Designer Babies

 Have you ever heard of designer babies? It was in the news awhile back.  With this technology parents can now choose what hair color, eye color, gender, and scan for cancer.  They also hope that in the near future they might even be able to make the child smarter.

Parents can choose what hair color and eye color they want for their designer babies.  But there are some public out rages about this technology. Some say if everyone gets accesses to it everything might be fine. But what people are worried about is that only the rich will get accesses to it. They also say that if in the near future they are able to make them smarter or prettier. That would separate the rich and the middle class even more. With the rich having the money to make their children smarter when the middle class can’t. Even more separating the two classes.

This technology can also screen for genetic diseases. If parents have bad health problems past down in their family
they can now screen to avoid passing them on. This can help stop genetic disease from happening, saving life later in the future. They can also use this technology to let the parents choose the eye color and hair color. It can even give hope to a country.

In England they have their first cancer free baby. This child may or may not have cancer when they grow up.   But it shows that maybe one day there’ll be no cancer. The baby was the first in England to be screened for cancer.  This gives the country hope that one day there will be no diseases.

There many other ways this technology can help us. These are a few things it can do. Parents can select eye and hair color. They can scan for cancer and genetic disease and give hope that one day there will be no disease. 

Do you think this technology will help or make humans worse?

Will it separate middle and high class even more? 

Do you think one day everyone will  be able to use this technology? 

11 thoughts on “Designer Babies

  1. Designer babies have both positives and negatives. It can be beneficial for people who have a disease, but don’t want to pass it on to their child. One problem, could be that adding one gene can affect another; that could be crucial for survival. We also don’t know how well the genes will be pasted on to the next generation; it could end up doing more harm than good. Another benefit could be that you can screen for possible diseases. That way you can help prevent it from happening. In my opinion “designing” babies is to risky, especially if you don’t know how it will affect future generations. I also think the choosing of hair and eye color is a little overboard.

    http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

  2. This was a very informational blog! I heard of things like this but i wasn’t really sure what you could do with it. I think that this could cause huge problems restating the issue of class what people can afford. I think it is a smart idea to have to be able to eliminate cancer and disease. In the end the when babies are born disease and cancer free as time moves on more and more kids will be born that same way. Other than that i think we as humans should just rely on fate to determine what babies and children will look like. Although i did further research and found that there comes a high risk of health problems.
    http://www.livescience.com/9825-test-tube-babies-fare-face-risks.html

  3. I think it is so interesting that they have technology to make a baby look a certain way. I do not agree with this choice because every person should be different and if to many want people want the same thing, no one will be much different looking. I also think it is amazing that they created a cancer free baby in England! If they can make an unborn baby cancer free, imagine the technologies they will soon have for the living people with cancer. I believe it will always be mainly the rich people with these designer babies because it is probably a very expensive process. I also agree this would be another reason that the two societies separate even more. http://www.livescience.com/27206-genetic-engineering-babies-debate.html, shows the pros and cons between having designer babies and not. This was a very intriguing blog. Nice work!

  4. The subject on designing your own baby is very controversial. Some people would want to “Design” their own baby, and others won’t. Having a perfectly engineered baby would definitely change the world. If it would change the world, worse or better is the problem. This subject could be worse for our world, because humans are not perfect beings. With perfect babies growing up in an imperfect world could be a disaster waiting to happen. With a designer baby there would also be a consequence to appear later, probably with the child’s learning ability. The technology today is becoming far worse in my opinion. Technology is slowly killing off the human race. Here is a site i found that could clear up any questions…http://infertility.about.com/b/2009/03/12/would-you-design-your-own-baby.htm

  5. This blog really interested me. I think that being about to make a “designer baby” is based on your own opinion. Some people believe that it would be morally wrong, and some people would really want to do this. I do see how the parents would want to make sure that their baby was healthy and have no problems in the future, but being able to make their baby look different, is a different story. I don’t believe that we should change the way our babies look, because that should happen naturally. But making sure a baby is healthy, I would do, because even after they are born we try to stop the disease or health condition anyways, so stopping it before it happens, is fine with me.

