How do you feel about parents who choose the gender of their baby?

I personally think that messing with nature is dumb, but if they want to spend the money to decide, all the power to them. To each his own.

If they choose what nature would choose randomly, who cares?

Let me know when they start giving them super abilities.

You can do that? Isn’t that Gattaca?

I think that they will raise their children differently based on gender which is something I am not a huge supporter of – but that’s our society for you

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
You dont think children should be raised differently based on gender?

@jackm no. I think each child is unique, should be raised to know they are a human first, gender category later…I don’t think we should limit our children in what they wear, what they play with and whether or not they’re supposed to be aggressive, passive, etc. etc.

I don’t really care one way or the other. I can personally think of fifty-eleven ways to better spend that amount of money, but who am I to judge a decision that won’t affect me or anybody else?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
Ok, I read that as all children should be raised the same.

@jackm well the same in that they should all be treated equally

So far I’m surprised there aren’t more people saying how ridiculous it is to mess with something that should soley be chosen by nature. Why can’t parents feel blessed with whatever they get? What gives them the right to choose? Whether they turn out to be a boy/girl, short/tall, blonde/brunette…children are a blessing. And I would personally be happy with what nature gave me.

I’m just still not sure it’s real.

I think maybe if they had like, 5 boys already and wanted a girl, okay I could see it making some iota of sense.

I still don’t much care, though.

@Snarp Not sure it’s real? What’s real? Having the ability to choose genders, etc? Oh it’s real.

I feel sad about it. It seems to be a deep misunderstanding about what having a child is all about.

I don’t think picking the baby’s sex is that big of a deal. It’s when you get into the whole ‘designer baby’ thing (picking features) that it starts to not feel right.

@ItalianPrincess1217 You said: “parents are opting to choose their baby’s gender, eye color, hair color, even height”. I have never heard of such a technology being available. Maybe it is, but if so it’s news to me, and I’d appreciate a link.

@Snarp it was just discussed on Dr.Phil. It’s real. They had parents on their that had done procedures like this. I’m not sure how advanced or safe it is yet.

Link

So I can make babies like I make sims characters?? Oh that’s great, I love playing God not

@Snarp: If a parent is a carrier of a devastating disease, an embryo can be engineered so as to be sure it doesn’t carry the gene also.

I think it creates a new social class. Only the rich can afford to do this and therfore the rich will have the best looking kids etc.. IMO this is a slippery road to follow.

Not to mention that the science behind it scares me a bit in how new it is and I would prefer a “natural” child myself.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.

OK, so this is only with implanted embryos. That makes a little more sense. I don’t like it, but there’s not a lot we can do about it, and I think we are a long way from a significant number of couples opting out of the old fashioned method of having children.

@Snarp I disagree, there is plenty we could do about it. For one making this option available to everyone so a social gap won’t be created. Another would be educating people seriously before they make such decisions. A third would be banning decisions until more research has been done. Just some ideas off the top of my head.

Say you want a blonde-haired blue-eyed precious little pixie girl. Ok choose hair, eyes and gender. Nine months later you give birth to a 6 foot 2, 12lb baby girl who looks like a marmot.

Nature has a way of winning. It’s sneaky like that. Parents that try to control everything are going to have nature smack them anyway. So for me, I’ll sit on the sidelines with some popcorn and wait.

They are just browsing all the choices instead of letting chance decide. I see nothing wrong with it.

@RedPowerLady Or we could just ban embryo implantation. That would eliminate the problem, at least for the time being. But let’s see how popular that idea is.

I’m going to interject again—if they can alter genes to change their physical character how long until they can control their personality too?

There is a movie about genetically altered people and how they eventually became superior to naturally born children (I’m not sure what it’s called but I’m assuming it’s something sci-fi).

@gemiwing Great point about having a baby that you didn’t choose. That, IMO, creates even further complications. Will these parents fully accept such babies?

@Snarp Um.. jumping the gun a bit I would think. That isn’t even a reasonable argument.

I think it’s disturbing. I can’t imagine wanting a certain sex so badly that I would have them implanted into me.

I think @Simone_De_Beauvoir is correct. People chose to raise their children by societies view on gender. Yes, my son is a boy and dresses “boyish” but I have no qualms with have him wear any color shirt he pleases, in fact, my favorite on him is a purple shirt with a dinosaur on it. We’re also getting him a baby stroller and doll for Christmas, because he enjoys playing with them and it’ll help him be involved with his new baby brother. I’m glad I married a man who isn’t forcing anything upon his son (like sports or whatever) okay, he did get him a Star Trek spaceship, and I told him to stop trying to make our child a dork lol

@casheroo Star Trek spaceship – coool! :) send it over here…we want our kids to be dorks

I think genetically engineering an embryo to be sure that your child isn’t going to have a horrible disease, rather than just being deprived of having children because you’re a carrier of something… I think that’s okay. I’m going to say that outright.

