ARGUMENTS AGAINST DESIGNER BABIES
The first issue with this technology and the notion of designer babies is completely unfair. Firstly because it will be incredibly expensive and only the wealthiest will have access, therefore giving them an even bigger advantage than they already have. To put into perspective how expensive it would be, at the moment to choose gender which is the most basic option and does not even require gene therapy, it costs $19000 in the US. Some other reasons are listed below:
The second argument against designer babies is that it is completely and utterly unnatural. It is playing God and that is something that we, as humans, should simply not do. Others argue that it is just speeding up evolution but this is not the case, no one could possibly know how the human species will evolve and it is not up to us to decide. As well as this is it will severely decrease the biodiversity of humans, as favourable traits such as height will be chosen often and as an impact diversity will decrease. There are also a magnitude of other reasons that argue the point that this process interferes with nature and that’s why it shouldn't be done.
The third argument is that the entire notion of designer babies is unethical. It takes away the beauty and diversity of life and it is not right. Also with designer babies it is effectively saying that only humans that have been engineered to be smarter and stronger are ‘good’, which completely undermines the idea of equality. More reasons are provided below:
- Unfair as not all people will have access to it, therefore giving the people that do have access as severe advantage
- Could lead to even bigger imbalances between rich and poor because of how expensive it’ll be
- If everyone is choosing the gender of the child, areas like China where boys are preferred there could be massive gender imbalances
- It would ruin everything that relies on human equality such as sport
The second argument against designer babies is that it is completely and utterly unnatural. It is playing God and that is something that we, as humans, should simply not do. Others argue that it is just speeding up evolution but this is not the case, no one could possibly know how the human species will evolve and it is not up to us to decide. As well as this is it will severely decrease the biodiversity of humans, as favourable traits such as height will be chosen often and as an impact diversity will decrease. There are also a magnitude of other reasons that argue the point that this process interferes with nature and that’s why it shouldn't be done.
The third argument is that the entire notion of designer babies is unethical. It takes away the beauty and diversity of life and it is not right. Also with designer babies it is effectively saying that only humans that have been engineered to be smarter and stronger are ‘good’, which completely undermines the idea of equality. More reasons are provided below:
- All it does is make life easier for the parent
- It defeats the idea of Equality, it says that not all humans are equal and that people who are stronger or more intelligent are better humans
- The technology could be severely misused, an example could be people creating lots of strong and athletic humans and selling them, children could become a business
- It means that a parent does not need to nurture their children to become healthy as it can just be done by technology
- It implies that children with genetic disorders are inferior