    Heres another good website that I found:
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9480372/Genetically-engineering-ethical-babies-is-a-moral-obligation-says-Oxford-professor.html

  6. Though is a very controversial subject, I do believe have a “designer” baby would rather be a good thing—to a certain extent that is. The fact you could screen your child to see if any genetically transferred diseases transmitted to the infant and stop it could possibly be a great feat in the scientific world as well as helping out human kind. The other side to this, however, is not something I would want in the world: to have a genetically altered child to be more intelligent or look better. Yes, I do believe it would create an even bigger gap between not only rich and poor, but the intelligent and the less intelligent groups of people. There is already a gap out there and with this, it will only become bigger and nothing good can come of separating people into classes like that. Changing their looks just to be aesthetically pleasing sort of seems like cheating, it is safe to say I would never do that to a child, maybe screening for cancerous cells and all, but never changing them so they could be a “blonde-haired, blue-eyed” person. In all, I would say that yes, being able to change certain genes as to not develop a fatal illness is a good thing—as long as it stops there. No altering the looks or the intelligence, people should be happy with what they are born with is what I believe.

    http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

  7. Designer babies have become a huge deal in the past decade as scientists get closer and closer to the key to deciding babies’ features. Some say that if certain families are allowed to choose while others cannot afford to this will separate the classes of the world even more. Others suggest making some part of the procedure free, while having a price for deciding specific features. This would make every baby be designed to not have cancer, or be screened for tumors, aneurisms and other life threatening illnesses that could mean life and death for the child. Otherwise, deciding your child’s gender, hair, eye, skin color, or any other feature such as perfect vision, or a perfect athlete would have to be paid for. Many think this would be terrible no matter how much money you have to spend. It could help our society by making sure our children will be healthy happy babies, but if we abuse this power we could end up having a huge conflict on our hands. One day we might be able to choose eye color, and gender choosing is already available, but what happens if parents with a sick child decide to have another genetically engineered to help that child survive? We could end up with one child being somewhat healthy, but the other healthy child would only have been born to cure the sick one. This proves a challenge for all doctors and lawmakers of the future.

    Sources
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4206623/Designer-babies-Controversy-over-embryo-selection.html
    http://www.buzzle.com/articles/designer-babies-debate.html

  8. I liked this blog because the topic is very interesting. It gives you a lot to consider and think about when it comes to designer babies. I think that this is an amazing form of technology but i think there is a lot of risks that come along with this. There are advantages and disadvantages to this topic. Some of the advantages is that people can have a choice in the appearance of their child. The disadvantages include people using this powe in a negative way and the social classes would get mixed up. In my opinion, the disadvantages outway the advantages in this situation and taking these high risks is not worth it.

  9. I also did my blog on designer babies and genetic engineering so I found it interesting that we were both interested in the same thing. I think that scanning for diseases is incredibly helpful and can be very beneficial. I don’t think people should be able to hand-pick what they want their babies to look like. This will not only increase the gap between the middle and upper class but it will create a society even more focused on beauty. I also think it would take the fun out of having a baby. There are some uses that could be incredibly helpful but we shouldn’t be able to pick and choose what our babies look like.

    Sources
    http://www.2facts.com/icof_story.aspx?PIN=i0100580&term=genetic+engineering

  10. I think there are some ups and downs for designer babies. Some people do want to know what their child will look like some people don’t. They would rather have it be a surprise. I mean why would you want to pick out what your baby will look like. There are so pros and cons though for doing this. It could also stop some genetic diseases babies can get like, Down syndrome, spinal muscular atrophy, and cystic fibrosis. There are some couples that can’t have kids and they have to adopt. But I think they would rather have them look like them so they think that they are there really parents. I thought this blog was really interesting and never really thought about tell now. This website I found was really helpful.
    http://www.buzzle.com/articles/pros-and-cons-of-designer-babies.html

  11. There were many questions that I had after I read your blog. I think that either way you write it, this blog is always going to be based on the blogger’s opinion. For example, like you said on the blog, there are many poeple that are outraged about disigner babies. Like here’s my opinion,everything comes with a bad thing. If babies are made prefectly though this new proccess, there’ll be more healthy babies. However it also means that no babies will die.That may sound good, but have you seen our population? It’s on the rise and this new tech. will only add to the problem. Oh btw here’s aource that might help you see it my way: http://www.prlog.org/10459698-is-this-problem-of-population-over-growth.html

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