Eugenics is the idea of altering human heredity to benefit people, such as genetically implementing defenses against disease. But it can also be used to create designer babies that look however you could want. There are certainly benefits and many risks. After World War II, when the Nazis' horrific eugenics program was revealed to the rest of the world, eugenics essentially dropped out of scientific vocabulary and has since become a largely ignored subject. But as science discovers more and more about genetics and how heredity works and can be altered, eugenics is possibly one of the most sensitive bioethics issues of the 21st century.

Thoughts on its allowance? Regulations and restrictions and ways of enforcing them? Altruism or playing God?

i think this messes up the whole cycle of nature. i mean, why cant we just be, the way nature &God made us to be. im not saying that just because i am Catholic. i mean, its like... boring? i mean, its like, planning out your baby. like, how they will look &all that. i find it pretty weird, and i dont think i'd ever get into eugenics, or w.e. if we advanced in technology more, &used it with eugenics, we'd have no surprise. everything would be planned &perfect. once the world evolves, life would be, plain and boring. i guess. i think that we should just let things, you know, happen. i believe God has a plan for everything, &nature will evolve, whatever may happen, imo.

imo... haha, i learned a new word

In other words, it's commonly known as "genetic engineering".

The idea of modifying makes me sick. It defeats the purpose of life and living if people can’t accept who they are. How could you love others when you don't love yourself? How could people like you when you don't appreciate yourself? There are many things in life that we can’t change, but we learn to accept it. Not only it disrupts nature, it makes humanity more vulnerable to depreciated flaws and degrades the values of flaws.

Flaws are what make us stronger.

you put it into way better words than i did. i totally agree.

I dont like the idea of altering genetics.. its scary when you think that scientists are delving in so deep into our biology that they can alter it. What will be next?????

Not exactly, genetic engineering is used more commonly on plants and whatnot simply defined as a change, while eugenics applies specifically to bettering humanity, with altruistic ideology in mind.

Personally, if we eradicated all diseases from humanity, and with world population already on the uprise and resourceful being stretched, a new generation of babies immune to everything that will live for well over a hundred years healthily probably isn't the best idea. But when you think of all the children born with Down's or physical disability that we could (theoretically) "save", it sort of adds another perspective. If you were a parent told your children was going to have some terrible malady, wouldn't you want to fix it?

ok.





You're missing my point. I only address the idea of designing the babies. That's what makes me sick. Curing illness and diseases is totally different from designing your babies for physical appearances.

Therefore, I do support the idea of modifying genes for medical and health purpose in certain degree. At the same time, there are side effects or if one part of the dna causes a negative chain reactions. I don't think it's even possible to easily cure every disease out there. There's risk and other things that we do not know. Really, I don't know much about the process of altering people's genes and the effects of it.

I don't think we can be immune to everything. We're not always stronger than disease, bacteria, and other infection. Don't forget that diseases/cancers/ bacterias do evolved and become stronger.

Ever wonder why soap claim to kill 99.9% bacteria? It's impossible to kill every single bacteria because they gets stronger and go through evolution. You can't completely annihilate bacteria because it's everywhere and will get stronger over time. i dont remember much about the details but you can research on that as well.

Whether we continue to find all the possible cures to all our problems, there will always be some sort of dangerous health conditions that are developing. again, bacteria becomes stronger ... which can cause cancers or diseases in different forms.

I don't think it should be outlawed or anything. Hey, if people want to have a boy baby because they want to bypass some girl things, there's nothing wrong with that. Gender is a thing it'd be nice to be able to choose, since there are some supposed natural methods to help steer pregnancy to one gender. Though, I certainly would not want to choose my child's face and talents. That is completely unnatural and some things were just left up to mother nature to decide.

When they throw health and immunities into the system, I have no problem with that at all. I obviously want my child to be safe and healthy as possible, and if that means changing a few things, that's a risk I'm willing to take for my child's safety and health.

You have the absolutely wrong definition of eugenics.

Eugenics is improving the human gene pool. Not changing the genes themselves. That's a completely different type of "science" (genetic engineering is science, not eugenics)

Eugenics was created to eliminate undesirable hereditary elements by controlling mating. To improve the human gene pool, they tried to stop people with undesirable genes (girls who got pregnant too early, criminals, disabled people, and during the Holocaust, anyone who wasn't straight, Catholic/Christian, and Aryan). Eugenics works with human beings that are already developed, functioning, and living in the world. They do not touch genes at all. Rather, they control the people who they believe have bad genes and stop them from reproducing and passing the bad genetic material onto the offspring.

Genetic engineering, however, works with genes themselves and tries to alter the type of genetic info offspring might get. This is the science that can help decide on the sex of the child, eliminate genes of hereditary disease, eliminate or implant of genes of certain traits. It's highly hyped right now. I haven't read up on it but the procedure is very expensive and the only thing they can really engineer for sure is the sex and the elimination of a well-known hereditary disease.

Oh well the science is still in its infamy . Once the process is developed to be safe , parents have every right to make any positive genetically changes to the baby . If the baby is going to get a better and/or healthier life I would care less if some people think it's playing "god" or whatever .