Is Advertising A Genetic Thing?

We are living is a world where very soon it will be possible for people to create ‘designer babies’ that have all the features they wish for. In the article Building Baby from the Genes Up, Ronald M. Green talks about all the positive impacts that genetic modification of human beings can have on our future generations. Green acknowledges some of the negatives such as parents creating perfect children and being able to give them any trait the parent wants. However in the end he comes to the conclusion that the positive impacts of getting rid of genes that cause obesity, cancer, learning disorders, and many other diseases and disorders, outweighs the negative aspects. Richard Hayes, author of Genetically Modified Humans? No Thanks, takes the stance that we should not be able to change anything about human beings through genetic modification. He believes that once we start modifying a few features, it will slowly turn into every parent altering as many of their babies’ genes that they want. While he does acknowledge the positive impacts of getting rid of negative genes such as Tay-Sachs, he believes that it is not worth the risk of having parents manipulate all their future children’s genes to their liking. Green and Hayes stand on opposite sides of the debate about genetic modification of human beings and this essay will explore the similarities and the differences of their articles.

Gregory Stock, in his article Choosing Our Genes, asserts that at this point not ethics are important, but rather the future of genetic technology. Stock supports his conclusion by providing powerful examples of how genetic modifications can benefit our population anywhere from correcting genes at the time of conception to extending lifespan. He wants to inform his audience about all of the benefits of genetic technology in order to prove that there are way more advantages in this technology that are highly desirable by people of different ages. He reaches his readers by writing a very detailed yet coherent article that brings awareness to various groups of people from parents to be to older populations.

I support the guidelines outlined by Kitcher for the use of genetic information because of their responsible and ethical nature. I believe that future generations will benefit as a direct consequence of these guidelines. I shall begin by defining eugenics as the study of human genetics to improve inherited characteristics of the human race by the means of controlled selective breeding.

Contrary to Kitcher’s minimalist model that constrains eugenic decisions only to avoid neurological diseases, Gregory Stock’s position in the debate defends maximalist eugenics in which individuals have total free eugenic decision-making, including enhancement, without any state coercion. He wants readers to accept and adopt such a position by arguing that genetic engineering such as selecting and alternating embryos is an inevitable future and human destiny (7, Stock, CC p.279). For example, if redesigning humans became commonplace, Stock reasons that parents would give their children endowments they desire but could not otherwise obtain and thus further expand life’s possibilities to the next generation (8, Stock, CC p.276). In this society, people’s genes would become an embodiment of their parents’ values and preferences. People would arguably want such endowments since they would view modifications as beneficial in

Other than our desire for perfection, we as humans also have another desire: to learn about ourselves. We have the desire to explore our humanity. We often like to look within ourselves and question things about ourselves. In this way, eugenics should be explored in order to answer questions we have about ourselves. " Humanly speaking, the new genetics seems to have five dimensions or meanings: (1) genetics as a route to self-understanding, a way of knowing ourselves; (2) genetics as a route to new medical therapies, a way of curing ourselves; (3) genetics as a potential tool for human re-engineering, a prospect I find far-fetched; (4) genetics as a means of knowing something about our biological destiny, about our health and sickness in the future; and (5) genetics as a tool for screening the traits of the next generation, for choosing some lives and rejecting others."

Future eugenicists can extort their knowledge and use it to their advantage. Eugenics is an interesting subject that is co-dependent on society; the future holds great possibilities for acknowledgment in this field of science.

Although this may be the case in many areas of people’s lives today, it is not always beneficial, or necessary. People may have trouble deciding whether messing with human genes and cells is ethical. Designing the “perfect child” in many parent’s eyes becomes a harsh question of reality. The concept of a parent’s unconditional love for their child is questioned because of the desire to make their child perfect. If genetically engineering humans becomes a dominant medical option, people could have the chance to create their child however they like: from physical appearances, genetically enhanced genes, and the possibility to decide what a child thinks and acts, parents have access to designing their entire child. Naturally, people could be creating a super-human. Issues between different races, and eventually creating new prejudices against genetically engineered humans may increase. People may not realize how expensive genetic screening is at first. With only the rich being able to “enhance” their children, another social issue might occur, giving the world another type of people to outcast.

