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Paper Topic:

Pros and Cons of Designer Babies- should paerents be able to design their own babies?

Pros and Cons of Designer Babies : Is it ethically , morally justified to have designer babies

A designer baby is a term used often by journalists where parents potentially might have options of using genetic technology to modify embryos and choose desirable or cosmetic changes . These leads to several questions . How will the parents prefer to have babies in future ? Will they prefer to interfere with the natural process of embryo development Is it ethical to make changes to an unhealthy embryo ? Would this lead to parents who cannot afford genetic modification cost

to disown their babies in embryo stage ? There are a lot of ethical and legal questions surrounding designer babies

Advanced reproductive technology using InVitro Fertilization (IVF ) has already enabled parents to have babies by fertilizing eggs with sperm in `test-tubes ' outside the mother 's body in a laboratory environment . This does reduce the chance that the child born will be free of genetic diss as the parents do not have to follow the level of caution that a normal pregnancy would need to adhere . However there are only two types of advanced reproductive technologies that are legally carried out on humans . There are differing ethical and legal opinions on use of these technologies across the world . The first technology involves determining the sperms that will fertilize the egg . This enables choosing the gender of the baby . The second involves genetically screening the embryos and only implanting back into the mothers womb selected embryos that have a higher probability of delivering healthier babies . This technology is known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD

The work behind designer babies can be attributed to the scientists from the Human Genome Project and from Celera Genomics who initially prepared a working draft of the human genome . This is considered a big achievement in cracking the genome code . The researchers as part of the exercise aim to construct a detailed genetic map of the human genome and determine the nucleotide sequence of human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA The working draft of the human genome suggests that the researchers have identified most of the human genomes but have distance to cover to assemble a finished sequence . Solving the human genome will tell the scientists lot about how life works . This knowledge will help scientists interfere effectively in the process of helping parents have designer babies . The goals of the research are much broader but the knowledge would work as a catalyst for pro-designer baby lobbyists

What makes designer babies so controversial is that the world is still grappling with issues relating to reproduction that are yet unresolved A wide majority of people it seems would want a more humanitarian view of the ethics of human conception as it is an aspect of life that weighs heavily on the basic needs of many people . However across the world there are many communities who are opposed to sex selection . This is more pressing issue for the developing countries and the third world countries where social stigma is...
