Designer Babies: The Promises and Perils of Genetic Engineering Essay Example

author of Ethics, said that “There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope. ” Genetic engineering offers enormous hopes — mingled with unspeakable fears. Children have always been the bringers of new hope and joy to our world. What parents do not dream that their children should be free from illness and weakness, endowed with much beauty and intelligence, displaying a slew of abilities and talents, indeed, be the very best and the brightest?

Today, such dreams fail much more often than they are even partially realized. However, in the near future, by employing techniques of genetic engineering, it would be possible for parents to have the children of their dreams, by doing nothing more than selecting a particular genetic profile and ordering a baby of their choice (Reiss & Straughan 1996). A child so born need not ever suffer from illness, nor ever be given to unwanted tendencies such as crime or drug addiction. Parents can choose their children to be gifted with very high IQs and/or excellent athletic abilities and so on.

If ever such a technology were to become feasible, and affordable, at least by richer sections of the population, it would seem to be such a blessing, a fantastic boon to human kind (Bova 2000). On a collective level, such possibilities could take the human species to the next stage of evolution. Evolution and the world of Nature could be affected in many other ways too because genetic engineering techniques, if allowed to be used freely, will not be limited to enhance the characteristics of humans alone but would naturally make their way into the animal world too,

especially affecting our pets.

Evolution, both human and animal, need not be guided by the blind forces of random mutation and natural selection – we would be for the first time be able to drive the process of evolution in a conscious and purposeful manner. We could end up creating a race of geniuses, heroes and gods. Designer babies could usher in a life of abundance and fulfillment universally. The possibilities are mind-boggling (Bova 2000). The sky would be the limit in everyone’s life, and as if that is not enough, death need not put an end to human life anymore.

Today, the possibility of human race becoming permanently deathless looms close to us. Professor Lee Silver, Geneticist at Princeton University, offers an interesting suggestion regarding the practicability of such a prospect: One of the approaches to overcome ageing is to genetically engineer our cells so that the ageing process is turned off. So I think what’s going to happen actually is that once we understand the genetic programme of ageing the simplest way to correct it is going to be in the embryo and the next generation will be able to have children born who don’t age. (BBC2 2000)

The idea is to discover the various genes that trigger the ageing process and find a way to switch them off in the early stages of embryo itself, thereby genetically engineering our children to overcome death. It is very much possible. Our babies would be pre-programmed to live forever. Freed from various human limitations and even death, the people of coming generations could travel unto distant stars, establishing human settlements there. This would indeed seem to be the

summum bonum of human existence as a species. Thanks to the promises of genetic engineering, we could have one day conquered the universe, no less.

However, there is another side to the story, a darker side, less poetic but infinitely more realistic than the picture of light and glory briefly portrayed above. According to this version of things, the promises of genetic engineering would not lead us to stars but to our own doom. To begin with, genetic engineering is unlikely to be cheap. Will this mean that those who can afford to pay will be able to program out from their children any traits they see undesirable and the children of those who cannot afford such process will continue to be born naturally?

A genetic intervention procedure originally developed to prevent children from being born with mental deficiencies could easily be used to create children with extraordinary mental abilities (Frankel & Chapman 2000). Children of wealthy parents who could afford to benefit from such genetic-enhancement procedures would be privileged way above children of parents who are relatively lower in economic status. This could create an abnormally pronounced rift in human species, the extent of which is hard to imagine.

As the children of the rich would be much too smarter, and the children of poor left at a stark disadvantage, in the matter of a few decades at the most, humanity could even diverge into two species. Such a scenario would resemble the picture portrayed in H. G. Wells’ classic Time Machine – where the former human race is seen divided into a dominant species that rules the earth and a subservient species that inhabits underground dungeons.

However, even if the possibilities of genetic enhancement were somehow to be made universally available, the situation would not be ameliorated.

Instead, it can only be further exacerbated. Let us consider a hypothetical scenario where it becomes easily possible for everyone to have children endowed with perfect memory. Memory, more than intelligence or any other mental faculty, seems to have a clear chemical basis, and hence it has high likelihood of being enhanced through genetic engineering. At first, such a possibility may seem to be very beneficial for humanity. However, on second thoughts, the picture would become enormously entangled.

For instance, students would be able to quickly glance through their books and reproduce all that material in their tests, whether they understood their subjects or not. Our education system would be instantaneously undermined. And such an eventuality represents merely the tip of the iceberg. Human society, as chaotic and disorderly, it may generally seem to us today is in fact a highly ordered one precariously balanced on a slew of factors. The real chaos and disorder would begin when genetic engineering procedures would be made available to population at large, or to certain wealthy and powerful sections of it.

