Designer Babies

By: Jen Ryan and Steph Cambrea

Basic Principles of Genetics

• Whenever there is a dominant allele in the person, the trait will show up dominant. If you are showing a dominant trait, your possible allele combinations could either be two dominant or one dominant and one recessive. However if you are showing a recessive trait, your allele combination has to be two recessive because a recessive will only be showed if a dominant allele is not present.

• Traits that are controlled by co-dominant alleles are neither dominant or recessive. This means that the trait that will be shown in the person in also neither dominant or recessive.

• You inherit one trait from each parent during the process of heredity. If you inherit two dominant alleles or one dominant and one recessive allele, you will show a dominant trait. If you inherit two dominant traits, you will show a recessive trait. When a person is showing neither a dominant or recessive trait, that are co-dominant. The alleles, or your genes, that you inherit are found in your chromosomes.

Human Genome Project• The Human Genome Project was a 13 year

project which started in 1990 and ended in 2003. The goals in this project were to identify all of the genes in human DNA, determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, store this information, improve tools for data analysis, transfer information to private sector, and address the ELSI which might arise from this project.

• The implications of the Human Genome Project was to try to understand different things about the way people act. Some questions that were addressed in this are whether or not people’s gene’s make them behavior in a certain way, if it is always able to control your behavior, is there anything that is considered acceptable diversity, and where the line is between enhancement and medical treatment?

• The Genome law keeps your genetic information private from everyone including insurance companies.

Genetic Disorders

• A. Single gene disorders are genetic conditions caused by a mutation in the affected person’s DNA. Single gene disorders are heritable and often run in the family.

Examples: Hemophilia A and Hemophilia B• B. Chromosome Abnormalities- Chromosome

abnormalities usually occur when there is an error in cell division, and it also exists in the genetic structure.

Example: Down Syndrome• C. Multifactorial disorders- one caused by the interaction

of genetic and sometimes also no genetic, environmental factors.

Example: breast cancerThe things that all of these disorders have in common is that they are types of diseases that will affect your life.

Genetic Counseling Genetic counseling is individuals, and of prospective parents regarding their offspring, on the probabilities, dangers, diagnosis, and treatment of inherited diseases. Parents could be informed of the risks of having children if they go to genetic counseling.

Genetic counseling is the process of:• evaluating family history and medical records • ordering genetic tests • evaluating the results of this investigation • helping parents understand and reach decisions

about what to do next

This is a good process to go through if you are thinking about having a baby because you will get to see what the possibilities are that your child could end up with a genetic disorder. One example of this is colorblindness. If the women is a carrier for this, there is a chance that their child will be colorblind. If the father is colorblind, then the daughter will automatically be a carrier and possibly but very unlikely colorblind.

Karyotypes • Karyotypes are used to predict genetic

disorders. A normal human karyotype has 46 chromosomes: 22 pairs of autosomes and 2 sex chromosomes. A karyotype gives information about the number of chromosomes a person has, the structure of their chromosomes and the sex of the individual. Down Syndrome is diagnosed by a karyotype test. This is also related to pedigrees. A pedigree is a family that talks about the genes in your family history.

Clones In an interview with Dr. Fong, he said that he was against cloning for many reasons. One reason is that he doesn’t think that there is a good reason why we should. He thinks that in terms of science we don’t know enough to clone humans. There could be some long term effects that we don’t know about and you could never know for sure what might happen. There is also a possibility that there could be a mutation in the genes during the cloning process. We completely agree with everything that he had said and are against human cloning too.

The graph would not show up when we moved it into the Power Point. If you want to see the whole cloning graph, please use the following URL.

Should Humans be cloned?

Response Number Percent Graph

Yes 265 29%

No 502 54% 

Unsure 158 17%

Number of Respondents: 925

 

http://www.tagyerit.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey.cgi?survey_name=clone

Designer Babies

• Designer babies are a way of engineering your child to look how you want it to. The only thing is that there are some good things about it and there are also some bad things about it. All of the good and bad things will be addressed in the following debate and in the following quote:

“As our knowledge and abilities in molecular genetics continues to expand, so does our ability to detect certain conditions and traits prenatally," said Dr. Harry Ostrer, Director of Human Genetics Program at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Debate Steph: How can you possibly be for designer babies?

