Designing
Babies
In Atwood’s book Oryx
and Crake, one of the main themes is human genetics. Crake is the leader of a
research looking for new ways to improve the human body. Crake created a pill called BlyssPluss. This pill was created to protect humans from any
sexually transmitted disease, to prolong youth, to provide an unlimited supply
of libido and sexual prowess in order to block testosterone which would create
feelings of jealousy and violence; and the last feature of the pill is that it
works as a birth-control pill. The last characteristic was made in order to
control the population growth which is also a problem in our society. But the
main project of Crake was the creation of perfect beings, the Crakers. He wanted to create
beings that would be perfect, with no diseases, almost no feelings in order to
avoid violence, or racism; he also wanted to create beings that would not need
to eat a lot of food because, in the book as in the real life, people’s demands
and use of resources is exceeding what we can produce.
In recent years, like in the book, scientists have
been looking for a way to create perfect human beings. in the article attached we can
see that scientist will, very soon, achieve their goal; they have
started making some tests on animals, but there is still work to do. There are
also ethical issues that are being discussed. Scientists argue that the
benefits of their findings would be the creation of people without certain
diseases, but the people against, argue that perfect people would create new
types of racism. I think that the book might help to understand what could be
consequences of creating perfect humans, such as, losing the real meaning of life
which is to enjoy life even if there are some defects.
Wow!!! That video was truly choking!! I had no idea that one could choose their baby's eye color or even hair color! When the Crakers were first explained in the book it seemed like such an impossible thing to: creating "perfect" humans, but I guess it's not as impossible as I first thought...Good post!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of eye and hair colour selection, here is an article I had found last week on designer babies:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/4885836/Designer-baby-row-over-clinic-that-offers-eye-skin-and-hair-colour.html
By the way, funny how the news reporter says "building a better baby" at 1:01... In fact, I had related the concept of designer babies with the "Build-A-Bear" concept in my oral presentation last week! It's not about having a baby anymore... It's all about buying a product "made to perfection". Pretty sad actually.
Did you like that the example of trait selection this article used was a blond girl with green eyes?
ReplyDeleteNow that you mentioned it... I just made the connection with the Crakers' green eyes!
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion I support the people against, it is human nature to have certain defects or have certain diseases and scientists as well as researchers should not be messing around with genetics that could lead to some serious consequences in the long run.
ReplyDelete