Bring on the designer babies

Some people are up in a tizzy over an embryo that had some abnormalities corrected in the lab, thus paving the way for designer babies in the future. I don’t understand the relevance of the argument. Since most people get their understanding of science from movies, let’s recall Gattaca, where genetic apartheid discriminates against children unfortunate enough to be born to parents who roll the genetic dice the old fashioned way rather than taking their gametes to the DNA tailor. This movie sums up the claims of anti-designer-baby activists, who fear that the advent of designer DNA would create a society where some people “would be considered inferior.”

Wait . . . CREATE a world like this?? I’m sorry. We already have a world where some people are inferior. You don’t even have to come up with a complicated historical or political argument. Just go to the nearest high school. There always have been social elites who treat other people like dirt, so let’s just skip this argument and move on to what’s relevant.

Opponents of DNA tailoring say that this is unnecessary tampering with nature. By this logic, they must also be opposed to corrective surgical procedures of any kind. Are you a baby born with a cleft palate? Leukemia? A congenital heart valve deformity? Tough rocks, buddy. God wanted you to be deformed, and fixing your problems is an affront to nature.

The “no tampering with nature” argument is completely hollow. If you really want to torpedo a screaming church lady’s argument, just ask her if she dyes her hair. Then tell her that God can see her roots coming in. Regardless of religious beliefs, curing human illness is supposed to be a good thing, remember? How could a kind and loving God be anything less than ecstatic that human beings have begun to figure out how to eliminate the root cause of terrible suffering? The whole wrathful, angry king that demands cringing and fear from helpless creations is so last millennium.

We already have “designer babies” in the form of infants who have corrective surgeries for club feet and a myriad of other deformities. We continue the process as children age with acne medications, dental braces, and LASIK. Yet you don’t hear the hijackers of religion and ethics complaining about these procedures. How is surgery at the embryonic and molecular level, stopping maladies before they have the chance to develop, worse than inflicting psychological and physical scars by cutting someone open with a scalpel? A quick DNA shuffle will one day be safer, healthier, and less costly than waiting until a problem manifests itself to deal with it.

If you could prevent a baby from having Tay-Sachs, Hemophilia, Sickle Cell Anemia, Multiple Sclerosis, Huntington’s Disease, Celiac Disease, or Cystic Fibrosis, wouldn’t you? Ethicists complain when fetuses are aborted because they have a handicap. DNA manipulation would eliminate such abortions, and thus terminate this kind of discrimination against disability. In a generation, the diseases wouldn’t even exist anymore, making the debate over genetic purification pointless.

Of course, this is where the “slippery slope” argument comes into play. Once you’ve torpedoed the irrational opposition to designer babies based on the idea that it tampers with nature, opponents then latch onto the idea that people will begin rearing a generation of genetically superior, good-looking, hyper-intelligent, athletic, mentally stable and multi talented superhumans.

OH NO! It’s the end of the world! The captain of the football team just cured cancer after getting a perfect score on his SAT! Help!

The last straw that opponents cling to is the idea that genetic engineering will produce a generation of freaks with purple hair, glowing eyes, or that parents will want to switch the race of their baby to something they find more desirable. To that, I say “maybe” and “oh well.” That’s the risk factor of this step in human evolution, and even then it has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with bad parenting. Life will suck for these freak babies, but they’ll also have a harder time reproducing, so they’ll likely be relegated to the shallow end of the gene pool and wade off. On top of that, this level of customization is still many, many years off, and it will always remain expensive. Rich people have always found ways to raise freaky offspring, so I don’t really see how it will change much when they can pre-equip their spawn with outlandish garb.

This is the next step of evolution, where humans seize the godlike power of creation and wield the power to shape their own bodies as they will. Designer babies are not a threat. They’re a solution. And the slope-browed opponents of advancement will still be banging rocks together when the rest of the world has moved on to a life of longevity and intelligence that in the past we could only dream of. Why is it you humans keep showing the tiniest spark of being worthy to lead, and then you just trample all over it?