Designer Babies
 

I was watching the news not long ago and a featurette came on about designer babies...

They esitmate in about 25 years through in vitro fertilization, we may be able to choose features to our kids, like what gender we want, eye, hair color, even intellegence, talents, and disease resitance.

Expecting mothers where asked about this and said that they would not want to alter their child, but when asked about the disease resitance, they began to change their mind.

Now I am not one to say if this is right or wrong, after all abortion itself is a touchy subject and I am pro-choice. But the disease resitance idea has me worried, today we have a birth rate that is far higher then our death rate, and that imbalance has lead to our over-population, and can only escalate
to more, long living people. The planet is in it's current state because little by little we are eating up the world's resources, the world cannot support this many people forever. It didn't seem that long ago that the birth and death rate was close to equal, death is just as important birth for the species survival in the long run.

What are your views on this?

Ethan Hawke would wipe out all of the designer babies before they had a chance to mature.

Thread over.

Hmmm. Yeah, I think we need to control birth rates before even thinking about disease resistance babies. The thing about life is the risks in it should happen. People aren't careful if they know nothing is going to happen to them.

Just throwing this out there, but it seems possible that the pressure of over-population might press humanity into more seriously exploring the options of expanding outward. That'd be kind of nice.

I would rather not have humanity's future generations be dependant on the whim of what's fashionable at the time.

It's bad enough with subjecting our pets to being fashion accessories. We dont need people editing their babies to be the popular choice for that year. You'd have no variety or uniqueness.

I can just see it now. This year, red hair is in and blue eyes are out! All you pregnant ladies out there have to give your baby red hair if you want to be IN! Don't be last years news!

that's the problem with genetic engineering. I think the possibilities for disease cures are amazing, but then you are inevitably going to get people who make designer babies. this is where the phrase "I love you for who you are" takes on a whole new meaning

The Earth can support this number of people just fine, it's just that a tiny fraction of it's population hog most of the resources.

I think genetic engineering should be used to remove certain major defects that severely affect lifespan and quality of life, but things that most humans can handle just fine (such as catching a cold etc) shouldn't be given a genetic solution.

While I wouldn't mind supporting giving babies more resistances to diseases, the problem is, what if you code it wrong, or something goes haywire in the DNA that you didn't/couldn't predict?

Suppose you activate some genes so that you're very resistant to most infections. But what if by doing that, you make an overzealous immune system that attacks anything that wasn't produced by your body (so much for transplants and blood transfusions)? And what if they're so overzealous that they attack your own cells? I wouldn't want to have my immune system suppressed my entire life, and then be forced to live in a bubble to survive.

Or what if you accidentally make it so that the genes age at twice the normal rate? I don't think too many people would like that, only being able to live half as long as most other people if they otherwise lived healthy lives.

Sure, I can see the upsides to that, but like others said, there are those who will inevitably create or want "designer babies", and by playing God, who knows what could potentially happen? We could either end up with real X-men, or have people that have really strange and weird diseases.

i'm personally all against this...even if it protects against a strain. this is life and it's not perfect. that's the beauty of it. yeah i know we're all selfish people and we want a perfect child, but this is not the way to do it. i'll agree to what everyone said above about how "i love you for who you are" is a totally different thing now.

Obviously like most other medical innovations, there would be a thorough vetting process to test for the "what-if" scenarios. While it would be difficult to test every single eventuality, they'd at least try to cover as much as possible. I don't really agree with the bolstering of immune systems in normal, healthy people. We already have enough problems with virulent strains of virus without further accelerating their evolution by tinkering with our own DNA.

How is disease resistance any different from getting vaccines when you're a baby?

Hell, if we have any way of preventing people from developing problems such as autism, why shouldn't we use it? If you want to be pragmatic about it, think of all the money we'd save on not having to treat all of these people with horrible diseases that cost ridiculous amounts of money to only let them live for 20 years.

Haven't put hours of thought into this, so im sure someone who is a friggen genius is going to try to make me feel like an idiot, but I'm definitely for the whole disease resistance thing.

