‘Designer babies’ is headline shorthand for a weird new world of genetic enhancement. Thanks to several generations of science-fiction imagery, it evokes an unnatural and evil world of blond, staring, probably homicidal children, which scares ordinary people.
Headlines create a cartoon world that subverts understanding and wisdom, but there is some truth in them. Human ‘enhancement’ is now being pursued in many ways, through life extension, psychoactive drugs like Ritalin and Prozac, information technology and, most obviously, through control of reproduction. The decoding of the human genome in 2000 signalled the start of an era in which we could hope to cure hitherto intractable diseases. But it also offers the chance to improve ourselves, to go for what the American techno-prophet Ray Kurzweil calls ‘Human Body Version 2.0’.
The first steps towards a programme of human enhancement will be taken — are being taken — through control of reproduction. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) already allows us to weed out potentially diseased embryos.
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