Paper Summary:

This paper explains that today, science is close to having the ability to selectively choose which babies will be born based on their genetic characteristics; therefore, now is the time to decide the ethicacy of this action. The author points out that the first applications of genetic manipulation will likely be medical; embryos will be manipulated to treat some genetic illness, such as Huntington's Chorea, or will be chosen selectively based on the absence of the Huntington's gene. The paper relates that, already in 2002, a hospital in Scotland was issued a license by the British government not to create "designer babies" but only to allow parents, by the use of abortion of defective fetuses, to avoid babies who are doomed to have some serious genetic disorder.

From the Paper:

"The problem is that genetics is rarely that simple. Most of the time, genes only show a tendency, and experts cannot say whether the developing child will develop a specific illness or not. Even in identical twins, sometimes one develops a disease influenced by genetics, such as schizophrenia, while the other does not. Nevertheless, genetic researchers believe that eventually we will be able to screen embryos for combinations of genes that predispose people not only to life-threatening illnesses but for personality traits as well. However, people's personalities aren't as simple as a cluster of traits."

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