What if there was a future where having a child was as simple as selecting desirable genes out of a catalogue? A future where technology granted parents the ability to design and perfect their children. The notion of “Designer Babies” seems absurd; however the rapid development of technology and the potential of gene manipulation could make this a startling reality.

Medical professionals today can screen for certain genetic traits (genetic diseases and sex) with in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis to obtain a healthy child, and reproductive technology continues to improve. With this in mind, the question arises whether sex selection is ethical. Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford University, argues that sex selection is moral, based on his ethical principle of Procreative Beneficence: that “couples (or single reproducers) should select the child, of the possible children they could have, who is expected to have the best life, or at least as good a life as the others, based on the relevant, available information” [Savulescu 1]. Savulescu claims

Science is now able to better improve human health and safety thanks to the advanced modern technology and medicine that are available. Yet with today's technology being implemented into science comes the questions of human morality, or bioethics. One of the bioethics debates is on the coined term “Designer babies”; on if or where society should draw the line on genetically altering our children before they are born. With the technology able to stop hereditary diseases, the scientific development’s are able to change the child’s “eye color, hair color, social intelligence, right down to whether or not your child would have a widow’s peak” before the child is born. From the options on choosing whether or not your child will look or act a certain

The birth of a child is supposed to be a time of joy, the uncertainty of life leads to this one point in time. Will she or he be the next president, a star athlete, a genius or just fall into the crowd as another citizen. With recent advancements in science, this uncertainty has become a thing of the past. The human being is now seen as a commodity and no more is valued in the uncertainty of individuality. The parent can now choose how they want their child to come out or develop into. Sandel’s book The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Case of Modern Eugenics is a well researched look into examples of modern eugenics and the problems that arise from it. These topics range from the ethics of cloning, athletes using performance enhancing drugs, and other practical uses in everyday life. Sandel’s argument is that there is value in human nature (even with all its flaws), and genetic engineering will forever change human nature. Destroying the very essence of what it is to be human and scarring humanity. The main features of human nature that will be altered: are responsibility, humility and solidarity.

In the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Powell, Russel, and Buchanan pose the idea that human genetic engineering of babies can overcome many natural impediments for the sake of the human race. They declare that natural selection “never gets the job done” and “does not achieve perfection.” However, natural selection is not designed to make human beings perfect. Humans adapt to what best fits their surroundings, but they can never be perfect. With designer babies, the traits that are seemed optimal will accede to the future generation, which eventually allows humans to change without process of natural selection.

There are couples where one member may be infertile, there are women or men who may want to raise children on their own, and there are homosexual couples who all want to have children. These people can turn to gamete donors in order to pursue their goal of procreating. One half of the genetic material would come from a person who would be raising the child, while the other half would come from some donor. These two individuals might have opinion x about whether the donor identity ought to be anonymous or not and they may have opinion y about whether to even tell the child of their biological origins. What about the child’s opinion. There is no denying that there are at least three key players, and in many cases four, who these types of opinions and decisions affect. That is the genetic and social parent, the non-genetic social parent (in some cases), the gamete donor, and the child. In this essay I intend to argue that it is ethically appropriate to inform children who are conceived by means of an egg or sperm donor of their biological origins and, in the case that they wish to know, the identity of their donor.

Let’s retrace this article’s path. There exist distinctions between disease traits and other – e.g., culturally-influenced – traits. The value of culturally-influenced traits change; thus, parents cannot always be morally obligated to “what [they] have the most reason to do” when selecting children, because what is most reasonable in one time/place can be morally abhorrent in another. It is also problematic to claim that people should recognize and implement social institutional reform, instead of genetic selection, when social institutional problems are present – history points to the implausibility of this suggestion. Finally, allowing unfettered, private genetic selection is likely to lead to adverse or unknown outcomes: a) It could lead to the selection of traits that are by no justifiable means ‘best,’ traits that drive homogenization, or both; and b) New genetic technologies have the potential to permit near-unlimited manipulations, the implications of which we don’t know, and thus, cannot allow

The definition of eugenics is to breed out undesirable traits. Based off of Austrian scientist Gregor Mendel’s studies, eugenics is accomplished through selective breeding. Dominant traits would replace recessive traits and the law of dominance would be ineffective. Originally, the idea behind eugenics was not completely bad. Over time though, problems surrounding it have been found. Dealing with positive and negative traits, questions have been asked about what constitutes as a negative trait and who decides which traits are