@sevenfourteen Gattaca

@RedPowerLady Why not? Look, there’s no way politically that we’re going to make this available to everyone, we won’t even make basic health care available to everyone, let alone implantation in the first place, far less genetic selection. And why should we ban genetic selection any more than we should ban embryo implantation? My solution is no more far fetched than yours.

@Snarp I posed several possible solutions. You are talking extremes to make some point, i really don’t know what point. The idea that there is no way we are going to do it politically has no meaning to me. We as a nation can make those decisions and even if it is far-fetched it is a possibility and one that should be considered. Now getting rid of embryo implantation, you know exactly why that is a bad idea, it isn’t even on the same planet of ideas. You are suggesting taking away couples fertility rights. I am suggesting giving everyone equal rights. IMO that is a big difference.

@poofandmook I could get on board that ship.

@poofandmook Yes, but where do you draw the line? Some people view deafness as a “horrible disease” and some people want to have only a deaf child.
To me, it’s all trying to play “god” or whatever. It’d be hard to draw the line in what is acceptable and what isn’t.

@RedPowerLady My point is that as long as we’re implanting embryos, those who can afford it and want to will have them genetically selected. Pass all the laws you want to, but the rich will still get it done.

When did having an embryo implanted become a right? To be perfectly honest, in a world with a population of 6 billion and growing, that can’t support those people at a standard of living that most Americans would find acceptable, it seems unethical to me to offer fertility treatments at all.

But that’s not going to be a popular position, and in the long run attempting to ban genetic selection isn’t going to be either.

Actively choosing specific properties of offspring will reduce genetic diversity in the human population and will eventually lead to genetic degradation of the human species, resulting in more inherited diseases, deformations and allergies. Maybe.

@casheroo: right, but I don’t think deafness is carried by genes, right? Two deaf parents can have a child who can hear and speak perfectly.

@ragingloli True, if it ever becomes widespread. As long as it is a small segment of the population, that shouldn’t be an issue.

@casheroo good point

@ragingloli good point

@Snarp I completely disagree with everything you have said and see no foundation in coming to any sort of logical compromise. I’ll let someone else take it up with you.

@poofandmook I remember a case of a family fighting to have a child via ivf, to be born deaf. http://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=4024 I think it’s legit.

@casheroo: well.. damn. No I don’t think it should be legal even to engineer a child to have handicaps… but I think it’s good that we can now screen embryos to prevent a child from being born with one.

I want to be against this, deep down inside I think it’s wrong, I think it’s unethical, I think there are serious problems with it. But I also can’t think of a legitimate argument in favor of banning it, assuming that it has been adequately tested. There are a lot of things that I find unethical that fit into that same boat and are legal. I’m the last person to defend this, I think it has downright terrifying implications, but I have nothing to base that on other than my own thoughts and some science fiction, none of which has any legal status.

Oh dear. Dollars to doughnuts, even with all that tinkering, parents like that are still going to be in for a surprise.

It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature!

@ragingloli
I don’t know about that… surely artificial selection should be more efficient at avoiding or even weeding out innate diseases, deformations and allergies than randomness is. The part of genetic diversity that will be lost would be the part that makes us weak, logically speaking.

As for the “messing with nature” business… people have been doing that since the day they discovered you can control fire. Everything that makes us who we are hinges on manipulating nature.
I find it a bit irrational to oppose something only because it’s not natural. It’s impossible to be consistent with that. Even hunting rabbits with a spear is unnatural. Spears do not exist in nature.

@Fyrius Aha!

While I understand that our very tinkering with our own chromosomes may be natural, I’m still not sure if it’s something we should do yet, given that we still don’t know enough about them to go and create made-to-order children.

Who knows why we evolved for sexual reproduction? What if there are mechanisms to genes and chromosomes that protect us in ways in which we don’t yet know about? And we’re manipulating them? That’s what concerns me.

@oratio
Good luck throwing that one at a rabbit.

@aprilsimnel
You have a point, I suppose; genetics as a field isn’t done yet. Although I’m not enough of an expert to make any kind of educated statement about how ready they are for this sort of thing.
Not to mention the ethical issues of human autonomy and the like, of course. I for one would probably feel tempted to have the God Gene edited out of my offspring, but it’s really not a decision I would have the right to make for them.

But the reason why sexual reproduction exists seems rather obvious – I’d say because back then it was the only way for DNA to be recombined, which helped survival a lot. At any rate, I’m not sure if that’s the right answer, but I’m sure that mystery has been solved long ago.
Additionally they’re not manipulating DNA, they’re just picking particular genomes that are already naturally there. Right?

They’re still not able to predict intelligence. I hope their designer babies are all stupid. That’d serve ‘em right. :D

They must be atheists or something because choosing the gender of your baby is changing the way of nature…its not the way its supposed to be

@jessicamarie can’t tell if you’re being serious or sarcastic…

@jessicamarie yeah, must be..uhh, what?!

