In the story A risk Free life by Leonard Pitts, he describes a case of a woman who’s family is diseased with Alzheimer’s disease and she wants to have a baby. The problem is the baby has a possibility of getting the disease too. So the woman got her baby’s genes screened before she was born for the disease so her baby would not get it. The author then debates that even though he might have taken the same action in the woman’s place, he would still think it is wrong for moral reasons. He thinks that babies should not be like a fast food restaurant and you should not be able to pick him like a meal with whatever you want. Overall the author seems like he has mixed feelings and contradicts himself on the subject.
The way that I look at this situation is that I agree and disagree with some of the things the author wrote in his story. First of all I agree with him saying that you should not be able to choose every characteristic we want in our children. It simply is foolish and we as a society should recognize that it is morally wrong. The baby should be special to you because it is your blood and your partner’s blood and it should have the qualities of both pairs. Not try to make the baby look completely different to what nature planned for him or her.
But at the same time I do feel like if we can avoid something such as a disease before the baby is born, we should screen the genes and try to change what is wrong. Personally I would do it. Even though yes, we may face others problems in life like other diseases besides the one we cured at birth, at least we are not guaranteed to be born with the one we have eliminated.
Changing our baby’s genes at birth may be wrong and go against many things like religion, government, or the way of life for some people. But even acknowledging all this under few circumstances I do approve in the screening of genes and fixing what is wrong if we could.
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