Genetically Engineering Children

For a number of years now, a great deal of discussion has taken place among scientists and in the popular media about the genetic engineering of children. Will it soon be possible, for prices widely affordable at least to the upper-middle class, to guarantee that children have a high IQ, or excellent athletic ability, or be over 6 feet tall, or have blond hair and blue eyes? Is it right to commodify children in this way, and have parents choosing options as they do with cars? And wouldn't it be boring to live in a world someday where almost everyone is extremely intelligent and beautiful? Variety, or even the politically correct term "diversity," But not everyone wants what seemed to be the three genetic engineering options: refrain and let nature take her course, attempt to repair genetic diseases but otherwise let well enough alone, or select positive qualities in children. There are parents who are deliberately ensuring that their children are born with disabilities, from deafness to dwarfism. A fourth option-inflicting permanent disabling conditions on children-is now being used. For some years now, some deaf parents have refused to allow their deaf children to receive cochlear implants that would enable them to hear. The devices must often be implanted when children are very young in order to work, so such parents condemn their children to a lifetime of deafness when they could have been able to hear. Some dwarf couples are even using in-vitro fertilization to create embryos in the lab, then killing the normal ones and implanting the ones with the dwarfness gene to ensure having a dwarf child.