Fiche Oral Anglais - The idea of progress

Notion 1 : The idea of progress

Intro : The world progress can have 2 main meanings : the evolution of something for the better or just the idea of change, a movement forward. It can be scientific, social or economical progress. In class we studied scientific and social progress concerning human reproduction. In the late 20th and in the early 21st century, science has made huge progress in the field of genetics and the fight against diseases.

Scientists and doctors are now able to genetically eliminate some deadly diseases through genetic screening and embryo selection.

The question is : What are the advantages and disadvantages of scientific progress ?

 Should we allow all the new ways to have babies ? are they all morally acceptable ?

Plan et développement :

1. Design your baby
2. Surrogate mother

The scientific progress allows improving life condition and keeping alive sufferers. Now, thanks to scientific progress doctors can screen embryos in order to choose the one they want. We saw in class two articles about « designer babies ».  In first article, this new technic to consist in implant a healthy embryo into mother to avoid genetic diseases. For that, doctors create several embryos from the same parents. Some people object to the designer baby for moral reasons. They are afraid that the children became a commercial production because nowadays, with genetic manipulation we could choose cosmetic characteristics and personality or intelligence. Of course the principal scientific interest is to cure genetics diseases, but we don’t know what the human can do.

In second article, we saw an other example of screening. It is an article about little Moly, a child born with a fatal disease, she couldn’t survive without a bone morrow. She was saved by her brother Adam. Adam is the first designer baby, he was selected because he was compatible, when he was born his blood from umbilical cord was transplanted to his sister. This article shows the advantage of the scientific progress, in fact the medical benefits allow saving life but the designers babies it’s a source of debate. Some people are afraid of psychological effects on the savior baby. It may be difficult for child to know that he was conceived to save his brother and if his brother wasn’t sick, maybe he wouldn’t have been wanted. This would be a moral problem and it could create inequalities between the rich and the poor.

There is an other way to have babies : Surrogate mother. More and more people in rich countries who are unable to have child decided to pay a surrogate mother. In class we studied a testimony about an Indian woman which decided to become surrogate mother. She needed money because their were poor, we can say that it’s a good deal between her and a couple who cannot have children. But, she was afraid of people’s reaction in her village so she moved to an other city during her pregnancy. In the end, she was happy to give a baby away.

This procedure raises moral issues and that's why some countries don't allow surrogate mother. This can be problematic because some surrogate mothers don’t want to give the baby away, for the baby, he don’t know his origins and from an ethical point of view it’s a problem because these women get paid to carry someone else’s baby and we give a price to human life.

Conclusion : We can conclude that thanks to the medical and social progress, we can improve living conditions of some people, offer them what they need, save lives and maybe in the future eradicate some genetic diseases. I think this progress are very important for our society. Obviously we must be very careful and set up rules and limits.

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