Prenatal Human Modification, Designing Babies and the End of Homo Sapiens.
Abstract
Since 1978, the year when Louise Joy Brown, the first human baby conceived by IVF was born, the scientific world has seen a huge explosion in the knowledge gained in the fields of genetics and genetic research and technology, biology, engineering, Artificial Intelligence and the such. Hybrid fields came into appearance and words like biogenetics, human engineering, human enhancement and Reprogenetics (Silver 2000) to mention a few have entered our vocabulary. ART was once a word to describe the talented outcomes of painters and sculptors. Today, it is a common word to refer to Artificial Reproductive Technology. Back in 1932, Aldous Huxley (Huxley, 1932) published well-known dystopian novel “Brave New World” and set the futurist genetically modified citizens, members of an intelligence-based social/political hierarchy into context, anticipating the huge scientific developments in reproductive technology which now are a reality. Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), Cloning, Germ-line Therapy, Human Enhancement and (True)Designer Babies are here to stay. Parents, today, are seduced into a possibility of selecting the particular genes that will render their children healthy, intelligent and powerful, thus controlling their children identity of being. They turn to cloning and baby design to provide for their sick children. Reprogenetics is being practiced in an effort to control the birth of mentally retarded humans and postnatal interventions are here to allow certain characteristics be integrated as human enhancements.
Studying the psychological and socio-relational consequences of traumatic preconception, prenatal, birth and early postnatal experience, what we are to see as a result of the new, here to stay scientific, technological and laboratory interventions that may turn parenthood into an act of gardening or cultivation with decision-making based on eugenic genetic control is just a small fraction[1]. Is there a line to be drawn? Is this the end of Homo Sapiens? Has already the Posthuman been conceived? Will the intention of health support become the front cover for hidden sociopolitical agendas, leading to the extinction of democracy and the sovereignty of those who have and can?
[1] The paper will risk posing questions for philosophical and ethical considerations, hoping to sensitize those involved so that human progress and consciousness evolution can continue on health grounds.
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