Designer Babies What is a Designer Baby A
Designer Babies
What is a Designer Baby? A designer baby is a baby genetically engineered in vitro for special selected traits, which can vary from lowered disease-risk to gender selection. In the future, this could mean the inclusions of other traits such as eye color, hair color, athleticism or height
How do you make a Designer Baby? Two Legal Forms: Choosing the type of sperm (xx, xy) to determine the sex and genes of the baby Screen the embryos for genetic disorders. Then selected healthy embryos are implanted (Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis) Most techniques involve In. Vitro Fertilization
Who has Designer Babies? Parents who are concerned with their medical histories or previous children’s illnesses Couples who have the privilege to ‘balance’ their families Balancing a family is when a couple already has one or more children of a certain sex, for instance all boys, and want their next child to be the opposite sex, a girl. This is very expensive
Cost of a Designer Baby Different pathways to arrive at a designer baby 1 st ($2, 500): Figuring out the sex based on a sperm donation but this does not include In. Vitro Fertilization. If IVF is required it can become a lot more expensive. 2 nd ($20, 000): To harvest and freeze eggs (usually around 30) earlier in a woman’s life. Then to fertilize her egg using IVF with her husbands/partners sperm and screen the embryo for disease before it is implanted into the uterus. ($10, 00 -$15, 000) per each treatment Ex: Three children via this method = $65, 000
Why do people want a Designer Baby? Preventing genetic disease Primarily aesthetic reasons Single mothers/sperm banks
Ethics Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs deems unethical Social Division Possible Neoeugenics
Future advancement in reproductive procedures Being able to fix unhealthy DNA in an embryo instead of searching for a perfectly naturally healthy embryo Being able to create an embryo with the exact aesthetic traits as a couple wishes.
Creating Baby
Citations www. thegardian. com/science/2004/jul/22/sciencenews. health 3 www. cbsnews. com/news/choosing-your-babys-gender/ http: //scholar. google. com/scholar? hl=en&q=designer+babies&btn. G=&as_sdt= 1%2 C 39&as_sdtp= www. thedailybeast. com/articles/2014/07/07/designer-babies-are-only-forthe-rich. html http: //embryo. asu. edu/pages/ethics-designer-babies www. bionetonline. org/english/content/db_cont 1. htm
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