Eugenics, a term first coined by Sir Francis Galton in the early 1800’s, is a controversy that continues to greatly impact the scientific community today. In its traditional sense, eugenics refers to controlled breeding of a human population in order to increase the frequency of desirable characteristics within said population. It draws heavily from artificial selection, or selectively mating individuals with certain characteristics in the hopes that those characteristics would be passed down and amplified throughout future generations. Currently, the scientific community is intensely debating and scrutinizing a new form of eugenics: human embryonic genome editing, such as CRISPR. In a nutshell, human genome editing refers to scientists artificially …show more content…
This group is chiefly responsible for coining the term “designer baby”, which refers to the possibility that embryonic gene editing will one day allow parents to design their perfect child. When analyzing this group’s beliefs about the interplay between the individual and society, it becomes apparent that this group holds a drastically different set of beliefs than the other two. This group certainly values the enhancement of human civilization, but they believe that the most powerful way to advance humans is to not only make us healthier, but to also enhance non-vital phenotypes to make us smarter, stronger, and more intelligent. In addition, this group also values the power of individual choice, and if a set of parents wants to edit their child’s genome, they have every right to do so. Granted, this argument does crumble upon the realization that the directly affected unborn child, and subsequent generations that will inherit this genotype have no say. However, the power of this idea cannot go unappreciated, as it causes many to envision a utopia where everyone is healthy, smart, attractive, and possesses other desirable traits. Although this idea appears futuristic, and many, including Robert Sparrow, doubt its legitimacy, designer babies have already managed to capture headlines and generate …show more content…
For instance, a scholarly article published by two professors from the University of Chittagong contends that the individual-societal relationship is “one of the most profound of all the problems in social philosophy” (Hossain & Ali 130). This sentiment is supported by the fact that many political debates ranging from tax policy to universal healthcare include aspects of this interplay. For taxation, the issue is how much an individual should contribute to society, whereas for healthcare, the question is whether it is society’s responsibility to care for individuals. By recognizing this overlap, one becomes aware of the significance of the interplay between the individual and