{"id":731,"date":"2012-03-15T04:10:57","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T04:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/?p=731"},"modified":"2012-03-15T04:10:57","modified_gmt":"2012-03-15T04:10:57","slug":"are-designer-babies-in-our-future-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/2012\/03\/15\/are-designer-babies-in-our-future-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Designer Babies in Our Future?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Image by Scientific American<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nSince the unveiling of Dolly the cloned sheep<\/a> in 1997, serious and contentious questions about the ethical and legal implications of genetic technology, and specifically its use on humans<\/a>, have come to dominate many religious and cultural debates. The central question seems to turn on the relative value of the \u201cnatural\u201d form, and consequences flowing from its alteration. More concretely, it asks whether it is wise to allow genetic technology to \u201cpollute\u201d our \u201cpure\u201d genetic code<\/a>.\n\nWhile the technology that would allow such alteration is still in a relatively infantile state today, its maturity is closer than we might think<\/a>. In part due to this perceived immediacy, some Americans worry about the implications of such a science fiction-esque state of affairs, and so a number of Congresspersons have sought<\/a> unsuccessfully<\/a> to ban<\/a> prospectively the technology and all associated research. As we come closer to the realization of the technology\u2019s full capacity, such attitudes will become more widespread, and similar efforts will likely have greater traction. In the not-so-distant future, the question of what to do about genetic technology will become a necessary one, and will require an answer.\n\nAn outright ban of this technology goes too far. The potential benefits of the capacity to alter the human genome far outweigh its potential costs, and the preclusion of any development by an outright ban will eliminate all of those benefits. Of course, the calculus here is not a simple one and is by necessity speculative.\n\nCentral to the policy arguments of those who advocate a ban (or at the very leastsignificant<\/em> regulation) of human\u2013focused genetic technology is a worry that its use would necessarily exacerbate the already significant problem of social stratification<\/a> by making manifest the markers of that stratification. In other words, the rich would not only wield significant and economic resources, but they would be biologically<\/em> superior. But this is already true. Through the miracle of cosmetic surgery, one can purchase physical beauty, limited only to the contents of one\u2019s bank account. Would the addition of another option really change that much?\n\nMoreover, is it morally acceptable to limit a person\u2019s choice to improve oneself in any way one sees fit? This question brings us to examination of the myriad potential benefits that the technology offers. Those benefits are not limited to superficial ideals of beauty and intelligence but would have a real impact on human suffering and human potential. It promises to cure all genetic disorders, to augment our immune system to eliminate communicable disease, and even to allow habitation<\/a> of Antarctica and Mars. Can we really throw away all of that in the face of possible social disruption? Is maintenance of the status quo so vital that we must foreclose all of the benefits of this technology to achieve it?","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Genetic technology gives rise to myriad of legal and moral debates\u2014in this post, Chad Pollard delves into the major issues at play. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[715,717,1511],"class_list":["post-731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-blogs","tag-genes","tag-genetics","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}