There are always two common ethical questions raised by the people when considering designer babies. The first question is concerned about the safety and the second question is can they morally be defended. Designer Babies are created by IVF (in vitro fertilization) in which the embryo created are then modified for specific characteristics and kept inside a womb. Genetic Engineers have proved the possibility of bringing in the resistance to disease and invoke babies with athletic abilities.
Even though scientist has tested these characteristics with the mice for NR2B gene, there are several safety issues when injected into human. They are as follows
1) NB2R is injected at random places inside the genome. This might disrupts other gene functions.
2) Genes have more than one effect when injected into living organisms. Even in the case of mice, the injection of NB2R not only increases the learning and memory power but also make them high sensitivity to pain
3) A gene when combined with other genes are more likely to affect intelligence.
PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) is a technology used to prevent passing disease to children from their parents. They use IVF to create collection of embryos which is later grown to the eight-cell stage. At this point some cells are removed and tested for genetic diseases.Only embryos tested with no symptoms of disease will be introduced into the womb. Even though this method is expensive, people are going for this concerning the health of the child. According to Dean Hamer, gene like VMAT2 increases the child's capacity to reach out beyond them. Even though PGD doesn’t involve genetic modification of human embryos, the removal of one or two cells from the eight-cell embryos might risk the well-being of the child. But the PGD supporters are still arguing that there will not be any problem associated with the removal of cells from the eight-cell embryo. But the technology has not yet proved who is right in this dispute.
Another method for selecting the characteristics of a child is through cloning. Cloning is done by transferring a nucleus from the person whom you want to clone and it is introduced into a egg cell initially with removed nucleus and then inserted into the womb. Even though the parents can clone from famous persons like Angelina Jolie or Roger Federer, there is no guarantee that the child made by cloning will have the characteristics that the parents want in the future. According to the author of the article, many parents are not ready to create their children by cloning; this is because major concerns are about the health of the clones. Previous records show that the animal clones suffer from a variety of disease which might happen in human also. There is a big important question among parents and opposers of GE that "are we preventing disease or enhancing attributes?". According to Francis Fukuyama, genetic enhancements in human will make them lose their humanity. Therefore, he suggests that there should be limits for these enhancements. The genetically enhanced child is described as "posthumans". But there were already accidental posthumans among us like Einstein and Ray Charles who achieved beyond the norm in their area of endeavor.
As a conclusion, there are two main advantages for creating a designer baby which includes preventing disease and introducing NR2B gene which makes the child go beyond them in some area. But if government encourages this without any regulations, genetically enhanced people will take the lead in the future which may bring the social arrangements into an end.
Reference:
Nicholas Agar (2006). Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations. Retrieved March 15, 2009. http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html#primer
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My opinion is that government should regulate or even enforce limit to the use of genetic engineering. Natural selection has its own way of doing things and balancing the world's ever so many systems. By utilizing genetic engineering, we are disturbing the balance of a system which may result in unprecedented, unexpected and probably disastrous consequences. I would say that even though natural selection is not always perfect, but it does its job well enough over the billions of years on the life on earth.
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