Fine with me. @jessicamarie God made us intelligent for a reason. If people can achieve the intelligence to choose the sex of their baby and other physical aspects, fantastic. I don’t see how it would be wrong.

those damn atheists and that crazy science of theirs

We can do that? o.o
Uhm…i feel against it, i feel that its wrong but i dont know why…
It just doesnt seem right.

I think it is one of those “if you don’t think it is right, then don’t do it” sort of things.

As long as they love it and take care of it once it is here, I don’t really figure it is any of my business.

If I did that, I would feel like I was making my child on the Sims. That just seems weird to me.

I dont like the thought of it. what could be so terrible about one gender of baby that you need to pay buku amounts of money to make SURE you don’t have it? sorry but it seems silly, and a waste, and like these people are trying to “play god”, so to speak. not for me.

I’m an atheist, and I wouldn’t do it.

It actually sounds like the start of a horror movie or something. It just doesn’t sound safe to me. It sounds like it may cause problems down the road with genetic mutations and such….

@Phobia I don’t think so. Tinkering with the genome is a total opposite. Genetic mutations will happen no matter what. You yourself have genetic mutations, as do I.

I am not a fan of people who would do that but it is true that a lot of people treat their children differently based on the gender. If that is the case it would be better I think for them to choose their gender so that our children are treated well, would rather have a child treated better because their parents chose their gender than a child mis treated because the parents don’t like what nature gives them

@jackm I don’t think children should be raised differently based on gender either

@Snarp – It’s not Gattaca. It’s selective breeding, not genetic manipulation. And you only need a centrifuge and don’t have to go to the DNA level.

How do I feel? It puts more pressure on the kid. There a higher expectations about the kid being a perfect girl or a perfect boy. If nature alone decides people are more willing to accept imperfections.

I really want at least one girl and if I had the money to do it, I would pay to have the sex selected and implanted. I don’t really get what the big deal is, though I respect the opinions of others that feel it’s not a good thing. What I don’t understand from reading this thread is how selecting the sex can lead to pressure on the child or other bad things like that. I realize this is maybe an unpopular view because of the general belief that you should be happy with what nature provides and be thankful your baby is healthy.

The reason I don’t understand is because from where I’m standing, there are no evil or bad reasons to want one sex or the other. I’d leave all else to chance, but when it boils down to it, I really want a girl. To me, it’s a positive because everyone will be happy.. The parents would be happy and treat their child well because of it. I see it as a negative on the other side of the coin, if the parents wanted one or the other and didn’t get it, that there’s a potential for unhappy parents or worse treatment of the child because of it.

@MissAnthrope I agree with most of what you said. I also really want at least one girl and if after trying a few times and only getting boys, I might consider going to the doctor and select the sex of my next baby (if I had the money). But I will never understand the desire to have a “designer baby”. Choosing eye color, hair color, etc, doesn’t seem right. I would look at my baby differently. Instead of it being a miracle and something naturally created, it would be scientifically created. There is no beauty behind science.

@ItalianPrincess1217
“There is no beuaty behind science”

Carl Sagan is rolling in his grave. How can you say there is no beauty in science

@jackm Beuaty? What’s that? Anyways…I knew I’d get shit for saying that. What I meant to say was there is no beauty in scientifically creating a designer baby.

@jackm
Lurve. :D

Though I’ll have to point out it’s not science that’s beautiful, but nature; science just reveals its beauty.
Of course, it’s also not science that perform genetic engineering; it’s genetic engineering that performs genetic engineering. It’s a technology only enabled by the knowledge science has made available to us.

I could go on to point out there’s nothing miraculous about natural, random childbirth. But I think I’ve done my share of pointing out for this post.

@Fyrius There’s nothing miraculous about natural, random childbirth. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. This thread doesn’t have a right or wrong answer. Just opinions. I was curious to see how many people had issues with designers babies or babies being created with the use of technology, and how many people thought it is absolutely ok. It was interesting, to say the least.

I think there’s a certain beauty in the randomness. My advanced bio class discussed this at one point and do you know how much variation is possible, just given one particular egg and one particular sperm? It’s a 1 in 8 billion chance that you turned out the way you did. To me, that’s amazing! Think of all the different people you could have been, and what chance it is that you are who you are.

Sure, having a child that you don’t know what will look like is spectacular. Wow, he’s got your eyes, my nose, and Great Aunt Bertie’s feet! But, what about the debilitating issues? Like cleft palette, or hell, I dunno, being born without a face at all?

Or maybe you simply always dreamed about having a green eyed blonde haired little girl? But you get a blue eyed red haired little boy? You love your child equally regardless of look, but that dream is still unfilled.

It seems that it’s a selfish, but not wholly wrong thing for a parent to do. If they want to alter what baby they get, it’s their decision. Personally, I think it’s awesome that we have the kind of science to do so.