Joanna Sobierska‑Paczesny Designer Babies

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An excited parent‑to‑beparent‑to‑beparent‑to‑be is sitting over a catalogue, selecting eyes, a nose, figure, height, talents etc. Creating a perfect baby. It might sound like science fiction, but the desire to have a beautiful and healthy baby seems the most natural thing in the world. Yet, as technological development makes it possible to create babies whose genes have been consciouslyconsciouslyconsciously chosen, many people are getting anxious. Why? What is the debate around designer babies?

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One way to ‘design a baby’ is to conceiveconceiveconceive it in the lab where the embryosembryos [embryo]embryos are genetically tested and screened forscreened for [screen for]screened for diseases - literally a life‑saverlife‑saverlife‑saver for the kids of people with a family history of diseases that are inheritedinherited [inherit]inherited. If the test results are satisfying, the embryo is implantedimplanted [implant]implanted through in vitro procedure and after a regular pregnancypregnancypregnancy, the mother gives birth to her ‘designer baby’. The first disputedispute (noun)dispute is whether testing fortesting for [test for]testing for other traitstraits [trait]traits, such as height or talents should be allowed. It is the answer to that dream, isn’t it? To be able to decide if your baby will have stunningstunningstunning green eyes, artistic or sports talents and so forth. The second moral dilemmamoral dilemmamoral dilemma arises when the embryos do have the disease genes or don’t test well according to their parents’ attractiveness standards. What should be done with them?

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Another way of ‘designing babies’ came with the development of CRISPR technologyCRISPR technology (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat)CRISPR technology, which allows scientists to manipulate human genes by cutting them up and replacing undesirableundesirableundesirable gene sequences with healthy ones. Enthusiastsenthusiasts [enthusiast]Enthusiasts of this technology rightly arguerightly arguerightly argue that it’s an unprecedentedunprecedentedunprecedented way to prevent and cure diseases. A way that’s already been tested and proven to work. However, many people are alarmedalarmedalarmed by the idea of ‘designing’ human beings, seeing the potential of abuseabuseabuse of the technologies to create a ‘better race’. Their ethical concernsethical concerns [ethical concern]ethical concerns are not just whether scientists should be playing Godplaying God [play God]playing God, but also that the price of such procedures means only the rich would be able to afford it. Thus, the gap between the rich and the poor would get even bigger.

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Yet both the outragedoutragedoutraged and the overexcitedoverexcitedoverexcited should calm down a bit. First of all, in order to avoid controversial applications of CRISPR, many countries are already introducing legal restrictionslegal restrictions [legal restriction]legal restrictions on its use. Secondly, the pop culture idea of designing a baby is oversimplified. Most of our traits are coded in multiple genes. Also, the development of most traits is to a great extent the result of the circumstances of one’s life. Finally, most genes are responsible for more than one thing, e.g. certain eye and hair colour genes are also responsible for an increased likelihoodlikelihoodlikelihood of cancers and other diseases. Designing a living organism is much more complicated than doing ‘cut copy paste’ and replacing blue eyes with brown.

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And it’s not going to happen any time soon. So, while some fertility clinicsfertility clinics [fertility clinic]fertility clinics are already offering delighteddelighteddelighted parents tests for the eye colour of their future kids, designing human beings remains a science‑fiction‑kind of distant future. This means we still have plenty of time to decide how to handle the potential ethical and social results of tampering with naturetampering with nature [tamper with nature]tampering with nature.

1 Źródło: Joanna Sobierska‑Paczesny, licencja: CC BY-SA 3.0.