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If you could pick and choose the traits of your unborn child, would you?

It seems that celebrities have figured out how to have twins and the option to selecting what your baby will look like may one day be an option. Would you want this option?
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dtvrivera
dtvrivera
Marked as Best! October 30, 2009 03:49 AM
Personally, I don’t think I would opt to select my unborn child’s physical traits, such as eye color, hair color, shape of teeth, or whether or not the child will have pimples when he/she grows up. Overall, it’s great that science could allow us to intervene in the conception process to this extent to ensure the birth of healthy and attractive children. However, the way similar methods (such as gender selection and selective reduction) are currently used can put the ethics of interfering with conception in question. If we create these genetically superior, perfect babies, do we also terminate any fetuses that fail to turn out to be genetically ideal? I think if children must be conceived in a test tube in the laboratory (if natural conception is not a possibility), they should at least be created from unaltered genes. Potentially, the only reason to consider such methods would be to avoid or circumvent genetically-inherited disorders or diseases that could otherwise prove detrimental to the child’s overall wellbeing.
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raerae2
raerae2
October 30, 2009 02:38 AM
No I would not. I'd like to leave some things up to nature, including what my child will be and what they will look like. Beginning a process of control over nature in such a way is bordering on a "Brave New World" scenario. It's scary and unnatural. It messes with the very fabric of natural randomness. It'll be a terrible day when you're asked: "Would you like a twin with that?" when you find out you're pregnant or when you talk to your doctor about wanting to get pregnant. Worse yet is when you start making up your child's physical features before they've even had a chance to multiply into more than one cell. There's something terribly wrong with genetically altering a child so that it will look a certain way. The only time genetic alterations should be used is to save the life of a child or person. That's it. Not to tailor-make your child like it were a build-a-bear.
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unwirklich
unwirklich
October 30, 2009 02:49 AM
No. I love the way my child came out, and I'm sure I'll love his brother just as much. I believe genetic alteration is just unnatural and the more human beings try to "play god" so to speak (in my book nature is god) the worse we will make things.

This question reminds me a great deal of the movie Gattacca. i think it portrayed a fairly accurate scenario of what would happen had our parents the ability to chose our genes. Scary thought, great movie.
Source(s):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
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annelisle
annelisle
October 30, 2009 10:36 AM
No, even if I would be given the chance I wouldn't want to dictate what traits my child should have. Because if I will do that then he won't be unique as God created us to be. And I would miss the excitement and adventure of learning the different traits of my child as she grows up. I think that any child even if I am the mother should be given a chance to develop her potentials. And even though I don't dictate her traits I know that there are some that she will be able to get from me. For a child is a mirror of her parents. What she becomes as an adult is the result of parents love, care, and guidance plus her experiences with her peers and the people around her including what she learned in school and at home.

So with constant guidance and care I am confident enough that my child will grow as I would like her to be. With love and respect to her family and to the society.
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