Synthèse séquence 2: design your baby (idea of progress)

...

and parents are.

As they know that doctors can make “super babies” due to media reports, parents are sometimes tempted or desiring to have a child like this. Some of them are even travelling around the world and paying hundreds of thousands dollars to have “the perfect one”. Therefore, national authorities decided (at least in France) to prohibit the use of medicine for a perfect baby. In UK or U.S.A it’s authorized to resort to medicine babies or designer babies in some cases. Authorities have to take a decision about designed babies. Some parents will go too far with it, and everyone will expect the best baby ever. Babies will all be the same, and it’s not really good for our society. Our societies are based on the other’s difference and not on the same similarity.

But there are so many debates about it, and governments are sometimes caught up by scientific advances. So there are still conflicts about the pros and the cons.

III) Pros or cons?

Now I will weigh the pros and the cons.

Modifying DNA is not really a problem for country which already allowed OGM in food etc... But science is going very far and now we are talking about human life and babies and children. Regarding to people it’s really unwholesome to clone a baby; and it is. Cloning a baby is to have the same as the previous one; it’s creepy to have twice the same child (if they are not twins). I can understand that parents are crying their deceased child but it’s insane to reproduce “him” or “her” one more time…

People are also mostly against medicine baby. The principal argument is about his life. This baby will be obliged to live in the shadow of the one who is sick. He knows that if he is here it’s only to make his brother or sister survive. And the problem will be bigger when the medicine baby won’t be a child anymore but an adult. What if he decided to leave his sick brother? What will happen to him? It’s a very hard situation to manage.

But for designer babies opinions are more divided. Some people think it’s really bad to interfere with nature, and to make super babies. Other people think it’s a good way to eradicate some weaknesses like drug addiction or alcoholism. They think it’s better to have a not really “natural” baby but in good health than to have a 100% natural and sick baby.

But above all what really matters is the bioethics committee regarding medicine advances.

To conclude I will say that now scientists can do everything with genetic selection, the only limits are law and bioethics. So we can thank them, they protect us.

Personally I think science has made a great job since the beginning of genetic research. The point is not to go too far against the nature with this. I mean that I understand designed babies, to avoid any illness and suffering of the parents and the baby. But I don’t think that clones, medicine babies, or too perfect designer babies are a good thing. Ours democracies have to solve some problems of our societies (about equality, gender…) before dealing with genetics.