Idée de progrès

I'm going to present you the notion « the idea of progress » through the study of the topic « Designer Babies »

To begin with, I’d like to give a definition of the idea of progress. He can be defined as an improvement, a development or a change – a technical, scientific or social advance which contributes to making the world a better place.

Also, « Designer babies » is an expression to define a baby whose genes have been chosen by its parents and doctors so that it has particular characteristics.

So we will go attempt to answer the question : Is progress always a progress ? We are going to ask our in a first time what are the advantage of this advance scientifique and in a second time what are the risk and the disadvantage.

So first, what are the advantage of the « designer babies ».

A event in 1978 made the front page of all British newspapers, especially the Evening News. Indeed, was born the first baby thanks to in vitro fertilization, called Louise Brown marking a major scientific turning point in the field of human reproduction. This allows couples who can’t conceive normally to have children.

Then, we saw in the document « Many Clinics Use Genetic Diagnosis to choose Sex » the procedure called pre-implatation genetic diagnonsis, allows of choose the gender of the futur baby, a female or a male. When parent want a boy or a girl because of gender stereotypes, ethnic traditions or simply because they have one sex and want the other, this allows couples to balance gender in their families

Futhermore, genetic advances also avoids risks of genetic diseases, genetic screening reduces the baby’s chances of being born with a serious genetic disease, so increases the likelihood of a healthy baby. Therefore, according to the text  « Will Genetic Advances Make Sex obsolete » the genetic advances allows could bring down health care costs. And why not in a few years, be useful for same-sex couples.

Despite these positive points, the designer babies has multiple disadvantage and risks.

First of all, social concerns. High cost can lead to a gap in society. This could create classes that distinguish designer babies from those that are not. For example, the movie Gattaca, presents a dystopia in which society is divided in two. With one side  lab-created babies are the Valids, while the other are In-Valids and are considered second-class citizens at best.

Then, moral and ethical problems. We can cite for example the book "Brave new world" a dystopian world in which human beings are all created in the laboratory, who determine their future tastes, aptitudes, behaviors, in accordance with their future position in the social hierarchy. The Designer Babies it would be give for the child the best possible start. But choose the birth and the futur of a Man, it's withdraw his freedom, so this humanitie. Indeed, imperfections are not they part of life ?

Conclusion

To conclude I think the designer babies is a good thing to allow infertile couples to have children or to detect diseases but we should not try to choose the sex of our future child or any other characteristics such as the personality, hair color, etc ... So we can say through this topic that progress is not always a progress.

...