May 19 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Health & Medicine Year: General Rating: 7 Hot
By Dick Pelletier
Science fiction has been preoccupied with technologies to
control the characteristics of our children ever since Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New
World. Now, experts say, human eugenics and the dream of
creating genetically-engineered superhumans is about to become
reality.
As a species we’ve always looked for ways to be
faster, stronger, smarter, and live longer. Many enhancements we
take for granted today; blood transfusions, vaccinations, and birth
control, seemed unnatural or immoral when first introduced. Yet
over time we’ve become accustomed to these controls over our minds
and bodies, and have used them to better ourselves and our
world.
At the turn of the 20th century, eugenics in America took the
form of state-mandated sterilization for people with mental
retardation, or somehow deemed to be a dreg on the public.
Margaret Sanger
started Planned Parenthood during this time to help rid society of
the genetically unfit. In Nazi Germany during World War II,
eugenics took the form of the Holocaust.
Though the idea of creating designer babies goes against much of
our bioethical thinking, over the next two decades, says Futurist
Magazine writer Eric Swedin, we will see an ever increasing number
of humans born with enhanced genetic characteristics.
Some level of eugenics exists today as evidenced when parents
wish for a specific gender in their child. More than 2,000 couples
have spent $20,000 each for gender-selection treatments offered by
pioneer Doctor Jeffrey Steinberg at clinics in Los Angeles and
Phoenix. (cont.)
‘Family balancing’ is the refrain heard most, Steinberg says;
“usually couples have four or five children of one sex and
desperately want a child of the opposite sex”.
Using a technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis
(PGD); doctors remove several eggs from the mother and fertilize
them with the father’s sperm. They extract one cell from each
embryo, determine its sex; and then implant a fertilized egg with
the desired gender into the mother’s womb and bring the baby to
term.
Bioethicists argue that the technique could aggravate world
gender imbalances. The process also alarms those with concerns over
the fate of unused embryos, since many believe human life begins
with creation of the embryo.
Steinberg stresses that his clients mostly opt to keep unused
eggs rather than discard them, and he stresses that the technique
is more humane than aborting fetuses, or practicing infanticide –
the killing of female babies – which has become routine in India
and China.
Researchers also use PGD to screen
babies for cancer and other genetic afflictions. It doesn’t make
sense, proponents say, to bring a diseased child into the world to
suffer horrendous pain and cause financial hardships for the
family.
The age-old science of eugenics is taking on a new, more
positive 21st century shape. Swedin sees a rush of record-breaking
athletes, science geniuses, and entrepreneurial wizards on the
horizon. New biomedical technologies make it inevitable that
society will soon experience startlingly new and profound changes
in its offspring.
A breathtaking time is unfolding over the next two decades as we
strive to use biotechnology to make ourselves stronger, smarter,
less prone to violence, and longer-lived. Can humanity achieve
these incredible goals? Forward-thinkers believe it can – and many
alive today will live to witness this “magical future”.
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