Designer Babies: A Future Utopia Or Dystopia?

Designer Babies: A Future Utopia or Dystopia?
Smart. Beautiful. Athletic. Healthy. All qualities a person would want in a child. For people in today’s world, they would get these things from their parents in a somewhat random lottery, but imagine a world in which someone could choose these traits for his or her child before they were born. While it may seem like something from a science fiction novel, the technology already exists to allow for that option. The technology is a combination of many existing techniques used to help parents who are unable to have children naturally. First through a process called In Vitro Fertilization, scientists take the egg and the sperm from the correlating parent and fertilize the egg. Normally at this stage,
The process is called preimplantation genetic diagnosis or PGD. Once they have selected an embryo, they use a technology called CRISPR. It allows geneticists to engineer a RNA strand with the desired gene and implant it into the cell. The RNA then goes through the natural process of trying to fix the DNA. The RNA uses an enzyme to cut the desired piece of DNA and replace it with the desired gene. Even though the technology exists, designer babies should not be an option because of the potential side effects on society and the child.
There are already children who fall behind in school and allowing designer babies would only leave those children further behind. In today’s school system, there are already a large range of children and teens at different levels in schooling. For example, in math, there is a remedial class, as on-level class, an honors class, a gifted class, and sometimes even
Genetically modified people would be preferable to business owners because they could be better at the job and since they would be less likely to get sick, they wouldn’t use as many sick days. It would save money for business owners. Noah Rothman, editor of Commentary Magazine, talks about how if genetic modification of humans was allowed, the natural borns would be out of jobs, just like when technology and AI started replacing humans in certain jobs. Rothman says, “ It’s reminiscent of the way in which automation crashed over the American economy like a tsunami. Simple robots have been stealing away from Americans the ability to be paid for the completion of rote tasks for over a generation, but it was the onset of artificial intelligence that truly upended the economy.” He goes on to talk about what would happen with the people who lost their jobs to designer people. The government would have to help those who lost their jobs by providing unemployment. The government would most likely do one of two things. The first option is to just outlaw genetic experimentation on humans. The second option would be for the government to mandate genetic modification on humans. The government would save money with the second option, and it would get rid of some of the issues around the topic, but that would take away the free will of