If the title of this post freaked you out a bit, I wouldn’t blame you.

Anywhos, this post has to do with our PSHME session about two days ago (PSHME, by the way, stands for Personal, Social, Health and Moral Education) - our year gets split into 5 gorups and we are put on rotation. Every 6 weeks we study a different category - right now my group’s under Ethics/Morality. In these sessions, our teacher in charge (Miss Mansfield, bless her) brings up a topic and has us discuss the good, bad and ugly about it - topics include sexism, abortion, yada yada - those without definite yes or no answers, if you get my drift.

If you kinda guessed that our topic of the day was about genetic engineering, then props to you - it was precisely that. I think that if you’ve kept up with the sciencey-updates of this year and yesteryears, you’ll find that genetic engineering isn’t something brand-new; it’s been in place for a while now. We’ve got bacteria modified to produce pure human insulin to supply diabetics with their fix (last time, one had to rely on pork insulin 0_0). We’ve got sheep/cows engineered to produce life-saving proteins in their milk, which can be extracted and used to treat certain illnesses. We’ve already got GM (Genetically Modified) foods on our shelves; although not many. And then there are the experiments-gone-weird - ever heard of the tomato that tasted like fish?

That’s just animals and plants. However, with advances in modern science, we’ve already got scientists looking at the possibility of altering a person’s DNA structure. Their reasons for doing so? Well, to cure stuff like Down’s syndrome, Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis or even birth defects like holes in the heart. Basically, to allow those with a pretty slim chance of survival a better shot at life.

If you look at it through one POV, it’s probably a good thing. Some of you may have heard the story of a couple who had given birth to about 4-5 children with some defect/ailment (blindness, deafness, mute etc) and asking you if they should opt to abort the next one - which if you did, would yield the answer “congrats; you’ve just murdered Beethoven!” (For the record, he did lose his hearing later on.) So genetic engineering would’ve significantly reduced the chances of all those kids suffering from disabilities like such, and allow them to lead better lives.

But take it through the flip side - people will say “who are you to play God; to decide who gets to be privileged and who gets to be deaf?” It probably means that the rich would have so much better quality of life than the poor; they would be able to afford to have their kids’ problems “fixed” as opposed to the poor. So in the future, when such engineering becomes available to all, a disability would be an indicator of your wealth - not very nice-sounding now, ei?

And then there are the extremes - designer babies. This term isn’t something new either. For all we know, if you had money to burn, you could ask for your baby (while still in its embryo form) to be altered so that the baby would be super-smart, super-pretty, super-fast (athletic-wise), yada yada. The possibilities are endless. Why, we would have another more urban generation of X-Men altogether!

Back to the classroom - when Miss Mansfield brought up the question of designer babies, and “how far could people go?”, Tamar and I came up with this:

From Tamar - New Burberry Fall/Winter Collection 2152: Hazel and grey eyes are in; blue are out. Tanned skin is a no-go; fairness is in-line with the season’s trends. (As you can see, the emphasis is no longer on “which skirt looks better”, but “which features are ‘in’ this season”. Eek.)

From both of us - “Instead of going to Miss Selfridge to shop for jeans, you’d be shopping for GENES and injecting them - so that the clothes would grow on you! You’d be charged per clothes-gene; so no need to worry about clothes shrinking or you getting fatter/thinner…”

From me - Convo with a guy in the year 2152:
“So, what’s your job?”
“Oh, I’m a (fashion) designer.”
“You design? Who do you work for?”
“Uh…RL.”
“RL? As in Ralph Lauren, the clothing brand?”
“No, hun. Real Life Babies, as in the designer-baby line.”
“…”
“We decide what baby-features are in, and what’s out. Pretty cool huh?”

I think not. But what about you lot out there?