Build Your Own Baby

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But variety is hot. It's not like everyone wants their kids to look a certain way. And there's no way that Asian parents will ever have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid. You're still only working from your own gene-pool.

Er... Asians ONLY want to be blue eyed and blonde haired. They often get surgery to get "western" "open" eyes.

You're not altering the unborn child, you're just picking one of many with desirable characteristics... right?

I'm pretty sure you're altering the baby that's already there.
 
Meh, it seems like this is something they could mess up too easily and the child could come out messed up.
 
Soooo, if you were ginger, and your partner was ginger.. would you do whatever this thing does, so you wouldn't have a ginger child?

I think this might just apply to British people. I've been under the impression that gingers don't get as much stick in other countries. But yah, whatever.
 
Er... Asians ONLY want to be blue eyed and blonde haired. They often get surgery to get "western" "open" eyes.



I'm pretty sure you're altering the baby that's already there.

butbutbut-
The Institute cannot change the DNA of the donating couple — if neither the mother nor the father has genes for green eyes, for example, then the Institute cannot give them a baby with green eyes.

So two Asian parents won't get that blonde-haired, blue-eyed thing.

Perception of beauty is different for everyone, too. Likeee I wouldn't want a blonde-haired blue-eyed child. That's so plain and boring. Some people might like it, but it's not for me. And it's not like this genetic breakthrough will cure things like obesity, so really a lot of people won't be 'beautiful'.
 
I'd tinker with my baby if I was given the chance. I don't see the problem with it really. It seems like an ethical thing to some people.
 
Agreed with Napalm, I'd be okay with screening for deseases and whatnot, but I'd never want to change how my kid looks.

If it helped with deformalities (I don't know if it does?) then I suppose that would benefit the child in the long run, so that would be okay. But I disagree with altering an unborn child just to please the parents. That's just selfish.

Even that I disagree with. I have worked with and befriended people with genetic diseases and they are wonderful people, and I am sure that they were born the way they are for a reason. Also, if that was the case, I would not have been born, because my mom was told to abort me due to a high chance of Down or blindness of deformity. If this stuff had existed back then they would have favored a different fetus with better genes than me. Same goes for more important people like Beethoven and several others.
Humans have to understand that there is a balance in the world that we yet don't understand, and when we go and try to control things we're only harming nature and humanity in the process.
 
Even that I disagree with. I have worked with and befriended people with genetic diseases and they are wonderful people, and I am sure that they were born the way they are for a reason. Also, if that was the case, I would not have been born, because my mom was told to abort me due to a high chance of Down or blindness of deformity. If this stuff had existed back then they would have favored a different fetus with better genes than me. Same goes for more important people like Beethoven and several others.
Humans have to understand that there is a balance in the world that we yet don't understand, and when we go and try to control things we're only harming nature and humanity in the process.
Tell me, what would those people with genetic diseases have said if they were somehow offered the chance to decide for themselves before being born? Could you honestly say they'd all be happy to along with "nature"?
 
Tell me, what would those people with genetic diseases have said if they were somehow offered the chance to decide for themselves before being born? Could you honestly say they'd all be happy to along with "nature"?

I think having been born that way, they become accustomed to live life that way. I believe the greatest hardship in those cases falls on the family, since they're the ones who have to take care of everything and put their normal lives aside.
But even then, I don't think most parents of people like that would say they would have rather given birth to someone else. They're still people and you come to love them the way they are. In some cases they turn out to be amazing people because of the way they were born. In other cases, their situation leads people around them to become better.
My point is, as humans we can't really know how we're affecting our futures by trying to control every aspect of our own lives. Some things are better left out of our control.
 
I would take advantage of every oppurtunity possible to change my child if it were free of charge.

I don't understand how some people turn this into an ethical or moral debate. The only argument there is that it destroys the uniqueness of our individuality, which many of you are arguing. You're all invisioning a homogeneous society with a master race, while, in reality, that will never happen. Even if everyone had the money for it, and everyone took advantage of this technology (which is quite a stretch, seeing as it's a small minority of people that would use it now), that wouldn't happen. We get to choose what we want to eat, so, following that logic, shouldn't we all be eating the same things? A more fair example is clothes, where there certainly are 'in' fashions that form groups, however, no group really dominates the others. There will always be preps, and jocks, and emos, and that sweaty kid that wears the same clothes every day. Given, this is a much more serious situation than apparel, and we're also choosing for someone else, so we're more likely to go on the safe side, I still think it's quite outrageous to suggest that such technology would have a debilitating effect on our individuality.
 
I think having been born that way, they become accustomed to live life that way. I believe the greatest hardship in those cases falls on the family, since they're the ones who have to take care of everything and put their normal lives aside.
But even then, I don't think most parents of people like that would say they would have rather given birth to someone else. They're still people and you come to love them the way they are. In some cases they turn out to be amazing people because of the way they were born. In other cases, their situation leads people around them to become better.
My point is, as humans we can't really know how we're affecting our futures by trying to control every aspect of our own lives. Some things are better left out of our control.
I think we have every right to control our own lives. Why shouldn't we? Yes, a person born with a disease could go on to become an amazing person, but what's to say they wouldn't be an amazing person without the disease?

And so what if we are affecting our futures? Maybe it's a change for the better. Heck, we already control our future health through medicines and vaccines.
 
And so what if we are affecting our futures? Maybe it's a change for the better. Heck, we already control our future health through medicines and vaccines.

Yea, and be sure to pay attention to what that leads to in a couple years, maybe decades.
To every action, there is an equal and proportionate reaction, no?
And change for the better...we'd have to sell our freedom, liberty, thought and reality to have humanity reach better places. You could arguably say humanity never reaches better places, improvement in condition only occurs in individuals.
Yes, I am glad I live in an age where kids live longer than a few years and where I can't get certain terrible diseases thanks to medicine. But I still believe that as a whole, humanity does not benefit from further attempts to control everything in nature.

@Levesqueisking: I think it really is extremely unethical to treat babies like products, and customize them as we wish. Also, would anyone really want their kid to not be good-looking? what happens to beauty when everyone is good-looking?
 
Everyone becomes equal, and everyone becomes beautiful.

I think it's rather arrogant and simple-minded of you to defend your ideology by saying, "But if there are no ugly people to compare ourselves to, how will we know we're beautiful?"

You see, it's quite easy to play the morality card. So, if you don't mind, let's try to move beyond that.
 
Everyone becomes equal, and everyone becomes beautiful.

I think it's rather arrogant and simple-minded of you to defend your ideology by saying, "But if there are no ugly people to compare ourselves to, how will we know we're beautiful?"

You see, it's quite easy to play the morality card. So, if you don't mind, let's try to move beyond that.

If you had just posted the first sentence, your post might've made sense.
 
I was under the impression that you wanted to have a debate. If you want to spew mindless insults back and forth then I'm sure there are quite a few threads in the White Noise section that you'd find quite exhilarating. If not, go ahead and enlighten me on the many flaws that my post apparently holds.
 
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