One of the ongoing debates in the biomedical engineering field today is about the human genetic engineering. Imagine being able to design your own baby the way you want it to be or mean to say “perfect” before it is even born, or prevent your unborn child from an outrageous disease, or make your baby a smarter, stronger, or even an athlete. You can even decide the sex of your baby. With the advanced technology you can even choose the physical feature of your child. Although human genetic engineering might seem attractive for these reasons, it should not be done because it defies nature, leads to less diversity and raises moral and ethical concerns. Scientists are messing with nature in the process of human genetic engineering. There is a delicate …show more content…
With genetic engineering, humans will become a “monoculture,” which is essentially putting all of our eggs in one genetic basket. According to Powell, the gene pool will be altered with genetic variation, unless it was a situation where every person cloned himself, which is quite unlikely. However, he argues that, since most of our DNA is not expressed openly, that genetic engineering would hardly impact our phenotypes passed down in the gene pool. While I agree that our phenotypes most likely may not be impacted by certain genetic engineering, I think that most types of engineering done to our DNA would be to the genes expressed outwardly, especially if we are to consider those who want to alter the genetics of their child to give him an upper hand athletically, intellectually, etc. Ethically, it is not a scientist’s position to alter the gene pool, unless it would be to eliminate a disease or genetic disorder. I agree with Glover, who states that it is immoral for parents “not to safeguard their children against debilitating disease” when there is the technology to do so. However, a debilitating disease must not be openly defined as what it is- a life-altering or life-threatening condition. It is our duty, as a society, to limit the boundaries for genetic engineering in order to maintain its purpose: to prevent the passing on of diseases and