looks. Sometimes it is done just for another child.

Example, My Sister's Keeper. In this movie, a girl named Kate Fitzgerald, is diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia, which is a type of cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow. The parents of Kate then decided to conceive Anna through in-vitro fertilisation to be a donor for Kate and maybe someone who could save her life and make her cancer-free. The parents though, in my opinion, use Anna. They make her donate blood for Kate from the age of three and use her as a donor for other bodily substances as Kate goes through remission and relapse.This is another reason for designer babies. I disagree with this on all points. It is against nature to use a child's body without their agreement from such a young age. They are being put through a lot of pain and too much suffering. Either way, in the end, Kate dies. What if Anna would've given her a kidney and her body would have refused it? What would the point have been to put Anna through pain all along? Kate's cancer would relapse and the story would start from the beginning all over again. The movie was sad, but at the same time I learned something new that shows me what this world and science are capable of. A quote that really inspired me was said by Anna at the beginning of the movie:

"On the other hand, I was born for a very specific purpose. I was born because a scientist managed to hook up my mother’s eggs and my father’s spern to create a specific combination of precious genetic material. I, the great disbeliever, decided to ask my parents the truth, and I got more than I bargained for. They sat me down and told me all the usual stuff, of course, but they also explained that they chose little embryonic me, specifically because I could save my sister, Kate. “We loved you even more,” my mother made sure to say, “because we knew what exactly we were getting.” It made me wonder though, what would have happened of Kate had been healthy. Chances are I’d still be floating up in Heaven or wherever, waiting to be attached to a body to spend some time on earth. Certainly I would not have been part of this family."

But how are these designer babies really created? It is all done through vitro-fertilisation or as scientists refer to it, VF. An embryo is fertilised in a test tube with other embryos that are as well candidates for being implanted in the mother's womb. The parents then decide which one would be best, and thus implant it. If the child is not the way it should be, it is thrown out. And that right there could have been a life. But it is killed against its will. Why would we waste a precious life just to get something more perfect? God gave us life as a gift, not something we throw out or genetically engineer.

Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis- PGD basically means embryo screening and its main advantage is that it is used to avoid passing on the genetic disorders that parents might pass on to their kids. How is it done? A group of embryos are taken away from the mother and grown to the eight-cell stage which is the stage soon after conception, where the fertilized egg has begun to divide. At the moment that these cells have reached the wanted stage, one or two cells are taken and checked to be free from the genetic variations that are associated with the disease before being introduced into the womb. That is how it is made sure that the child will be disorder free.

Ethical Problems- So, is this idea brilliant? Is it a good thing that we are artificially selecting our child's genetic makeup? Do we all agree on ensuring on the presence or absence of some particular genes? I completely disagree against this. For me, it is a terrible idea just to make out future look better and for science to go even further. Why chance a life? Why not leave it the way it is? Life's a gift to be pleased about and to give thanks to. We are all created in a particular way to be different from the other. Would we want the world to be identical? Blonde hair and blue eyes? That seems awfully dull.Scientist on the other hand, believe that this is something that is going to change our look on children. Also this experiment costs something over 18,000 just for an embryo to be screened for a desired sex (boy or girl) and the prices would just go up if we want to change other traits. Other ethical problems include custody battles over fertilized embryos that were frozen but never put to use.

Questions about what to do with embryos left over a successful pregnancy, and the increased health risks posed by multiple births. Yet, no one is suggesting that this be stopped. The ethical issues raised by techniques beginning from the genetics labs are likely to be even more complex. What if parents can use preimplantation genetic diagnosis to avoid having kids with attention-deficit disorder, or those destined to be short or dullwitted or predisposed to homosexuality? Will they feel pressure from friends and relations to do so? And will kids who are allowed to be born with these characteristics be made to feel even more like second-class citizens than they do now?

Conclusion-There are many questions left that are not yet answered. In my opinion, we should stop, or we should argue on this case. It's sad to see such a thing being created. Our world just wants to turn us into robots. In science, something new is created every day. Some creations are good, some are not. The good I see in this? The reduction of diseases or PGD. If mother and father have had a family member diagnosed with cancer or if they have cancer, why not want to reduce that chance for your child? It's something that you carry on your shoulders knowing that your child might get sick at a young age. It's something not all of us want to happen. What if your grandmother had Alzheimer's? Would you want your child to grow up and slowly start forgetting things? No, we do not want those genes to be carried on through our blood, passed on to generations. If this is the only way we can get rid of that, then yes, maybe I'd take the chance, but then after all, things do happen for a reason.

Sources-

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/30/designer.babies/

http://www.beep.ac.uk/content/115.0.html

http://jcurry2009.blogspot.com/2009/11/pros-and-cons-of-designer-babies.html

http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=127

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

http://www.bionetonline.org/English/content/db_cont1.htm

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pros-and-cons-of-designer-babies.html