Last week I was the Anatomy and Biology teacher at the High School. Science is not my strong suit, but it is higher on my knowledge scale than Math, and I do remember a lot of what I learned and since I find it interesting, it is easy enough to just read the material and teach. (Holy run-on sentence! Just as I was going to say that English/Language arts is what I am most qualified for!)
Understand that when I say I am "teaching," many times I mean taking attendance, watching a video with the kids and trying to stay awake. Monday was one of those days. We watched a show called "Designer Babies." The video was about 10 years old and talked about the "new" technologies of choosing the sex of your child, screening embryos for disease, and picking everything from hair color to eye color to IQ.
"Designer Babies?" one of the students asked, "Who would want that?"
"Are you kidding?," I joked, "Who wants ugly, stupid, uncoordinated babies?? Nobody."
Given my history with infertility (see the series on this starting here ), I certainly have nothing against the mix of technology and baby making, but...
The video introduced us to a couple who had no fertility issues, but had health issues in their family. Diabetes was the one they were afraid of in particular. They had seen family members suffer and did not want to pass the disease on to their children. They decided instead to "pick perfect" and use an egg and a sperm that were both "screened for health" and have the embryo implanted in the wife. She was adamant that this was a smart choice. I should add that both parents were overweight, and I'm not judging anyone on that matter, but diabetes is not just a question of nature but also of nuture. The poor health habits of the parents may very well lead to the disease they think they are "putting a stop to."
I wonder also, if they were able to screen for other things besides physical health. How do they know they are not making a very healthy serial killer?
I started to think about the first time that kid sneezes. Will they bring him back to the clinic? "Our baby done broke! Is he still under warranty? He's been leakin' since the day we brought him home! This was not in the brochure."
1 comments:
So, you're subbing? I wonder if I could do that--although that might not work since I homeschool my own kids. Science is definitely not my strong suit--I'd take math over science. But for me the issue is lack of patience with anyone younger than 20.
Designer babies--not surprising at all. I suppose people could use it as a way to deter people from aborting babies that they find out have physical abnormalities. People think they have so much control. Yeah, right.
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