In 1932, Aldous Huxley imagined and wrote about a world where designer baby technology is prevalent in his science-fiction novel, Brave New World. The technology would not come until many years later, but his ideas still hold up today. In the book, there were different classes depending on how genetically modified one was, including Alpha or Beta (“The Public Should Oppose Designer Baby Technology”). Outside of science fiction, though, is real science where an actual baby can be genetically modified before even being born. A designed baby is one that is purposefully shaped to be one way or another through processes including In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), where an egg is fertilized and genetically altered, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis …show more content…
Doing the procedure undermines evolution and could even reverse it. The reason humans have been so popular in terms of surviving and reproducing is due to the genetic diversity given to them from two million years of evolution. Now, not everyone will look exactly the same, but most will be pretty, healthy, and smart because almost everyone has the same idea of what a “better” human is (“Designer Babies: The Good and the Bad”). Almost no parent who would go through with the procedure would choose an ugly and dumb child. So, the genetic diversity or the variety of different genotypes will be severely reduced in modified communities. Also, the ability to survive directly depends on genetic diversity because populations without it will not be able to meet the demands of the environment (Wolfe, Christian). A disease that could be survived by a population with the normal human genetic diversity, would wipe out the modified community without the genetic diversity. Changing the genotype of just one can affect the whole diversity of humans and with the many processes, including sterilization and genetic screening, changing the genotype of one comes with ease. The ease of changing one leaves humans at a point where the achieved diversity can be easily destroyed, further placing them at risk through the threat of disease (Wolfe, Christian). With all risks and social divides, comes the fact …show more content…
Eugenics or “good breeding” is meant to improve the human race through the gene pool using various methods. Similar to designer babies, the process could be used for good, but like Colin Tudge points out, “…although guns and bombs can be used as agents of peace, [humans] should not be overly surprised when in practice they are used to make war” (Tudge 282). Eugenics can be performed simply by regulating who and who cannot mate. It can also be done by sterilization, a procedure that permanently blocks pregnancy in a woman, which was a reality for many. The most famous account was performed by Germany, specifically the Nazis, during WWII, when 400,000 women were sterilized (Tudge 284). The list of countries does not stop there, though, Canada, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, and Sweden all allowed for sterilization. Even the United States participated by sterilizing up to 100,000 people (Tudge 284). Its participation happened between 1911 and 1970, when six states passed laws that allowed the government to do such a horrible thing. “Horrible” can be used to describe the sterilization that occurred due to the countries’ reasoning behind it. The women were not given the choice, but rather the procedure was done to those that were deemed “feebleminded.” Germany took this a step further and based sterilization on race (Tudge 284). Through sterilization, the
Technology has had a tremendous effect on how we live our lives raging from how we find information, communicate, and travel the world. Medical technology is well on the way to allowing parents to create designer babies, modifying the DNA of a fetus to achieve desirable traits among them. This ultimately changes their life. It may seem beneficial at the time, but it can cause more harm than good because it goes against nature. Designer babies could lead to new discoveries, but is it right for parents to do?
I agree with your point that we shouldn 't have the authority to take away anyone 's right to bear children but sterilization is not inhumane if someone chooses to do it for their own personal reasons. I myself, after bearing 3 children, made the personal decision to not have anymore. There was nothing inhumane about my decision or the procedure. I do agree however that the inhumane practice of forced or "coercive" sterilization, favored by eugenicists and population controllers was wrong. Much of the controversy over Sanger and her involvement with eugenics came from a letter she wrote and an inartfully written sentence that describes the sort of allegations that fueled people 's suspicions that she was opening clinics to exterminate a
government never imposed eugenics measures at a level on par with the Nazis, but, believe it or not, forced sterilization laws were actually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court with Buck v Bell in 1927. By 1931, twenty-seven states had those laws on the books! In fact, these were hardly controversial policies as a survey in Fortune Magazine found that 66% of Americans agreed with compulsory sterilization in 1937. To sum up, about 6,000 people were forcibly sterilized before Buck v Bell. However, approximately another 30,000 people were sterilized or castrated after that case, meanwhile a large percentage of them were prostitutes who weren’t actually “mental defects.”
