What Do You Think About Designer Babies?
If you haven’t heard of the term “designer babies,” you will soon. A designer baby, in its most basic form, is an embryo that has been genetically manipulated (or gene-edited) to produce a child with certain characteristics. Unfavourable features or poor traits (such as a genetic disease) may be removed in some situations, while favourable ones (such as increased intelligence or strength) may be introduced. Designer infants are becoming a reality, even though it may appear to be something right out of science fiction. In simple words, a designer baby is a genetically modified human embryo with desirable characteristics that have been sculpted according to the parents’ wishes.
The term “designer babies” refers to the genetic manipulation of pre-implantation embryos to modify the characteristics of the resulting children. Although this is not currently achievable, it alarms many people about the prospect of parents choosing their children’s DNA, particularly for non-disease traits.
“People can dispute whether it’s a good or bad notion, but… people don’t even know whether or not it was going to work,” said co-author Shai Carmi, whose lab at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem investigates statistical and population genetics. Carmi and his colleagues investigated if scientists might utilize PGT to ensure that a certain infant will grow to be exceptionally tall or intelligent using a combination of genetic data, computer models, and real-world case studies.
One advantage is that altering a baby’s genetic make-up can improve the health of the child. It can lower the risk of genetic abnormalities when employing genetic modification technology to create a designer kid. For example, it not only reduces the risks of a baby being affected by specific health disorders but also raises the possibility of a baby surviving. Designer infants have a high level of resistance to diseases like cancer. Genetic editing opens up an alternative path for future generations to develop natural immunity to illnesses.
This process of growth may one day put an end to such agony. Cancer therapies using genetic editing, for example, have already been effective when CRISPR is used to target and kill problematic cells.
