Imagine a world filled with masterfully created inventions that venture beyond your wildest dreams. For as far as you can see, these fascinating, real life innovations roam the streets freely. Now imagine these “innovations” are people. Except they are not like you and I. They have been genetically modified.
As technology continues to advance on a global scale, lines that were previously etched in stone erode as society pushes limits past boundaries. It is appropriate to desire to have children. It is also appropriate to use in vitro fertilization if you are having difficulties conceiving. It is not appropriate, however, to have your chromosomes manipulated in a petri dish and have your “build-a-child” embedded into your uterus via in vitro implantation.
On its website, the American Pregnancy Association offers information to couples choosing in vitro fertilization who dare to go a step further. Parents can opt to have their soon-to-be-bundle-of-joy monitored using a process called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. This procedure allows doctors to determine things such as gender and the probability of genetic diseases by removing one or two of the multiple cells of the embryo and observing them for tell-tale genes. Based on that information, parents would have the option to proceed with the implantation or to have the fertilized ovum destroyed in favor of another less likely to develop a disease.
As if the ethics of this issue were not already being pushed to the limit, scientists all over the world are trying to develop processes with which parents will be able to essentially “customize” their children using a few manipulations of cell material. Although there have not been reputable reports of this procedure being done as yet, scientists are well on their way.
Scientists have created procedures which are used to distort and manipulate genetic makeup. They give them fancy, scholarly names such as cytoplasmic transfer and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, but do we really sit down and think about what these procedures are and what they entail?
I can already envision the rhythmic squealing of my grocery trolley being overpowered by the incessant whining of an irate pre-pubescent girl, feverishly berating her preoccupied mother about why she is the way she is, when her parents could have easily modified her. Normally, bratty whining is uncalled for and downright annoying, but this girl has a justifiable concern. How could a child who was conceived in the traditional way ever be expected to fairly compete against her peers who are equipped with the best the gene pool has to offer?
The most repulsive aspect of the whole practice is the control that humankind wishes to exact on a job that should be solely managed by the Big Guy Upstairs. Eye color, hair length and height are just trivial things, and in the end we love our children just the way they are. If children are really considered gifts, what would be the fun of a gift that you’ve already customized, selected and gift wrapped yourself?
As of right now, all we can do is speculate because although we can offer logical guesses about the well-being or endangerment of genetically modified children, we are not able to see the future or the consequences these procedures may have on those genetically modified children and their kin. Nature has been doing a great job thus far and should be able to continue doing so. The engineering of chromosomes for personal preference should not even be discussed but instead actively dissuaded.
Some boundaries should just not be crossed; the manipulation of genes to fulfill foul and selfish desires is one of those lines.
