“Designer Babies” and Society
With recent class discussions and readings on eugenics and how it is still prevalent in modern society led me to further look into recent accounts of this concept. A recent local news article by Desert News Utah has presented the positive effects of new gene editing tool called CRISPR, which is short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat.” The article discusses how the research and clinical trials being done at the University of Utah could be able to help children diagnosed born with the muscular dystrophy. Similarly, there are up and coming technologies associated with choosing genes even before birth. The popular term for this concept is “designer baby”. The name itself has a questionable connotation. It doesn’t imply the original motivation of removing genetically linked and other hereditary diseases, but rather the idea that parents can pick and choose certain qualities like intelligence and physical appearance.
While this may seem like a good idea, in the long run we can observe potential consequences akin to eugenics. For example, a major concern is access to this technology. Will it be available for everyone or only the elite who can afford it? It is more likely that it is the latter, and thus this technology could further exploit the divide between social and economic classes if parents in higher classes can pick out favorable genes. An article by Dr. David King published in The Guardian brings up a related point, “More subtly, but equally profoundly, once we start designing our children to perform the way we want them to, we are erasing the fundamental ethical difference between consumer commodities and human beings.” Not only can this technology contribute to the already existing socioeconomic inequality, but it also can lead to the commodification of human life.
Another article by the Organic Consumers Association brings up a drastic argument that this could ultimately lead to a divide in humans on a higher scale than social class. They argue that this technology could create an entirely different “type of human”, and that society would be divided into natural people and “GenRich” people who have undergone genetic modification. Specifically, “As time passes,…the GenRich class and the Natural class will become the GenRich humans and the Natural
humans — entirely separate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee.” This perspective relates to our readings in class when we discussed current efforts in genetics. While we assume that eugenics is a thing of the past, we fail to acknowledge that it is still occurring under different names. Ultimately, we must take societal consequences into consideration when considering scientific research and advancement because they are both tightly connected.
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