Реферат: Designer Babies
DesignerBabies
AsI was on my way to college on a typical weekday morning, I saw a newspaper witha very attractive cover. There was a picture of a baby wearing a bib with “DBCustom Made in LA” written on it and “Designer Babies” written in bold blackletters on the cover itself. I picked up the newspaper, which happened to beamNewYork, and read the cover story. Apparently, a Dr. Jeff Steinberg, who runsa Fertility Clinic in LA and is a 1970s In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) pioneer,is offering a chance for IVF patients to choose the physical traits of theirchild, such as hair and eye color, using Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis(P.G.D.) They already offer people the choice of selecting the child’s gender(Fink). After reading this article, I couldn’t help asking myself the question:is this right?
Inour times, technology presents us with numerous opportunities to make our livesbetter. We see these opportunities in various areas of our life: education,career, leisurely activities, etc. However, technology has now found its wayinto our family life as well. In Vitro Fertilization is used to provideinfertile couples with a chance to have a child and P.G.D. is used to insurethat parents with a disease that can be passed on to the child will have ahealthy child by excluding the disease-carrying genes (Handyside and Delhanty270; Belkin). IVF is the process of manually combining male sperm and a femaleegg in vitro (in the lab). When IVF is successful, it is combined with aprocedure called embryo transfer, which allows the embryo to be physicallyplaced into the uterus and after a while, pregnancy occurs (American PregnancyAssoc.). Of course, there can be no doubt about the fact that this process is ablessing for the unfortunate, but fertility specialists have gone too far thistime. The ability to choose the gender and physical traits or your baby isunethical and dangerous.
Accordingto data from the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, 36,648 womenunderwent fertility treatment in 2007, compared to 34,855 in 2006, which showsa 5 % increase (Kirby). Moreover, this number continues to rise. However, thereis a problem involved with IVF. While undergoing the process, women have totake certain fertility drugs, which may have a negative effect on the patient.Complications include the risk of multiples such as twins, triplets andhigh-order pregnancies, and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), which isthe process of the enlargement of ovaries, leading to them filling with fluidsand causing difficulties when ovulation occurs. This can then lead to bloodclots and kidney failure (Gurevich). Therefore, IVF poses a risk for peoplechoosing to go through with it, and for people who choose this process forreasons other than to be able to have a healthy baby is unnecessary.
Oneproblem associated with the ability to choose the traits of a child is that,from the point of view of ethics, this allows the parents to play the role of“God” and the child to be treated like a toy. As a Boston Universitybioethicist named George Annas said, “It could radically change our view ofhuman life, our view of children, our view of parenthood, our view of ourrelationships to each other and what it means to be human” (qtd. in Snow).Parents will tend to lose the feeling of excitement that comes with not knowingwhat the baby’s gender is and what he/she will look like. With the ability tochoose, children will turn into some sort of competition between parents, acontest to make the more beautiful baby. Moreover, the parents cannot becompletely certain that the child him/herself will be satisfied with the looksthe parents chose, and this will create tension in their future relationship.“It encourages parents to think about their child not as a person they willnurture and take into adulthood, but as a product like a new kitchen or a carthat you might customize,” says a scholar at the Hastings Center, a bioethicsresearch institute, Josephine Johnston (qtd. in Fink).
Artificialfertilization methods also pose a health risk not only for the mother, but forthe baby as well. The fact that this process is relatively new and has neverbeen tested before creates a hazard for the child and can lead to negativeoutcomes. Doctors themselves are not entirely sure of the results this processwill bring. Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at NYU, hasasked “How many arbitrary and willful choicesabout a child’s genetic makeup could lead to unexpected negative outcomes?”(Siegel) This process is dangerous, and until scientists are completely sure ofits safety and success, it should not be allowed. According to a researchconducted by scientists in Atlanta, babies conceived artificially are likely tosuffer 30% more from health problems and genetic flaws (BBC News). With the interventionof the ability to choose genes, the risk increases.
