Summary Of Embryo Police By Brendan Koerner

Brendan Koerner’s “Embryo Police” describes the possible future of genetically altering embryos. He tells us how in the near future it is perfectly possible for us to be able to pick and choose what traits our future children will have with technology such as in vitro fertilization (IVF). Throughout his article he often makes the reader unknowingly decided whether this is a good or bad piece of technology and whether or not we should be meddling in nature’s way. There are a multitude of variables that are to be considered when examining the morals of this technology. Koerner tells us a true story, in which the family by the name of the Mastersons, suffers the tragic loss of their 3-year-old daughter to a fire at the family’s Monifieth.
To allow the Mastertons to simply pick their child’s gender would have been nice but I believe that we would have to look at the bigger picture here. Yes, the Mastertons suffered a tragic event but to allow them to genetically choose their child would cause some discontent with some people. While the ethically good thing to do would be to allow them to choose their baby’s gender. The ethical thing is not always the right thing if it means putting our future and species at risk. Koerner tells us of a man whose name Nazir- Ali who states that “There's a fear that sex selection for social purposes will discriminate against women. There is also the fear that a child may be treated as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, particularly if that child is seen as replacing a child who died in tragic circumstances. It's a heavy burden to bear if you're there as a replacement, not for your own sake. (Koerner 2012)”. Nature has a specific way of laying things out and fate or destiny will have its way one way or another. To allow scientists and researchers to meddle in the affairs of what is one the most intimate and natural processes of life seems unimaginable and could put mankind in a place that would be irredeemable. Can we justify
We run into the problem of money and power when it comes to genetically altering babies. Of course we want to believe that we would do it for the mere health aspect of our children but there are people that would take advantage of this advancement. This is where the restrictions are applied and the reason why this advancement has not taken off as fast as one would think. People are mostly competitive by nature. We compete for everything from love to prizes to recognition and we strive to be the best whether you know it or not. So naturally we want our kids to be the best at what they do. We want our kids to achieve the highest honor roll and win every award, right? So what’s to stop someone from taking these genetic advancements and working them to their advantage? That mom wants to give her kid an amazing athletic ability and increase his or her intelligence to push their IQ score off the charts and now with these genetic advancements what’s stopping her besides money. Before you know it there is an even more defined social and wealth distinction between the rich and the poor. We are then really created a new class of humans. Professor Silver of Princeton says it best in his book Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family. Silver tells us of a world where a new class of people, GenRich, rule everything while a more