Jen: Simple, when you design your baby, you can select the genes to make sure it is the smartest that it can be. Designed babies typically have higher IQs.

Steph: That’s true but in that case you would be buying the baby’s smarts and that isn’t right, especially for people who can’t afford to design your child, which most people can’t.

Jen: You have a point there but what about genetic disorders. There are so many that your child can end up with that is not in your control. That is, unless, you design your baby which would give you the option to not select those genes.

Steph: Yes the baby might not end up with a genetic disorder but babies that are clones or genetically designed might not live as long as a normal child.

Jen: Well how long less of a live would they live like five years more or less?

In that case, you would get a much better childhood out of the baby so who would care if they die a little sooner. You could make your kid be whatever you want them to be, just by selecting their genes.

Steph: When you say it like that, you are making it sound like you are going to plan out your child’s personality, which doesn’t even also work out. I feel that you should let your baby be whoever they want to be.

Jen: So you are saying that you would let your son or daughter became a bank robber if they want to?

Steph: Well when you put it like that no, but I don’t think that you should give you child athletic genes if they want to be a signer or vise versa. And if you do this, it is going back to what I said before about buying their talents, which isn’t right. This is also messing with nature.

Jen: Okay, so let’s say that you have four boys and you want a girl very badly. Would you designer your baby to make sure you have a girl?

Steph: Well if you put it like that. I might.

Jen: See I told you.

Steph: Okay I admit it there are some good things in designing your baby like eliminating genetic disorders, having a child with a higher IQ, selecting the traits that you want you child to have including the gender, and

Jen: And there are also some bad things like messing with nature, the chance that the child will die sooner, it cost a lot of money to do, and it is unethical in the form of buying the child’s talents.

Designer Baby Movie

Click the picture to play the movie.

Designer Babies.MOV

Conclusions There are many great things that we learned from this project. We learned that even if you design your baby, it might not turn out exactly the way that you want it to. This makes us wonder that if one day, you will be able to design your baby and know exactly what it is going to be like, without any chances of the baby being like something else. We think that with research, designer babies should be able to improve so that there are no bad things a all so there will be no need for a debate. This means that we think that the government should put money in for designer baby research.

Citation

• "Designer Babies - TIME." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989987,00.html>. 

• "What Is a Designer Baby?" Bionet - New Discoveries in Life Sciences - Explore the Science and Debate the Issues. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://www.bionetonline.org/english/content/db_cont1.htm>.

• "Custom Newspaper Product  Logout." GaleNet. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale(en,,):FQE=(KE,None,15)designer babies$&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T004&prodId=SPN.SP00&searchId=R2¤tPosition=5&userGroupName=nysl_se_tap&docId=CJ232701924&docType=IAC>

• Web. 23 Mar. 2011. <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Cuadro_de_Punnet.gif>. 

• "Custom Newspaper Product  Logout." GaleNet. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale(en,,):FQE=(KE,None,15)designer babies$&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T004&prodId=SPN.SP00&searchId=R2¤tPosition=5&userGroupName=nysl_se_tap&docId=CJ232701924&docType=IAC>

• "Medical News: Genetic Testing Yes, 'Designer Babies' No - in Genetics, Genetic Testing from MedPage Today." Medical News and Free CME from MedPage Today. Web. 17 Mar. 2011. <http://www.medpagetoday.com/Genetics/GeneticTesting/12630>.

• PRIMARY SOURCE:• "Dr. Fong." Online interview.• "PowerSearch  Logout." GaleNet. Web. 19 Mar. 2011.

<http://find.galegroup.com/gps/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale(en,,):FQE=(ke,None,15)designer babies$&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID=T003&prodId=IPS&searchId=R1¤tPosition=7&userGroupName=nysl_se_tap&docId=A193584681&docType=IAC&contentSet=IAC-Documents>.

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