http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html

Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations
Nicholas Agar

In 2004 the word designer baby went to the dictionary. There are two of the main questions that deals with the designer baby topic. The first is "Are the technologies of genetic modification and selection safe enough to be used on humans" and the second question is "Even if the technologies are safe, can they be morally defended?" There are many geneticists that have been doing experiments involving mice. There are many safety concerns for the technology. One of them is disrupting one of the genes that is beneficial for survival. The process is also very expensive. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is not a risk free procedure too. Cloning is also an alternative method and this could lead to parental preference for an enhanced child.

One of the movies that I watched this weekend was Click. This movie stars Adam Sandler who is one of my favorite actors. The movie is about a husband/father recieving a universal remote that actually controls the universe. There are plenty of times where I say I wish I could take that back or I wish I could skip past something. I say I wish i could skip through Anthropology all the time. However the problem in the movie was that the more he used the remote, the more it was making him fast forward the time in his life. He went through his entire life within a couple of days with the remote. At the end of the movie he was able to go back to his normal life and get the chance to use the remote again. He decided not to and threw it away. I think I would not have used the remote because of this. I do not want to change my past, because then I would not be where I am today. Everything happens for a reason and even mistakes you made will pass in time.

This semester has gone by extremely fast to me. We only have like two weeks left and then exams. However I am not looking forward to the week of exams or the previous week of studying for them. The only good thing about the exams is after they are over, my christmas break starts. It is going to be very fun not having to think about school for a while. I am probably going to spend my christmas break with my family and hang out with some friends that I did not get to see as much during the semester. A part of me kind of wants to go out of town somewhere but not sure of any specific location. I was thinking about trying out snowboarding somewhere. I always see people snowboarding and just wanted to try it. I would probably fall a lot though. I still think it would a cool experience and something exciting to do.

Annotated Bibliography 11/24

http://jme.bmj.com/content/28/5/290.extract

J Med Ethics
2002

There was this woman who was thirty at the time and was bound to have Alzheimers by the time she would reach forty. However she was able to use PGD (pre implantation genetic diagnosis) and track down an embryo that was not a carrier of the particular gene. The woman was then able to birth a child that was completely free of this disease. This marked a very important time for the PGD and the designer baby as a whole. This was the first case where the PGD has been used to find an embyro with the defect 1-3. This most likely gives people an abundance of hope and reliance on the PGD test. This can give people a certain feeling of safety with this, and will probably attract more and more people in time with getting good results.

This past Saturday I went bowling with a group of friends. I am not the best bowler in the world but I do enjoy bowling anytime I am able to. We were cosmic bowling and I was not really in the competing mood. I saw a couple of my close friends from high school at the bowling alley and I was happy to see them. I had not seen one of the them since like junior year, and the other one since the summer. It started off with just April, Houston, and me, but then Kenny joined in with us. He was really good compared to us, and I joked around with him saying that he needs to get into a different lane. He won all of the games except one. I even tried bowling with a size 6 ball, just trying to put a lot of spin and power on the ball. It didn't turn out too well. I got a lot of gutter balls, but it was still fun. The next time we go bowling, I am still going to have fun but also be more competivie and try to win some games.

I hate it when you go through the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant and they completely screw your order up. This happened to me twice in one day on sunday. The first time was when I went to get some breakfast as Mrs. Winners. I had ordered two chicken and biscuits and it seemed they had given me it at first. I looked in the bag and there were two sandwiches there and it looked right to me. It just so happens those were biscuits with just egg on them. I was really angry at them, because all i ordered were chicken and biscuits. I mean like what is so hard about that? A couple hours later, I decided to go get some taco bell for lunch. I prefer to get my food from there without the sauce on it. I always just chicken and cheese, no sauce. They usually do a good job of getting it correct, but they have messed up before. I got some quesadillas (plain) and some chicken taquito's. The order was correct on the menu too. I got my food, and they messed up on both of these items! The quesadilla's definately had the sauce on it and they even gave me steak taquito's. I thought to myself this could be a sign to quit eating fast food. It just was not happening for me that day.

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/bio/great-designer-baby-controversy-%E2%80%9909

Michael Anissimov

June 11, 2009

The Great Designer Baby Controversy of ’09

Fertility centers are the places where the deisgner babies are being made. Some of these clinics guarrantee a 100% chance for their pick of gender for the child. Controversy arrived when the idea of hair and eye color rose. Steinberg said, "I would not say this is a dangerous road, but an uncharted road." They have never gone this far before and it is all very risky.An overwhelming seventy five percent of people would use the pgd for the gene of mental retardation, fifty- six for blindness, fifty-four for deafness, and even fifty-one percent for cancer. The lesser percents like ten and twelve were for athletics and intelligence. This shows that majority of people just want their children to be able to live a regular life. They are not trying so much to build a perfect baby, but a baby that does not have any diseases or disorders at birth.