Designer Babies - Ethical?
Imagine a society where the ability to produce the ‘perfect' child is a possibility. The opportunity to eliminate all genetic diseases with a few simple modifications to the genetic makeup. A society in which forthcoming parents can skim through a hypothetical catalogue and shop for desired traits to ‘design’ their children. This imagined world may soon become a reality through the rapid development of genetic engineering. Modern-day society encourages us to strive to be 'perfect', but what is perfection? Hungerford (1878) devised the well-known phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" therefore suggesting that perfection is merely subjective while others perceive it to be a fictional term that is impossible to achieve. The term ‘designer babies’ has become part of everyday language. But what is a ‘designer baby’? The Oxford Dictionary defines it as a "baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected, manipulated or changed at an embryonic st...