Good day!
Last night me and my mom watched the touching movie "My Sister's Keeper".
Have you ever heard of it? It's a great movie! But what is more important is that the movie has a really deep and interesting message. My Sister's Keeper is about a family in Los Angeles, one of the children in the family Kate, got leukemia and the parents decided to create a designer baby - a savior sibling, to rescue Kate from her disease. When the movie was ended I started to research about designer babies and I found really interesting facts and different views on the subject. The big question I will bring up in today's blogpost is "Should Designer Babies Be Allowed?" Want to know more about it? Keep on reading!

The use and the science behind designer babies:
A designer baby can be made with the purpose to be a savior sibling/saviour baby. It's when the parents decides to make a baby to save their other child's life. The sick child has a deadly disease like cancer, fanconi anemia (FA) or another genetic disease.
Fanconi anemia is an recessive genetic disorder. It works in the way that two mutated alleles, one from each parent, is needed for causing the deadly disease. For every following baby with parents with this sickness, are running a 25 % risk to get FA. X-linked recessive are 2 % of every FA case, meaning if the mother carries on one mutated FA allele on one X-chromosome there is 50 % that the new baby, born as a male will have Fanconi Anemia. Fanconi Anemia is a disease that make it hard for the body to develop white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets so it's get's harder to fight infections, deliver oxygen and to form clots. Treatment can be used for this disease, but it's not sure that the patients body will respond. One treatment is androgens and hematopoietic growth factors, 50-75 % patients respond to this. A more long-lasting treatment is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. To do this a donator needs to exist, often the best option is a family member, or better a sibling that shares the same parents. However siblings only have 1 in 4 chance to have genes that match each other, it exits four different possible combinations. It's 25% to get a sibling with same HLA genes from their parents if the baby isn't a designer baby, a savior sibling. That's why It's not a surprise when parents choose to make a savior sibling to rescue their other sick child.
The savior sibling is made by preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).
In PGD the mother's egg need to be fertilized, so the mother's egg and the father's sperm are combined. Three days after the fertilization the embryo has grown in the laboratory, the embryo consist of approximately eight cells. One or two cells is then removed from the outer layer of embryo (called trophectorderm biopsy), and will be tested for abnormalities and genetic disorders. This is also when the matching happenings. Embryos that are a match with genes of the sick sibling or are free from genetic disorders or abnormalities are implanted back in the uterus.
When the mother have given birth to the savior baby, cord blood is collected from the umbilical cord and transplanted to the sick sibling. (That has FA.)

PGD are also used to reduce Down Syndrome, autism and to create designer babies. Designer babies works in the same way like cutting the DNA to make mutations but instead insert new pieces of genetic code at the site of the cut. Today we can only change the sex and the eye color trait. In the future maybe it will be able to choose the gender, appearance, intelligence, diseases and the personality of the baby. The technology is always developing.

Advantages with designer babies/savior siblings:
Designer babies can prevent the genetic diseases in the family so it doesn't go on to the next generation.
Parents can give their children a healthy life.
Scientists will get a greater understanding about genetics if they research about designer babies. The research can lead to more understanding about cancer for example and how to cure it.
Designer babies allows parents to give genes to their baby that they maybe don't carry.
A designer baby reduces the chances of inherited diseases.
The savior sibling have a chance to save another child's life.
Instead of hoping for the best and hope you get a child that can be a donor to the sick child, it can be securely that the savior sibling can be a donor.


Disadvantages with designer babies/savior siblings:
It's expensive to design a baby, so only the rich people will afford it.
The savior sibling will be a hero for saving their siblings life, but the transfusions and surgeries can go on rest of their life. The first transfusion doesn't harm the new born baby but it gets more harmful due getting older.
A savior sibling is created without love, only having the purpose to save their siblings life.
Some savior siblings needs to donate body parts like kidneys. All the donations can be a reduction for the savior sibling, they can maybe not live a normal life after the surgeries.
The change the DNA without consent of the unborn baby.
Some parents only create a designer baby to get the stem cells, so after birth the parents extract the wished cells and adopt the baby away.
Is it really ethical to design a baby, shouldn't all parents accept the children independent of intelligence, beauty or gender?
In China for example boys are most desired, but if every family in China designed their baby to a boy the population would be unbalanced. It's very important to have a even ratio between boys and girls or it will be very hard to reproduce in the future. The Chinese population will also nearly decrease with 50 %.



My opinion: If designer babies should be allowed I think it should be used for a good thing like saving some other persons life rather than design a baby to make it beautiful. Designer babies had done a big impact on our lives, because today we are able to take away the genetic diseases and abnormalities in the cells of the unborn baby. I think it's fantastic, because no one should be scared to give birth to a child with a deadly or life affecting inherited disease. A option have been found to reduce this type of diseases before it even have affect the human body. To use a designer baby to reduce diseases and to create savior sibling should be allowed. I can imagine to have my own child and it get's really, really sick. Of course would I do anything to save my child's life. If a donor can't be found I would do a designer baby. However I would have limits and I think that it's really important to have. If my savior child needed to donate things that would affect it's life negativity I would let the nature do their job, I don't think you can manipulate their nature too long before it come back at you even stronger. I think though not many parents have this limit as I saw on "My Sister's Keeper" for example, the mother in the family didn't care so much about her other children, Kate was the one who was important. In the movie Kate understands that she will eventually die so she begs her savior sibling Ana to stop donate to her. Kate did understand that eventually the donations need to stop, because it will just slow down her death, but not long enough.

I have read about other families with savior siblings, they only had one blood transfusion and then the kept on living as usual. I think this is amazing, how another creature saved their siblings life.

On the other hand I think designer babies that is only created to look beautiful or to succeed in life should not be allowed. This is very unethical. Parents should not care so much about the appearance of the baby, I don't think you are mature enough to get a baby if you choose to design it just because of the looks. I also get really irritated at parents who do designer babies to get a specific gender, if every family did this the nature would be unbalanced.
Another aspect I have is: what would happened if designer babies was created while the WW2 still was fought. Designer babies would be a powerful weapon for Hitler. The Nazi Germany believed that Aryan was the best race and Germany should only consist of people from this race. If Hitler had designer baby as a tool, he could design the "perfect" Aryan people. That's why designer babies should not be allowed, it can easily go out of control.

My conclusion is: Designer babies should be allowed if it's used for something good, reduce diseases etc.
It should not be allowed for appearance etc.
Limits should be created of what's is okay to use a savior sibling for.

I hope you enjoyed your reading, see you next time!
// Johanna