Nowadays, biotechnology has been highly developed to fit people's needs. Genetically modified crops or animals are not rarely heard at the present. More than that, Scientists are even envisioning futuristic genetically modified babies, also known as designers' babies. However, it remains controversial whether anyone should be allowed to design his/her own baby if it could be done at an affordable price. I believe that use of such technology must be regulated, which means only qualified parents can design heir own babies and they can only modify limited traits.
Some people may argue that everyone should have equal rights to access such technology to make the society more inclusive. By choosing desired traits for their babies, parents can provide their children with a head start. When the children grow up, they are usually found more superior than others in terms of appearance, strength or intelligence, which allow them to have more opportunities than natural people without genetic enhancement. As a result, another group of people are disadvantaged simply because their parents are not allowed to design them with genetic modification, which is predicted and portrayed in the movie Gattaca. Hence, to prevent the rising "Genoism", everyone should have equal rights to design their own babies.
However, we must realize that not every parent should be qualified to enhance their babies with genetic engineering technology. There could be extreme cases where babies are genetically modified in order to satisfy their self-interest. For example, gangleaders and criminals may make their own children intelligent and strong to work as their reliable assistants when committing crimes. Besides these extreme cases, parents who are not able to offer proper family education and care should also be disqualified from accessing this technology as they may lead their children to a wrong direction and it would become more harmful to the society if the children are genetically enhanced. Up to now, many children are still suffering from abuse and neglect, which may probably lead to problems such as smoking, addiction to drugs and even crimes among teenagers. If such children are genetically enhanced at birth, they become more dangerous and hard to control once they start crimes. Hence, genetic modification may amplify the negative impact of improper parenting if anyone is allowed to have their own children.
Furthermore, genetic modification should not be applicable for everyone to prevent disruption of diversity and balance of people's appearance, talents and even gender. At the present, some of traits are less favoured than the other though they are actually not abnormal. As a result, from an individual perspective, rational parents would like their children to be more competitive in the current society which may cause that their children display similar traits which are very limited compared to various natural ones. It might not be a big problem if people have good looks in a similar way but it matters when next generations are designed to have similar talents and aptitude in order for them to get a highly-paid jobs. For example, a parent may want his/her children to have a mathematical intelligence instead a aetheistic talent because the former one would secure a good job in the future. It is not wrong from an individual point of view but considering as a society, it will probably lead to unemployment since certain types of talents are supplied excessively. It would further lead to other social and economical issues because parents would probably think as an individual to get their children the best. In the same way but even worse, in some countries where gender discriminations are still prevalent, some parents would like to avoid girl babies if they can design their own babies because female have obviously fewer opportunities than male while subsequently, severe gender imbalances might lead to a significant lower birth rate in the long term and potential social instability. Hence, if anyone can design his/her own baby, the combination of all parents' best choices will finally lead to the worst choice of the society where people are homogenized at birth and many social and economical problems are caused.
If genetic engineering is done by wrong parents, social issues like troubled teenagers due to problematic parenting will be more harmful to the society. Also, abuse of genetic modification by everyone and in every traits will probably lead to a severely homogenized society and subsequently a lot of social and economical issues. To prevent all these from happening, we should not allow everyone to design his/her own baby. Instead, use of genetic modification should be controlled in the way that only qualified parents can design their babies and they are only modify a few traits which will not affect the diversity of the society.
