Designer Baby - Ethics

Ethics

See also: Procreative beneficence, Reprogenetics, and Liberal eugenics

The technical capacity to heritably modify the biology of mammals, available since the 1980s, has led to proposals to apply such methods to the biological improvement of humans. The term "designer baby" was originally derived from "designer clothing" and used pejoratively as implying commodification of children. More recently it has gained currency as a relatively neutral shorthand for such manipulations, which, as far as the public record is concerned, have yet to be implemented. Supporters of designer baby technology include liberal technophiles, libertarians, and transhumanists, who variously believe in a moral imperative to improve society by improving the health, intelligence or physical capability of individuals, or in the right of individuals over the disposition of their own bodies and those of their unborn children. Opponents of the prospect of designer babies include those who object to experimentation on human embryos, either because they reject abortion, which would be an inevitable consequence of some designer baby attempts, or because they oppose experimentation on humans in the absence of informed consent. Some have projected a dystopia in which a race of superior humans look down on those without genetic enhancements, though others have counselled against accepting this vision of the future. If genetic manipulation could successfully prevent diseases and disabilities, some have anticipated that discrimination against those with disabilities would greatly rise. It has also been suggested that genetic engineering could have deleterious effects on the human gene pool.

Genetic modification is widely believed to be potentially capable of affecting the full range of biological traits, from gender to susceptibility to disease, and eventually appearance, personality, and even IQ. Such broad claims for the efficacy of genetic manipulation have been disputed, however. Nonetheless, the perceived desirability of genetic modification technology has led to controversies concerning the price of such procedures and its ability to create a gap in society. The technology is fairly recent and as it develops is a very costly procedure. With only the wealthy being able to pay for the modification that will eliminate disease for their children and eventually choose to treat people with disabilities or diseases and those used to enhance healthy people. They are particularly wary of this technology’s ability to lead to a new eugenics where individuals are "bred" or designed to suit social preferences such as above average height, certain hair color, increased intelligence, or greater memory. Not only is the prospect of future generations of "better people" a metaphysical concern, but apprehension also arises from the possibility that such groups of people might become prejudiced against one another due to a feeling of lost common humanity with non-enhanced or differently-enhanced groups. Within journalistic coverage of the issue, as well as within the analysis of bioconservative critics, the issue of safety takes a secondary role to that of humanity, because it is thought that the ethical issue of safety can eventually be resolved by innovation and so should not be focused on due to its fallibility. The so-called Frankenstein argument asserts that genetically engineering designer babies would compel us to think of each other as products or devices rather than human individuals.

The genetic modification of humans can pose an ethical debate about the rights of the baby. One side of this issue is that the fetus should be free to not be genetically modified. Once the genetic modification of the fetus takes place then the baby is changed forever, there is no chance that the genetic modification completed prior to birth could ever be reversed. The opposing view to this is that the parents are the ones with the rights to their unborn child, so they should be able to have the option to decide their genetic code. Despite the pejorative nature of the term "designer baby", a minority of bioethicists consider the notion of a designer baby, once the reprogenetic technology is shown to be safe, to be a responsible and justifiable application of parental procreative liberty. The usage of genetic engineering on one's children is said to be defensible as procreative beneficence, the moral obligation of parents to try to give their children the healthiest, happiest lives possible. Some futurists claim that it would put the human species on a path to participant evolution.

Some concern may also fall not only what factors are modified, but also how they are modified. If genetic modification technology available can be used to prevent the succession of diseases, then the reverse process with PGD (pre-implantation genetic diagnosis) can also be true. There have been reported cases where parents have capitalized on “negative enhancement” where characteristics that would normally be considered disadvantageous to pass on to the baby are targeted. For example, in one specific case a family where both parents had been afflicted with deafness appropriated embryos that had a high chance of passing on the same disorder. 3% of clinics specializing in PGD have offered this type of service based on a survey conducted by Johns Hopkins.

It has also been argued that designer babies may have an important role as counter-acting an argued dysgenic trend. Initially this may be limited to wealthy couples, who may possibly travel abroad for the procedure if prohibited in their own country, and then gradually spread to increasingly larger groups.