Designer Babies

Personally, I am against using gene sequencing for “designer babies”. I don’t think it is ethical at all to use this process as a way for parents to make a baby that would perceive as “perfect”. Babies should be born naturally and parents should love their children under all circumstances. The only circumstance that should allow parents to have the right of gene sequencing would be if there was a harmful chromosomal disease that was definitely going to be passed down to the parent’s offspring. As one of the mothers said in the show “Designer Babies”, “I will now know that when I die, the disease will die with me.” I think that is a logical argument for using gene sequencing because diseases, such as cancer or Down’s syndrome should be terminated if possible. Some benefits of having your genome sequenced is that it can help researchers and clinicians better understand the unique qualities of a disease. It could also be used to help select treatment methods when combined with other information. Another benefit would be that there would be an advance in personalized medicine. But, along with the benefits there are also risks. One risk is that there are no experiments done to determine the long-term effects. With genomes being sequenced, it could ultimately result in decreased diversity and lower tolerance to disease as a whole. However if the gene sequences are eliminating disease, the sequencing could be a major improvement in society. Therefore, if diseases are eliminated, the benefits of gene sequencing could outweigh the risks, as long as the rights of gene sequencing weren’t abused. One benefit of altering the genome of an embryo is the procedure will virtually guarantee that the child will be as requested. If a parent requested that their child is a female, it will definitely come out as a female. However in addition to this, the probability that it will have green eyes and blond hair will increase because those two traits were biomarkers associated with the