Designer Babies, The Next Generation

Science is amazing. We all know it. We also know that science is like a curious little baby who just became mobile and doesn’t know where not to go. Granted those types of places could be endlessly argued with things like morality and religion and the like, it’s safe to say the baby knows no such thing nor cares little for it and simply wants to go there and satisfy its curiosity for the time being.

In a recent video I watched an interesting topic was being discussed that got me thinking about babies, and not in the cute ‘I want to have some of my own’ type of way.

In it the discussion of whether or not humanity should venture into making ‘designer babies’ as the possibility for gene manipulation becomes easier with the technology and resources that have become available and/or will most likely become available in the not too distant future.

Now while I am both amazed and impressed that humanity has reached such great lengths as a species, I am also worried as I think about the implications of such breakthroughs. As the video also indicates, the ethics behind such acts are somewhat questionable when you add in the human factor of creating the ‘perfect’ baby. Because one has to ask, what is the perfect baby? And is it the same for everyone?

However, that’s not even the most worrying thing of all, it’s the fact that the process of creating these designer babies has long term effects that are unpredictable after birth as well as down the generation line, but can you honestly say most people would care about that?

Looking at our society and the rate of most pop culture and social media, we can see that people are more interested in the now and have no interested in what will happened later down the line. So if we give them the option to create their ideal babies, or even unique babies, as the guy in the video suggested creating a baby with a tail, you can only imagine what the next few generations would have to deal with on top of a decaying world.

But then you have the flip side of genetic manipulation where certain illnesses can be eliminated and cures can be cultivated saving millions of lives. So it’s clear that the process isn’t all that bad and has multiple levels of use to it.

It’s interesting to mull over, especially when you consider further, things like; how will these babies be accepted into a society that isn’t yet ready to fully accept all the different types of people it already has in its fold? Where does the moral compass lay, with the millions saved or the selected few that could be created? And quite frankly, are designer babies worth possibly deforming your future grandchildren?

Either way it’s safe to say the research will be done and somewhere in the world further experimentation will be conducted. I guess all one can do is wait and see what society does when the results crawl into the playroom.