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Designer Babies In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Decent Essays

In 1932, Aldous Huxley imagined and wrote about a world where designer baby technology is prevalent in his science-fiction novel, Brave New World. The technology would not come until many years later, but his ideas still hold up today. In the book, there were different classes depending on how genetically modified one was, including Alpha or Beta (The Public Should Oppose Designer Baby Technology). Outside of science fiction, though, is real science where a real baby can be genetically modified to an extent before even being born. A designed baby is one that is purposefully shaped to be one way or another through processes including In Vitro Fertilization(IVF), where an egg is fertilized and genetically altered, and preimplantation genetic …show more content…

Sex selection, in this new age of technology, is one of the easiest sections of designing a baby. All the parent has to do is say “yes” or “no” to one gender or the other without the risk of some percentage indicating a disease the new baby might have. Since this particular procedure is so easy, it can be abused (Rachel Lehmann- Haupt). For example, some cultures put more value on a male’s life than on a female’s including the hugely populated countries, China and India (Designer Babies: The Good and the Bad). Even the USA has taken notice with four states, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Illinois, and Oklahoma, banning any abortion that is gender-based (Sex-Selection Abortion Bans). This eliminates sex selection through abortions, but the bans need to spread into the designer baby realm and into more states. If more bans are not put in place and humans are allowed to freely pick the gender of their child, then the majority of the world could be become male, but with the price of the procedure comes an even bigger, social …show more content…

The reason designer babies can create this divide in economic classes is due to how expensive it is. IVF costs anywhere from $10,000- $15,000(Rachel Lehmann-Haupt). PGD can cost up to $5,000(Rachel Lehmann-Haupt). A couple that would rather use an egg donor, either for necessity or for the characteristics of the donor herself, could spend up to $50,000 just for a donor (Rachel Lehmann-Haupt). This all adds up to around $48,000-$70,000, a staggering amount to the lower class and even the middle class. What this will create is two distinct, separate groups of people, the modified and the unmodified, and once again the “Alphas” and the “Betas.” New prejudice will form that is based purely on genetic makeup, which will be easy to distinguish through one’s attractiveness and intelligence. The world would not be able to break from this because only the modified, the one ones with higher intelligence and predetermined good health would be hired for the high paying jobs, keeping them on top (Designer Babies: The Good and The Bad). These Alphas would be the cream of the crop, with only a .01% chance of cancer compared to the 50% chance natural humans have, and could create a species divide, but there are other risks to humans that would come into play

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