Slippery slope” is generally associated with the possibility of genetic engineering inevitably transitioning from therapeutic purposes to enhancement purposes, but the real slippery slope would be the transition from a society that makes genetic engineering procedures freely available — to total chaos (Lamb 2003). The “slippery slope” scenario puts most of the arguments of the people who passionately champion the cause of science, embryo research and designer babies at serious jeopardy (Flaman 2002). The path of progress and freedom,

if pursued relentlessly without any restrictions, may end up destroying the human race.

The philosopher Spinoza also said, “Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts” (Thinkexist. com) Since the times of Renaissance, we have axiomatically accepted freedom as the highest value, and progress as the greatest cause. But the field of genetic engineering, fraught as it is with controversy, is creating the need for us all to think twice, to think again and again, before we venture into the well-mapped territory of human genome, which nevertheless remains as treacherous as the most uncharted of waters.

If scientific progress during the last few centuries led us from darkness to light, today we are on the verge of witnessing that light turn into one of such dazzling brilliance that it may totally blind us. In the name of progress, for example, the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century sought to promote traits that proponents felt were desirable to society, while weeding out what they considered undesirable. Eugenics is the study of heredity improvement by genetic control, that is to say, controlled breeding in human species (Turano).

In the United States, Nazi Germany, and elsewhere, eugenics led to efforts to discourage procreation among people deemed to be socially inferior through compulsory sterilization of many people, particularly those who were poor, in prison, or in mental institutions. At that time, there was no genetic engineering of course, it was more of a social engineering. However, when genetic engineering is combined with social engineering, nightmares are possible.

In the Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel, Brave New World, “Major instrument of social stability” is the name given to the

technique of genetic human embryo manipulation (Jori 2002). In the novel, the technique is used to create harmonious labor squads of dozens of twins whose intelligence varies according to the work assigned to them. Biological processes of genetic selection and perinatal engineering are used in conjunction with methods of educational conditioning to produce squads of identical men, marching with empty eyes into a factory.

Thankfully, it was just a fiction. However, if Adolf Hitler had his way with his eugenic ambitions, such a situation as portrayed in The Brave New World could have very likely translated into a reality (Kunich 2003). Tomorrow, the genetic engineering technology that makes designer babies possible could be easily misused by a dictator like Hitler and Stalin to further their own power, and make them into a god who rules humanity. In our own day, we are already on the verge of witnessing a recrudescence of eugenics using biotechnology and genetic engineering.

Only, it would not be so crude as decades ago, it would be carried out in a much more sophisticated manner. Through genetic screening it is already possible to determine if persons are predisposed to certain diseases, and whether couples have the possibility for giving birth to a genetically impaired infant. The preliminary stages of genetic screening and diagnosis themselves can lead to abuses, such as forbidding people with certain traits to have children, prohibiting the birth of babies with particular genetic features deemed undesirable by those in power in a society (Burkhardt & Nathaniel 2002).

Further, unlike the aborted early twentieth-century eugenics scenario, early twenty-first century “planned parenthood” need not be instigated by state intervention, it can happen of its

own accord, through unforced decision of the parents themselves. Such designer baby movement, as it spreads far and fast, would also give birth to a number of moral issues. At the very outset, it may lead to the imposition of a skewed or harmful definition of what is normal regarding human traits, and what is considered abnormal or undesirable.

Because individuals and societies tend to impose their own values and standards on others, and because parents are by nature keenly desirous of bringing forth such offspring as would ideally fit their own preconceptions of what is good and beautiful, the designer baby boom would open up a Pandora’s box of interesting possibilities, that could eventually turn into grotesque realities. Genetic manipulating of embryos need not only result in babies free from Down’s syndrome, Spina Bifida and such other serious congenital maladies, it can easily be used to let parents procreate babies that reflect their own ideals of perfection.

The point here is that there is very thin line between these two dimensions, a line that can be breached with ease as technology advances (Reiss & Straughan 1996). We would not need any dictator or strong centralized state power to impose a skewed eugenic agenda on the masses, a grossly imbalanced eugenic movement could spontaneously get underway as common people gain the power to procreate designer babies.

Certainly we are not there yet, and may be long way off, but today’s technology could soon lead to a new era of genetic enhancement, a “brave new world” as it were, where desired traits like increased height, strength, intelligence, disease resistance, and longevity would be accomplished through insertion or alteration of

specified genes into developing human embryos (Fox 2001). We could be witnessing the return of eugenics in a big way, and with it come a wide variety of ethical, social, philosophical questions for which there seems to be no simple answer.

New and powerful technologies, whether they appear in the area of medicine or some other science, present important social challenges. The challenge posed by advances in reproductive and genetic engineering technologies is to ensure that they are used to increase, rather than lessen, the freedom and well-being of all (Gordon 2003). However, this is an enormous challenge, almost insurmountable in view of the increasingly convoluted ethical, social and philosophical dilemmas these technologies bring with them as they seemingly inexorably advance every year.

Reference

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/1999/living_forever_script.shtml