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Ethics and Reproductive Technology Essay

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Ethics and Reproductive Technology

Reproductive technology has come a long way in the last twenty years and continues to make expansive advances. The question "where do babies come from" is becoming harder and harder to answer. The response used to sound something like "when a man and a woman love each other very much…" now with in vitro fertilization, fertility drugs, and sperm/egg donors as well as future advances the answer will take on a new twist "…they go to see a doctor and look through a catalog to pick what kind of baby they want." That is already true to some degree today. If a man or a woman is infertile they can look for sperm or egg donors, try fertility drugs or use in vitro fertilization to bring …show more content…

New technological advances will lead to more exorbitant fees, which will in turn cause a reduction in the amount and types of people that can afford these new procedures. Will future generations of natural births then be lorded over by a genetically enhanced master class? Will these future "perfect people" segregate themselves from the flawed human class of today? Will they be at an advantage in the society? Another moral and social problem that arises from this genetic donation is the loss of the ability to trace genetic lines. If a man gives a sperm sample about three times a week, and each donation is split up into three samples, he has the potential to father a dozen children in one week alone. If this matter is shipped all over the country between different sperm banks how can we keep up who is from what genetic descent? This can quite possibly lead to inner familial (in the genetic sense) marriages, causing many genetic defects in future generations. These new technological advances can actually hinder the human race.
With the completion of the Human Genome Project rapidly approaching, the scenario becomes even more farfetched. Don't want your child to need braces? Why then you can just pull out the gene for crooked teeth and replace it with the gene for a perfect smile. Does diabetes run in your family? Well then just check out your unborn child is a carrier for the disease and remove the gene

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