Science has grown over the ages and it’s been crossing the border to cause controversy. Stem cell research and genetic engineering have provoked religious moves to go against the option to alter a child before it’s born. After gathering facts and thinking through it, I’m against the genetic altering of unborn children except for the prevention of disease and disabilities.
There are two good sides of this argument and I won’t strike down opposition to my opinion. Altering the genetics could prevent the death of new-borne children from disease and defects. The prevention of some diseases could even result the end of most other diseases in the far future. Scientists can make sure that the spine is formed properly and end being paralyzed for good. Or maybe the parents have some sort of disease or defect to prevent a baby being born. That could result in couples having test tube babies when they couldn’t have babies at all before.
Countries like China have an overpopulation of women and too little men. Female babies are given up and abandoned because everyone wants a boy to be born. Using genetics, scientists can change the gender to bring up the population of the men. A couple can decide on how their children look to make sure they are beautiful in their eyes. Families whom are strongly against homosexuality can even lower the chance of their children being gay or bisexual.
On the other hand, preventing deformities and diseases may be good, but changing physical and mental attributes could result in a population being too alike. If everyone didn’t have a big nose or small hands, then the diversity over time could disappear. Choosing gender might be good in China but giving a normal American couple the option would result in possible over population of a male or female. A lot of people may want all boys to continue on their name, or girls for a different reason.
Genetically altering a baby to make it smarter could be a new useful trend to increase the population’s intellect, but changing things like sexuality should be left to the person. This is because extremists who have babies might make them gay or straight and raise the children in a way that could cause hatred to the other party. It would result in more protests, fights, and disagreements.
This technology has been used for a little while in different ways by now. We can now start to see results of these altering which could be both good and bad. That’s why I say that we restrict genetic altering to be used only to prevent illness and defects. Stopping it now could prevent a change of the future that we may not want.