The biggestproblem concerning the ability to choose the gender and traits of a child isthe one of social division. The average total cost of an IVF process in theU.S. is $1,250,000 (IVF Cost). Obviously, the typical middle-class Americanfamily will not be able to afford something so expensive. Only the wealthy,upper-class families will have the choice of creating good-looking children.This will significantly increase the already wide gap between the classes,because the wealthy will now not only be wealthy, but beautiful as well. Theinequality between classes will deepen, and there will be no knowing what theoutcome of such differences in a society will be. «Thereis going to be a growing gap between the haves and have-nots, and so thechildren of the rich really might be beautiful, and the children of ordinarypeople won't have access to the same sorts of expensive technologies,»Paul Saffo, a futurist, said (qtd. in Snow).
Another possibleproblem is that the people who can afford this option will try to createchildren based on their ideal of beauty, and due to the fact that people tendto have similar ideals of beauty, the children will most likely turn outlooking the same: probably blue-eyed and blonde-haired. At a gathering ofpregnant mothers in NYC, one woman named Risa Goldberg said, «Ithink the world will be a little bit more competitive. If everyone programmedtheir own kids, then everyone would be…the same. There would be a lot of thesame type of people. There wouldn't be as much diversity or variety” (qtd. inSnow).
Thesituation in China demonstrates the possible problem the world might encounterwhen being able to choose the gender of a baby. Because of their nationalpreference of boys in the past and today, China now faces gender imbalance. Forcenturies, the Chinese valued men more than women, and often committedinfanticide. Now, China has a lack of women in their population. The choice ofselecting the sex of a child can lead to similar issues. If a family prefers aboy, and millions of other families will prefer boys as well, the world will beexperiencing a lack of females and vice versa and therefore, reproduction rateswill decrease and gender imbalance will occur all over the world (People’sDaily).
Anonline poll on MSNBC.com asked the question,”Would You Choose Your Baby’sTraits?” and 51,898 people responded. 73% answered “No”, 20% said, “I’m NotSure”, and only 7.4% said “Yes”. This demonstrates the overall negativeattitude people have towards selecting what your baby looks like. Nevertheless,some people actually might consider it as an option. One of the pregnantmothers at the gathering, Shabina Sheikh said, “I could be a little selfish inthe fact that I want my baby to look more like me, not my husband…Have mypretty nose and not have my husband's flat chin” (qtd. in Snow). Without adoubt, there is a positive side to this process. If there are defects in theappearance of one of the parents, for example a harelip, while undergoing IVF,they might as well choose not to have those defects passed on and instead makethe baby inherit genes that the other parent has. Different people havedifferent points of view on this matter, such as Dr.Aniruddha Malpani and Dr. Anjali Malpani, infertility specialists, who wrote:
Whynot? If man can improve on Nature, then why should he not try? After all,building a house is simply man's way of improving on nature — and if we canimprove man himself, then why not?...If we allow people to choose when to havebabies; how many to have; and even to terminate pregnancies if theyinadvertently get pregnant, then why not allow them to select the sex of theirchild, if it is possible?...We should allow patients freedom to choose forthemselves — medical technology should empower them with choices they can makefor themselves!
Theopinions about whether it is right to allow people to choose the traits and genderof their children varies greatly from person to person. The doctors andspecialists will obviously stress the fact that there is nothing wrong withsuch a procedure, as Jeff Steinberg does when saying “I would not say this is adangerous road…It is an uncharted road” (Fink). Nevertheless, the majority ofpeople consider this wrong, unethical and hazardous for the baby, the motherand for the population in general. However, if this procedure is possible, andpeople are actually considering it, who knows what will happen next? Technologydiscovers new things on a daily basis, and at this rate, people will soon beable to choose not only the physical, but also the psychological traits oftheir children. The outcome of this remains yet to be discovered.