What are designer babies? Are they the future of humanity or the start of a dystopia?
The term “Designer Babies” are children whose genetic traits have been artificially selected or modified using modern technologies like CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) to remove or change certain things about them. For example, physical characteristics like eye colour, skin colour, hair colour or even physical abilities could all be chosen before their even born meaning they may be born without any of their natural features or characteristics, instead it would all be pre-determined for them. While this technology sounds terrible, it does have the potential to prevent serious genetic disorders or illnesses. If we look at it from a medical viewpoint, there's many amazing advantages of this technology. For example, a scenario for this is if two people, both seemingly healthy from birth, create a baby where they have the potential to be born with a genetic disorder, for example cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease, both very cruel, harsh diseases. One reason this could happen is because the parents could be carriers which means they won't have any symptoms of it, they would just have a recessive allele for it which means the disorder wouldn't be present in them, but once they have a baby, the recessive alleles could have a chance of presenting in their baby. With technology like CRISPR, parents, once aware of the risk could choose to use this technology to remove or modify the child's faulty gene meaning this faulty gene which could have caused them to be born with a genetic disorder would be gone. This could mean, overall, less children are born with these restricting, deadly disorders as gene editing technologies have already shown lots of promise in correcting these faulty genes.
However people are worried about how far parents and scientists will go to change children, as not only is it considered unethical it also could be dangerous. And so, a question arises, where should people draw the line between treatment and enhancement, and could this line really be maintained?
If you look at the issue from an ethical viewpoint, there's an obvious issue that arises. Should humans really “play God” and interfere with natural life? This sort of technology is considered quite recent which means there's questions on if it's really safe, as the long-term effects are still unknown. This could mean as people choose more appealing characteristics, genetic diversity and therefore our gene pool may decrease. Another issue many people are concerned about is the socioeconomic threat, as this technology, the process and the result could create a new form of inequality or social hierarchy where genetically modified or enhanced individuals are seen as superior to others. This concern is linked to past extreme cases, an example being Adolf Hitler, and his obsession over “Pure Aryans” and their physical characteristics of being blue eyed, blonde, tall and athletic. And as everyone knows, through Hitler's obsession over these traits, the line blurred on whether it was ethical or even morally right to want these things, which we know then led to the mass murder of many innocent lives just for not fitting into these characteristics. This shows just how serious this is as it raises hundreds of questions and concerns on the violation of human rights, human dignity and morality of people. Luckily, back then, the technology was not yet advanced enough to modify babies for these characteristics, but if it was, I'm sure you would agree, Hitler would have clearly supported and justified it. So, as you can see, there's always been and always will be concerns and questions regarding the ethics on this topic.
Another important concern to consider is the safety and risks those children could be facing. This is because technology like CRISPR, although advanced, is still prone to making mistakes which could lead to unintended health problems or even new genetic disorders. I believe a good example of the risks is to look at certain breeds of dogs like pugs or bulldogs, dogs that have been selectively bred for certain physical features like short legs or a smaller snout all because we found those features cuter, yet in the end, caused serious health problems like breathing difficulties or a reduced quality of life. This shows how altering genetics for certain desired traits can lead to serious, harmful consequences which causes nothing but pain and suffering for those victims, and ironically enough, the pug, selectively bred for certain features to make them cuter, have now got characteristics that most people dislike and don’t find cute anymore. This is clearly an example of how genetic editing can create unpredictable mutations or long-term effects that may not be immediately understood or disliked, but when passed onto future generations can pose significant risks to both the victims themselves and society as a whole.
In conclusion, although genetic modification can offer amazing, life changing benefits, the risks and ethical concerns people have for this new method seem to constantly outweigh the benefits. And although, I do agree with these concerns and don't agree with the topic of “designer babies”, I think genetic editing should continue to be researched for medical purposes only, while things like genetic editing just for certain physical characteristics or to create a designer baby should be heavily restricted and supervised.