http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123439771603075099.html

I love the treatment in the film when the parents do PGD fertilization. That's not easy subject matter to cover. And I think they were careful not to snub anyone when they presented that scene, and the parents ask "what happens to all the embryos we created that don't pass the test?" They get flushed.

No one goes on a pro-life tirade at this point, but you can just see it in the parents' eyes, how disturbing this feels.

And all of these dimenstions took on a whole new meaning for me after I entered fatherhood.

Honestly, the "designer children" movement simply scares me. I won't go on a bible-thumping rant. I'll just say it scares me. That is all.

Here's a good idea. How about if you're gonna have a child you HAVE THE CHILD and love him/her for who he/she is instead of trying to basically build a living being out of physical traits that the parents would prefer.

Actually, here's a better idea. Open a clinic where people can get these "designer babies" and then sterilize both of the parents on the spot. Miserable, materialistic fuckwits like that probably shouldn't be reproducing in the first place.

But it's also being used to prevent disease, surely there's nothing objectionable against that?
And if the same procedure that allows for the prevention of certain illnesses, also would allow you to "customize" your child, then why not?

Let me be the Devil's advocate for a moment.

I'm not saying everyone should do it, I'm just saying, I don't see what's wrong with offering the possibility.
Well, there'd be less variety probably, but still.

It's easy to get all p.c. about this, but if you're not bothered by using this method to prevent disease (that's assuming that you aren't), then is it really that bad to take it that little step further?

I know I'd be pretty upset if I was flushed away as an embryo just because I wasn't tall enough for my parents. Then again, who knows what kind of life I'd have with people who value height or hair color that much as parents.

Behind me, there is a very large college textbook titled "GENETICS", copyright 2009. Unfortunately, I have not yet read it, and I honestly don't even know two-thirds of "one damn thing" about genetics, so I can't say much.

  This got me:

  sometimes described as "negative enhancement." Groups who support this approach argue, for example, that a deaf child born to a deaf couple is better suited to participating in the parents' shared culture. So far, however, no single clinic has been publicly identified as offering this service.

  That's truly bizarre. It seems more beneficial to invest money in technology that could ameliorate deafness than to purposely make a human that is deaf.

  Those of you that have seen Total Recall might remember the part where the receptionist was changing the colors of her nails. I read (somewhere) that we might one day be doing that with our skin. So all this body modding before birth will probably not last long, or, it won't seem impressive for very long.

Some of the deaf community are a funny bunch. And they are very much a community, but some see that almost like they're a race and to cure deafness is akin to genocide and that deaf parents should have the right to a deaf child.

While I admire the strength of their community, that's just all sorts of wrong to me.

As for the topic in general, I totally disagree with Amazingu's slippery slope logic. Lines have to be drawn and are drawn all the time in every day life - saying one thing might be okay under certain circumstances never by default greenlights every related activity. Eliminating a disease or severe disability is one thing, choosing the specifics of your child is entirely different. And, now that I put it into words, it seems important to bear in mind that this is not a case that diseases or disabilities are being removed from unborn children - it's that those potential children are not being allowed the chance to live and are being removed from the reproductive process.

These are two different things. Preventing disease can be seen as a positive aspect of the process, but the temptation to go beyond that and start putting people together like a Lego men is really too great to justify it in my opinion. Like it was said - a slippery slope. The whole idea reminds me of the movie "Twins" and how one twin (Danny Devito) got all the bad genes and the other (Arnold) got all the good ones. Kind of makes me sad thinking about how Danny Devito's character felt when he found out he was the "reject." I can only imagine how a child might feel being "customized."

Wasn't there an old couple that paid $150,000 for a clone of their old dog in the news recently? Combine this with Miss Octo Mom and it's not hard to see why people get so defensive when others screw with nature. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it.