Genetic Engineering Their Own Baby Essay

With today’s technology, we are capable of doing countless features such as coming up with new medical innovations to treat diseases and other medical related issues. Since we now have genetic engineering, it makes it easier for us to change genes in the deoxyribonucleic acid. As a result, this new medical innovation allows us to replace a defective gene that may cause a genetic disorder on the baby with a healthy gene that will allow the baby to be healthy. However, several people intend to manipulate genetic engineering for their own advantage. A number of individuals have thought about the idea of creating the “perfect” baby or designing their own baby. If we allow such task, the human race may become extinct due to the reason of survival

Hammond (2010) states that if the parent are aware that they or their partner are a carrier of a specific genetic disorder, they are morally obliged to use genetic engineering as a means of preventing this defect on their child. Hammond (2010) says “a parent who could provide adequate genetic inputs, but fails to do so, is guilty of ‘genetic neglect’”. Therefore, she believes that it is a parental duty to take advantage of genetic engineering when they have the chance. While Hammond views this type of genetic engineering as a duty, Brassington (2010) struggles to define exactly what a duty is. He first refutes the proposition that an enhancement is strictly something that makes a change for the better. Brassington (2010) argues that since “there is an indefinitely long list of things that might count as an enhancement…it is hard to sustain the idea that providing those enhancements might be a matter of duty”. Basically, there are far more changes that can be made to a person than ever possible; therefore, it is improbable that genetic engineering be seen as a duty. He argues that no matter what is done, there is always going to be something more that can be done. Hammond boldly states that society as a whole, based on the argument of seeing genetic engineering as a duty, can agree that moral wrong is done when parents decide to have a severely disabled child when they could have prevented or done otherwise. There are concerns about this usage of genetic engineering. Hammond points out that those already disabled most likely would not favor it. It possibly could make those disabled at a greater disadvantage than before. If people are more focused on trying to prevent disabilities, than the disabled might be shoved to the back of people’s minds. Currently, since disabled people constitute a large portion of