Pros and cons of designer babies

The Notion of the 'Designer Baby'

"Designer baby" is a term that was coined by journalists, and officially accepted since 2004. It's not hard to grasp what the idea means, especially if you have ever seen the film Gattacca. The term designer baby is most often used to describe babies born from in vitro fertilizations (IVF), after having been selected as embryos with desirable genetic attributes and after genetic defects were "weeded out". 

It can also, in a futuristic sense, refer to more active genetic engineering, in which embryos are enhanced in labs to achieve "superior" physical attributes or intelligence. 

The very notion of this variation of “having a baby” is bound to be a subject of controversy. Some people embrace this idea greatly, wanting to have babies that can be, more or less, perfect. On the other hand, there are people who believe in natural development and human individuality and who think that no one should be able to “design” their baby, considering the whole process highly unethical, a slippery slope to future new forms of discrimination, against their relgion, and even, bizarre. All in all, there are different opinions on the subject.

Positive Aspects of Designer Babies

Strange as this might sound, parents who have children with serious diseases may decide to have "designer babies" so that they could help their current children. Therefore, the embryos of these designer babies are scanned for any genes which might develop illnesses and, once these are ruled out, they are born healthy and with all the necessary genes and stem cells which can help their suffering brothers and sisters. Children born from this practice are also called savior babies.

These cells and genes are normally harvested from the umbilical cords of these babies. Thus, creating another life to save a life that already exists can be a benefit with this approach, since the family gets one more baby, while, at the same time, being capable of saving the existing child too. Some countries, however, do not approve of these methods (since the savior child is not a commodity but an individual who has the right not to be subjected to constant medical procedures), and parents often need to seek places where these things are possible.

Negative Aspects of Designer Babies

These babies come with a financial price and it is not a small one. A designer baby costs about $180,000. Moreover, the parents can choose many of its traits as if they were playing a game on the computer. Eye and hair color, intelligence and many other aspects of a baby-to-be can be modified and designed, making the bizarre factor even more prominent.

Finally, many people strongly believe that no one should be playing God, creating perfect individuals which will be delivered into rich families. Subsequently, only the rich will be beautiful, meet all the social standards and be healthy at the same time, while people who cannot afford designer babies will be sentenced to a Russian roulette of mother nature. This is bound to have a catastrophic impact on the future of human society since it only nurtures the diversities between us, which have already cost us millions of lives throughout history.