Author: Jeffrey Li
Genetic engineering is the process of editing embryos to enhance certain traits such as height, intelligence, and beauty.Gene editing is important since there is a high probability that in the future the entire human race will be genetically altered. Genetic editing will damage society, most evidently through the entrenching of social inequalities and the creation of certain health risks.
With designer babies, the gap between the rich and the poor will significantly increase, since the poor cannot afford to have designer babies. According to Twenge from The Daily Beast, the entire process of having a baby with no flaws costs about $50,000, which is the average amount of money a family in the U.S. makes in a year. This shows how an impoverished family will have a hard time to have enhanced children, but the rich can easily pay for it. In addition, since the technology will be able to provide immunity to different diseases, the rich will be able to purchase this immunity while the poor cannot. As a result, diseases and cancers that once have affected both the rich and poor will affect the poor even more.
In addition, many of these “benefits” also have side effects. Perfectly editing DNA is a very complicated and difficult process. Therefore, most of the time, the edited gene will not be absolutely perfect and has many side effects. For example, according to Janssens, a research professor at Emory University, some of these side effects are shown through the MC1R variation, which causes one to have a higher probability of having red hair, but also increases one’s likelihood of contracting skin cancer. In addition, the OCA2 and HERC2 variations, which increases one’s probability of having a certain eye color, has the side effect of making the likelihood of contracting different cancers, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease. Even one of the major breakthroughs in designer babies, which was accomplished by He Jiankui and allowed a pair of babies to not contract HIV, had the side effect of augmenting the possibility of contracting influenza and the West Nile virus. This shows how gene editing can remove certain diseases, but the consequence of doing so results in even more diseases.
Clearly, because there are many side effects and increases the gap between the rich and the poor, designer babies are harmful. Our already wide economic gap will continue to widen, causing an inequality between the rich and the poor. This inequality will diminish economic growth and cause more inequality to occur. Therefore, we should not make problems worse by creating designer babies.
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