“Eugenics and Compulsory Sterilization Laws: Providing Redress for the Victims of a Shameful Era in United States History,” is an article by, Michael Silver, that addresses the issue of eugenics and involuntary sterilization laws. He specifically looked at the sterilization laws that were practiced in the 20th Century in the United States. Silver brings forth the argument that sterilization laws violate the constitutional rights of Americans of procreation and childrearing. Throughout the article, Silver explains the history of how the laws were created, practiced, and how they affected those that were involuntarily sterilized. As the article progresses, Silver gave examples of how individual states and the United States, collectively as a
Human eugenics has become a popular technology in the biology world of reproduction. The idea of conserving the superior traits and deleting the tainted traits has become an exciting movement where even novels like Brave New World has predicted us with the dramatic future of eugenics. Although the idea of deleting tainted traits such as disease seem ideal, the fear of creating “perfect” traits will create dominance from the upper class and will strip individualism. John H. Evan talks about the pros and cons of human eugenics in his article. Inspired by the novel Brave New World, Evans first introduces the idea of class separation between the selected designed babies.
Eugenics was a racist pseudoscience the aimed at clearing out all human beings that we regarded as unfit leaving behind only a selected that were conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Sterilization and segregation policies and marriage restrictions were enacted enshrining elements of philosophy. California was among the top five states to adopt such laws by early 1910. This attributed to a substantial number of marriages being barred and thousands of Americans being sterilized. On average about half of coercive sterilizations were done in California before the eruption of World War II in the 1940s.
Furthermore, men were the majority of sterilization victims and then intension shifted dramatically to women. The unfit mother and well-fit dependency affected many people. Plan Parenthood has led to the eugenics movement with eugenics mania occurring. The unfit motherhood was the real problem in the society. In the 1960’s, black power groups formed and race genocide occurred.
Harry H. Laughlin’s Influence on Nazi Sterilization Law Harry H. Laughlin was a leading eugenicist in the eugenics movement of the United States, the first major eugenics movement in the world. However, the idea of eugenics has been around since ancient times. In his Republic, Plato suggested the idea of selective mating to strengthen the guardian (upper) class of the time, but it was in Great Britain that ‘eugenics’ was created. Sir Francis Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin, first coined the term eugenics in his book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, taking it from the Greek word eugenes, meaning “good in stock.”
Unfortunately, the Eugenics Movement is still alive today in The United States in the form of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). To grasp a better understanding of this movement, the ART policies will be scrutinized, major concerns will be
In 1907 Indiana enacted the first law allowing sterilization on eugenic grounds (Lombardo). Merriam Webster Dictionary describes eugenics as a science that deals with the improvement of hereditary qualities of a race or breed. Although these laws are now illegal many people still have the opinions that sterilization is beneficial. These American eugenics ideas helped to give rise to some of the beliefs of the Nazi Empire in Germany in the first half of the 19th century (Lombardo). Diversity is also important because it causes a decreased risk of genetic health problems.
Sterilization started back a while ago in america 's history. It was used during a time when the government and people wanted to control the undesirable populations, such as immigrants, people of color, poor people, unmarried mothers, the disabled, the mentally ill, and whoever else seemed unfit to reproduce. This procedure took place in thirty-two states throughout the twentieth century, particularly in California. Eugenics was commonly accepted as a form or protecting society from the offsprings of individuals listed above. More recently, between 2006 and 2010, almost 150 female inmates in california prisons were authorized to have sterilization procedures done to them.
The coercive implementation of sterilization and euthanasia was not limited to Nazi Germany. Instead it was indicative of a global eugenics movement, occurring in the United States and much of the Western world, during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Essentially eugenics was the,“practical application of genetic science toward the improvement of the genetic health of future generations.” In response to the theorized fear of racial deterioration, eugenists advocated for the cultivation of superior genotypes and the eradication of those that were deemed to be genetically inferior. This pseudoscientific method of identifying hereditary disorders implied that the physically and mentally ill were, thereby, unworthy of life.
but what about the child. How do you think that they would feel about it. Knowing that they aren’t who they actually thought they are. Wow that would be hard to life like that. Studies say that, “There is a debate that says that creating designer babies can lead to a gap in
There are religious, ethnic and cultural biases in our society that are the main cause and lead to non-healthy choices in designer babies. Modernization is linked with scientific inventions and discoveries which are part of this 21st century in which we live today. Modernization helped us to discover many new things however, it has also helped us to discover a lot about the details and functioning of the human body. Such discoveries have always done in order to cause betterment to the humanity and in a way to improve our knowledge with regard to humans. There is a huge difference in opinion amongst a number of people.
What many people do not realize is that we can benefit from sterilisation. In fact, if someone chooses to get sterilized and this individual has a genetic disease or disorder, it can be prevented from passing it on to future generations. Also, according to a survey conducted by the genetic disease foundation, “genetic diseases affect an estimate of 12 million of Americans”. Therefore, sterilization is the key to protect the human race from diseases. Most people think that getting sterilized is immoral or inhuman since the bible in Genesis 1, 28 states that the “sexual” reunion was involved in god’s first command to man “be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth”.