I hate overpopulation as much as the next guy (go to Disneyworld around Christmas and you will too) but its not worth voluntarily going out of your way to leave yourself more susceptible to disease. As someone else mentioned, it would also prompt further exploration for alternate living areas (if we could develop shit underwater we'd be fine for a long-ass time). I really dislike the fact that certain kids are born with certain disadvantages that they don't deserve, so yea, 100% for the disease resistance.

As far as the other shit goes, for physical aspects, I say go for it. Maybe if everybody looked alike people would pay more attention to shit that isn't physical...and then the age of the goodlooking getting everything (including job offers that require no talent) would be over.

Mental crap (like choosing intelligence) I am on the complete other end of the spectrum for. Being able to choose your childs intelligence or personality...I just don't want to consider that ever, honestly.

I would not consider autism as a development problem, it is just a way of being... I know this because I was autistic and I graduated from collage at age 19 in technology and have a decent full time job. I did not socialize because I chose not to.

If genetics can prevent real development issues like down syndrom, the I am for it.

I'm trying very hard to come up with a reason to say that I am against designer babies, but I can't come up with anything. What's the problem again? I just don't see one.

http://www.doctorpundit.com/images/uploads/khan.jpg
KHAAAAAN!

I'm in favour of the attempt to remove certain disabilities like Down's or malformed limbs. I don't think it is a lack of tolerance, but I have seen many people attempt to raise children who have no chance of a decent quality of life. I'm sorry but saying that you love your child won't make up for it not having a face (literally) or having no hands or feet or even worse, some form of severe brain damage.

In the past, the sabre-tooth tiger or the wolf would have preyed upon the weakest in the species, if they didn't die of natural causes. That was a natural form of controlling and limiting the effects of genetic faults. Where's that limiting factor now?

I can imagine it....like a sci-fi movie, where a certain minority of people are treated as inhuman because their parents didn't want, or couldn't afford to do genetic engineering. We have ways to make healthier people without genetic mutations. Yes, there are some things that medicine won't take care of, for this I think using genetic engineering very sparingly could be good. I'm just worried about the inevitable bad that people will use it for.

That is a sci-fi movie. It's called Gattaca and it's very good.

He's likely referring to the more serious cases of autism, where they have actual learning difficulties and communication issues, not high-functioning autism and Asperger's syndrome.

I have had learning difficulties and communication issues, I can't do math to save my life to this day, and my firends where few and far between, my cats where my best firends, I did not start to talk until age two and even then I got frustrated and did repetitive things when no one understood me, but I learned how to talk better and I just did not socialize with others because I did not like them, that was choice. We all depevlop differently as individuals and have different preferences in terms of interaction with other people, that is why I don't consider autism a mental issue. I speak from experience.

If autism was any worse then that then it would have to be bridging down syndrom or something simiar. Only then would I think genetics would be a good idea to prevent it.

There are many degrees of autism. Historically, autism is a communication disorder that can be so severe that autistics cannot speak or write at all. High-functioning autistics often can overcome these issues and lead healthy, normal lives, but many of them struggle with their problems from day to day.

These differing degrees of symptoms all fall under the "autistic spectrum", which includes individuals as varied as highly disfunctional, mute autistics, and people who have Asperger's Syndrome (A parallel disorder to autism which contains many of the same indicators, but lacks the delayed speech development and large amounts of imaginative play of typical autistics.). The general public's awareness of autism sadly falls into what they've seen in movies, such as Rain Man and Mercury Rising, as well as the extremes that the media loves to push into the spotlight, giving them the false impression that all autistics are severely developmentally disabled, instead of the broad range of autism that is a better indicator of what it consists of.

The idea of "curing autism" is indeed a flawed one, as this would change many people's personalities, feelings, interests and outlooks. That's not the aspect that I believe RR was referring to: attempting to remove the impaired IQ's, major communication issues, and other problems that plague more serious cases.

However, this is all hypothetical anyway. I, personally, would be against much of this kind of genetic engineering, but only time will tell if it's even possible, much less if people will accept it.