What is a Designer Baby?
A designer baby is a baby that is genetically engineered to have a specific trait pick out by the parents of the child. With this new technology you could choose to have a lower risk for a specific disease, the gender of your child, or even traits such as hair and eye color. The process know as Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, or PGD, is what helps doctors to be able to let you choose your baby's traits.Things to know
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| Gene Splicing |
"Gene splicing is post-transcriptional modification in which a single gene can code for multiple proteins."-(http://www.premierbiosoft.com definition.) Gene splicing is an important source of protein diversity and generates multiple functional proteins. It then enables a single gene to increase its code capacity
Gel electrophoresis is a method for separation and analysis of macromolecules (DNA, RNA and proteins) and their fragments, based on their size and charge.
Transgenic organisms are organisms that have had genes from other species inserted into their genome.
Pros and Cons of Designer Babies
Though designer babies have many good things about them, such as being able to protect the child from disease, there are several bad things about designer babies as well. We have put together a list of some of the pros and cons of designer babies.
Pros
- Reduced risk of genetic disease
- Better chance of the child succeeding in life
- Possible increased life span
- Child can have selected gene that the parents do not carry
Cons
- Possibility of damaging the gene pool
- Mistakes by the Geneticists could cause your child to have problems
- Expensive
- Modifying one gene could affect another one that is not so good.
Should Designer Babies be Legal?
We here at Family Health Genetics believe it would be best if designer babies were not legalized. Though designer babies could be a major help to prevent future diseases the child could get, we feel it would not be smart to design a "perfect" baby because it would not be smart to "play God" so that you can have a baby you want. It could also cause the parents to put extra pressure on the child to be just the way paid for it to be.
What Do you think of Designer Babies? Should they be legal? Would you ever do it for your own child? Leave a comment and let us know.
For more information go to...
http://www.newsweek.com/can-designer-babies-be-made-smarter-401258
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/07/designer-babies-are-only-for-the-rich.html
https://sites.google.com/a/jeffcoschools.us/designer-babies/home
Interesting...
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post, thanks for including websites that have more information. I enjoy the diagrams that are provided as a visuals!
ReplyDeleteDon't you think having less diseases and deaths is better than someones "feelings"?
It depends sometimes it can be, sometimes it can't. It depends on the feelings and the diseases.
DeleteI too think that being a designer baby would put alot of extra pressure on a child to be perfect. To live up to the price paid for him/her. What diseases do you think might come from the designer babies?
ReplyDeleteAt the moment it is still unknown what diseases designer babies could cause.
DeleteSince nobody is (Perfect) how can designer babies not get diseases? All in all it is a great blog post
ReplyDelete-Harrison
Thanks! Designer Babies cannot prevent every disease, however it could prevent diseases that are hereditary and that is known that the parents have
DeleteThis is very interesting, I feel like, its an expensive process. What if it doesn't work?
ReplyDeleteIf it doesn't work then there could be a possibility that the baby may die or it could just be that the the trait the parents picked would simply not develop the way they want it.
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ReplyDeleteIts a great post, but how would designer babies not get diseases? and if they did any cure somehow?
ReplyDelete-Hunter
With designer babies, any genes that carry disease are taken out and replaced by healthy genes from donating eggs. If they did ever get a disease it would be treated like any other and they would get treatment for whatever type of disease they get.
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