Designer Kids
David Brooks had an interesting editorial in the New York Times Op-Ed pages. With the title, "The National Pastime," the article focuses on genetic engineering and what may not be far off.
He reports that in a recent Harris poll, 40 percent of parents responded that they would enhance their children's physical and mental characteristics if they had access to genetic engineering. Currently there is a sperm bank located between Harvard and MIT and another one next to Stanford. He recently read an advertisement in the Harvard Crimson of someone offering $50,000 for the purchase of an egg from a Harvard woman. In a University of Chicago campus paper he read advertisement in which the person was offering $35,000 for a woman's egg from the university with the further requirements that "You must be very health7, very intelligent and very attractive, and most of all, very happy. Liberal political views and athletic ability are pluses."
As the study by the President's Council on Bioethics noted in their report, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, this kind of involvement in the reproductive process fundamentally changes the nature of parent and child. The child increasingly becomes "a product" rather than the "gift" that they are.
As Brooks notes in his article, if you lived in a world where this kind of genetic engineering were available and legal, if 40 percent of people were engaged in this practice, it would put incredible pressure on others to engage in it as well, for who wants their child left behind? I find this possibility (probability?) pretty scary. How about you?
He reports that in a recent Harris poll, 40 percent of parents responded that they would enhance their children's physical and mental characteristics if they had access to genetic engineering. Currently there is a sperm bank located between Harvard and MIT and another one next to Stanford. He recently read an advertisement in the Harvard Crimson of someone offering $50,000 for the purchase of an egg from a Harvard woman. In a University of Chicago campus paper he read advertisement in which the person was offering $35,000 for a woman's egg from the university with the further requirements that "You must be very health7, very intelligent and very attractive, and most of all, very happy. Liberal political views and athletic ability are pluses."
As the study by the President's Council on Bioethics noted in their report, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, this kind of involvement in the reproductive process fundamentally changes the nature of parent and child. The child increasingly becomes "a product" rather than the "gift" that they are.
As Brooks notes in his article, if you lived in a world where this kind of genetic engineering were available and legal, if 40 percent of people were engaged in this practice, it would put incredible pressure on others to engage in it as well, for who wants their child left behind? I find this possibility (probability?) pretty scary. How about you?
posted by UCC Medfield at 9:34 AM
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