Teen Forums - Teen Chat, Teen Help, Teen Advice & Support

What are some opinions on people taking, and designing genes, with the intent to chance how a child will be born. With our modern society, people now have the power to chose if their child will have this physical trait. or will not have this particular disease. What are your opinions on this? Is this right and legitimate? Or is this not right? Keep in mind, they have the power to chose if the child has blue, or green eyes. Is tall or short. And they have the power to decide for the child to not get... autism for example. BUT, with these choices, also keep in mind, you can eliminate one birth defect, for another.

Sounds like nothing more than Eugenics to me.

Eugenics is already illegal.
Next.

The Vintage Coast Website

Subscribe to it!!

This is like the plot for that movie Gattaca!!!

And yeah i would think this is illegal cuse no one know what the hell is going on. We do know what genes to what to a degree, but its it not something you want to be messing with.

Forgive the crappy grammar!
"The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large. " - Confucius
"The guy in the back always has something to say"

I do not agree with humans doing this. They are trying to play God, and I don't fell that it is right. Right now, I am reading the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. IN the book, everyone is genetically designed to be a certain way, taking away their pfree will. I don't agree with that at all.

I'm not religious, and I don't think it's just scientists experimenting for experiments sake, but I'm not altogether comfortable with it....

I love the debates about genetic engineering and design To be honest... My debut novel is actually about a genetically engineered teen... She has some advantages, but like you said she traded one thing for another.

Well it's already happening and has been happening with animals for a long time, eventually we'll be moving on to actual people. Nothing we can do to stop it. Was watching a show about it on The Discovery Channel, the scientists they interviewed are apparently are coming very close to being able to genetically engineer an actual human. This'll probably happen within 15-20 years.
Though it would be available exclusively to the wealthy, at the beginning at least. I don't totally disagree with it, but I don't agree with it completely either.
We could eliminate and find cures for many, many diseases and other sicknesses by doing this. But at the same time, it sort of feels wrong; I mean, actually "Creating" a person, as if we're a higher being? It sort of reminds me of the Uruk-Hai being created in Lord of the Rings. Very creepy if you ask me.

I must be the only person not to think it's bad. Why is taking away an illness/condition from a child a bad thing? Making their quality of life a lot better should be considering a good thing, not bad.
As for choosing the characteristics of their child, again, sure it's playing "God" to an extent but is it really do anybody any harm? It might be shallow or whatever choosing your child's eye colour but as long as the child comes out healthy, who cares.

One should be very careful when messing around with things like this..

Well, as long as it's 100% safe and it might save a child from getting heart diabetes etc. then I see nothing wrong with it.

I'd love to be able to create someone though, but I'm a nut job.
It's ethically wrong, but it's nothing I see as "wrong" To be honest.

As long as the children are raised and loved, and even if their genes don't turn out like they think they would they'd function normally.

Same with having to not use braces, glasses, crutches or take surgery.

Only time will tell how this develops though, right no I see no real "point" in it, it'd only be a waste of money and probably something only rich people could do, if it were ever legalized.