A new frontier of disease preventing babies
Designer Babies
Technology
The strategy to create designer babies involves using genetic material from two women and one man to generate a healthy embryo. There have been concerns for using current techniques of genetic modification which introduces genes at random places, could possibly disturb the functions of other genes causing dangerous or fatal results. Also, many genes have more than one effect, so while the insertion of one gene might perform its intended job, it could also affect other areas. The long term effects of PGD are still not known and could have serious consequences in the future. Many fear that someday PGD will be used to select desirable traits of our children such as hair color, height, or intelligence. Other questions arise as to whether or not this technology is ethical. Some believe it is playing god because parents are selecting which embryos are implanted and which embryo get discarded. The cost of PGD is about $20,000. Many people cannot afford this which could widen the gap between upper and lower class.
Challenges
Strategies to create the babies are dangerous, many people won't be able afford this process. Manipulate the genes of future generations is immoral and dangerous, same advances can alleviate diseases cause ethical dilemmas. Some parents may even want to select the gender of their child, and they have the say that they don’t want their child with a mutation that raises the risk of some kind of disease or disorder. These traits could range from changing the color of the child's hair to pinpointing the baby’s intelligence level.
Many couples want to create a designer baby for two reasons.
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Prevent Disease- PGD can detect genetic disorders in embryos such as huntington's disease and cystic fibrosis. By knowing which embryos contain disease carrying genes doctors are able to select the healthy embryos for implantation. This allows couples to have a healthy child.
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Genetic Enhancement- Many parents want the perfect child. They want to be able to choose what they will look like as well as other characteristics such as intelligence and athletism. Today, this is not yet possible, however, technology and our knowledge of genes continues to advance at a fast rate, raising concerns about our future.
Long term issues
This PGD technology is still fairly new in the world and no one would know what might happen to these designer babies 10 or 20 years down the road. This might cause the child to suffer as he/she grows up and may even endanger a life. In order not to put too many lives to danger, to risk this new technology, the best solution would be to have only 1 or 2 such designer babies and closely monitor them as they grow. Only when there are no negative symptoms and impact in the long run then should this Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis be allowed.
Future advancements
A significant portion of the debate focused on a particular technology known as mitochondrial transfer. While the most of DNA is in a cell's nucleus, a small amount is contained in the cell's energy factories, called mitochondria. This mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to baby. In rare cases, women who have mitochondrial defects can pass it down to their children, causing severe problems or even death. Mitochondrial transfer can replace such defective mitochondrial DNA with that from a donor, allowing affected mothers to avoid passing these defects on to their children, who then carry genetic material from three parents .
Genetic engineering
In order to select for the right combination of genes to get the results you want, you have to understand the difference between two or more very similar options which may vary by only a few base pairs. This recognition is the essence of both genetic selection and genetic engineering. Selection is knowing the right combination when you see it; engineering is the technical skill to directly “arrange” or “edit” the genes in the proper known sequence.
Technique concerns
For instance, parents can choose to screen embryos created via in vitro fertilization (IVF) for sex or diseases, a process known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Scientists have also recently reported a method of extracting defective mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of cells, from a woman's egg and replacing them with healthymitochondria from a donor egg. New tests can detect fetal DNA circulating in a woman's blood stream early on in pregnancy, determining sex or catching errors in the number of chromosomes, Murray(a scientist) told Live Science. Abnormal chromosome numbers cause disorders as Down syndrome. Myths About Fertility Treatments and though parents may not be able to screen their future babies forgenes that confer intelligence, hair color or athletic aptitude just yet, the company 23andme recently applied for a patent on such tests, the article notes. (Traits such as intelligence and height are governed by a complicated interplay of dozens of genes and the environment, so such tests are still a ways away, Murray said.)