blog 18

The article Designer Babies: Eugenics Repackaged or Consumer Options? tells the audience about the history of designer babies and introduces possible pros and cons to the advancement.   According to Stephen L Baird, a technology education teacher at Bayside Middle School, designing babies comes with arguments on both sides. The fact that Baird is a technology educator gives the information more reliability. This article adds to the discussion of developing a checks-and-balances system within scientific experiments. “We could get carried away ‘correcting’ perfectly healthy babies. Once we start down the slippery slope of eliminating embryos because they are diseased, what is to stop us from picking babies for their physical or psychological traits?” (Baird, 16). This quote initiates a question of humanity to the audience. Although it’s one of those “what if” questions, but these types of questions are still very much legitimate when it comes to research that has a possibility of hurting the future of the world we live in. These “what if” questions need to be taken into consideration to create a greater level of assurance that the minimum amount of problems will occur. Using the operation to pick a baby’s physical and psychological traits could mess up a perfectly healthy baby. There are many movies, such as GATTACA and The Island, that make these questions come to life. Another thing that legitimizes this quote is how people always want the next better thing. Perfection is what we’re constantly trying to strive for, but there needs to be some limitations. Perfecting everything will lead to greater consequences, such as those “perfected” segregating those that were born naturally.