Should parents be allowed to custom build their children?
Will it lead to happier parents and children?
Will it lead to healthier people?
Will it lead to more beautiful people?
Will it lead to there being more differences between rich and poor people?

Should scientists tamper with the genes of unborn children to cure genetic disease?
Is it right?
Is it unnatural?

These are all questions about whether the technology to create designer babies is right or wrong?

Here are some points of view both for and against custom building babies.

Arguments for creating designer babies

Some couples are not able to have children because their children will have a genetic disease and die before they are born or when they are very young. Techniques used to change the genetic make-up of the embryo allow these parents to have a child.

If we want the best for our children why shouldn't we design our own babies? Using genetic techniques we can help prevent certain genetic diseases. This both saves the children from suffering and reduces the cost and emotional strain of looking after an ill child. Will this lead to happier children and parents?

Spare part children? In a few cases where parents have had one child with a serious blood disease, they have used IVF to select embryos so that they can have a second child that can act as a future, tailor-made blood or bone marrow donor. In these cases when the child is born he or she will be healthy and can help their older brother or sister stay well.

Arguments against creating designer babies

But is this right? In these cases, parents and doctors are creating a child to act as an organ-donating factory. How will the child feel? The child may feel that they were only born to be a help to their older brother or sister. Children should be loved and cherished for themselves and not what they can do for others.

These genetic techniques are very expensive. Why should only rich people be able to eradicate genetic diseases? This could lead to imbalances between rich and poor people.

Will we breed a race of super-humans who look down on those without genetic enhancements? Even today people who are born with disabilities face intolerance. Will discrimination against people already born with disabilities increase?

We could get carried away 'correcting' perfectly healthy babies. Once we start to eliminate embryos because they have the gene for a disease, what is to stop us from picking babies for their physical or psychological traits?

At the moment we can screen human embryos to choose only those embryos without the 'bad' genes. But is it right to add new artificial genes, or take away other genes? These genetic changes will be permanent and be contained in every single cell of the baby.

Alterations made by genetic engineering would be passed on from one generation to the next. What right have parents to choose what genetic characteristics are best for their children, and their children's children. Will the children react against the genetic changes that their parents have chosen for them?

Who is responsible for genetic modification of a child? The parents? The doctors? Or the Government?

Is it right to experiment on babies?

Animal studies have shown that this type of genetic engineering is unpredictable. There is a huge risk that we may produce physical changes, or even change the child's personality. Mice whose genes had been changed to make them more muscular, unexpectedly became very timid compared to other non-genetically engineered mice!

However, some scientists think they will become more certain about how a gene will act if it is engineered into a person or an animal.

Will future humans have animal genes added to them to give them superhuman abilities? This really could happen. Human genes have been engineered into animals for years.