Designer Babies: An Analysis Of The Eugenics Movement

Throughout the past few hundred years, humans have been attempting to improve the human race, particularly through eugenics. The quick response is to look to science for facts to pick superior traits. The global society want the future to be smart, athletic, disease free, and happy. Education and medication could not completely solve this desire, so it went to purifying the gene pool. The American Eugenics Movement gained momentum throughout the early twentieth century and dwindled in the late 60s. Unfortunately, the Eugenics Movement is still alive today in The United States in the form of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). To grasp a better understanding of this movement, the ART policies will be scrutinized, major concerns will be

Designer babies are a more obvious form of eugenics. The parents would be choosing genes which they deem superior: green eyes, dashing good looks, and a magnificent brain. Some rare phenotypes may be more prevalent. Diversity on the human population may dwindle, thus putting humans in a tight spot if an epidemic occurs. The subtler form of eugenics with ART are is screening and terminating children who have the possibility of having a disability. The National Council of Disability forbids ART companies to deny parents their services because of a disability, whether it be mental or physical (NCD 2012). However, there are no laws or regulations to protect children with disabilities from being aborted. Furthermore, in the America, each state is able to make its own laws and regulations about ART. However, this type of action is unlikely: one, it complicates abortion rules and regulations, and two, the nationally industry in assisted reproductive technologies in huge, thereby hurting the economy and professional careers, plus any decision would cause an uproar (Macintosh 2011). America is choosing to cover its eyes. By allowing one tragedy to escape, the economy, another occurs: modern

Although ART companies cannot discriminate among couples based on disabilities, they can refuse the procedure if the couple cannot pay for it. In a business perspective this makes sense. However, if infertility rates are declining around the United States only offering a solution to the upper-class promotes the genes of the wealthy. It could be comparable to the sterilization laws in the United States in the 1900s. People with so called “inferior” traits such as disabilities or pauperism were sterilized to remove their genes from the gene pool. However, rather than sterilizing citizens, America is only offering a solution to infertility based on socioeconomic status. Although this is an unintended consequence of making ART an industry, the problem still