Designer Babies: A Right to Choose?

           The public was outraged in 2009 when a Los Angeles fertility clinic offered to let the parents choose their kids’ hair and eye color. The clinic shut down their program that let the parents choose the kids’ hair and eye color on March 2^nd of that year. This clinic can choose the eye color and hair color using reproductive technologies. They could use pre-implant genetic diagnosis (PGD). The doctors could screen embryos before implanting them and then change the hair and eye color if the parents wanted them to.

            Many doctors think that genetic modification is perfectly fine if nobody is getting hurt and everybody has access to it; they have even said that by restricting the method of genetic modification is an assault on reproductive freedom. “It’s in the same category as abortion. If you think women have the right to control their own bodies, then they should be able to make this choice. There should be no law restricting the kind of kids people have, unless there’s gross evidence that they’re going to harm that kid, or harm society,” says Dr. James Hughes.

            This new technology would allow us to create our dream baby. If you wanted your baby to be strong and athletic, you could genetically make them that way. You could make them almost any kind of baby you could think of, which is very scary and unreal to some people.

            Genetically modifying also has it’s benefits; if the doctor screened the embryo and found that the baby had a disease, he could genetically remove the disease from the embryo, leaving your baby to be healthy. A doctor could also make your baby have a better chance at a certain thing that you wanted them to than if they could not screen the embryos and genetically modify them. There could also be bad things people would do with this technology, for example: this technology would not be cheap, so it would turn into the rich being the best: smarter, faster, stronger, bigger, wiser. This technology would also create more stereotypes than ever before. You could literally pick what kind of stereotyped kid you want; many people think that is ethically wrong.

            The future of genetically modifying embryos is strong. Many people will adapt to the idea that you can pick what you want your baby to look like and act like, and many parents will choose to do so.

            I can see both sides of the case; if your baby has a disease and that disease could be taken care of so they won’t have to have it, then I would be completely for getting rid of it. Though, I do not agree with being able to pick and choose what you want your baby to look like and act like. I think that is a part of life, finding out what your child’s habits, likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses are.