Ethics of Designer Babies Essay Example for Free

Ethics of Designer Babies Essay I believe that it is unacceptable to reproduce genetically designed babies, unless it is to prevent disease or disability. Genetically designing babies can be used in many different ways. You can choose their hair and eye color, their IQ, and their special talents. People are beginning to predispose their children to be whatever they think they should be. Some want their children to be superstar athletes, while others want the next Beethoven. Others want their children to be just as they are. A deaf lesbian couple wanted to have a deaf child. Their friend donated the sperm and they asked the geneticists if it were possible to create a deaf child. A few months later, the child was born as a fully deaf baby. I believe that it is wrong to intentionally harm a fetus by giving them a disability or disease. It prevents them from living a fully functional life. If a couple were to research or visit a gene therapist, and they determined if the couple were to have a male child, the child would most definitely be born with a heart defect and would only live a few years, but if they had a female child that she would be perfectly healthy, then it is okay to provide the family security by enabling them to have a female child. By doing this, they are preventing a disability or disease. If the couple has four boys and intentionally says â€Å" If I am having a male, I want an abortion. † then that is completely immoral. In one book, Choosing Children, It asks the question: â€Å"People use antenatal or pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to have a child without disability. Is this a form of eugenics? Is it a part of a slide toward what the Nazi’s did? † . I believe that it is a form of eugenics. We are bettering the society by providing fully functional human beings. Nazi’s weren’t trying to prevent a disease or disability, they were worried about the physical features of the Jewish descent. Another book, Disability and Genetic Choice, asked if it were okay to have a Down Syndrome test. I believe that it is okay to have the testing as long as it is not the determining factor in terminating a pregnancy. This gives the parent(s) a chance to prepare themselves and be educated or give them a chance to arrange an adoption. I draw the line of designing babies at preventing disability. It is unnecessary to chose a babies hair or eye color. Just because they have a certain hair or eye color does not mean that they will be treated or act differently in society. Every genetic change has a downside, so while creating a child that is an athlete by making their uscles work harder, it is causing their heart to weaken a lot faster than someone who was not â€Å"designed†. Genetically â€Å"strengthening† babies can provide a family with a piece of mind that they will have a healthy child. Although many people want to chose how their children may look or act, having a healthy, functioning, strong child will triumph over how they may look or act. Before one thought that he could genetically design a child, In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) came about. IVF then paved the way for preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and preimplantation genetic selection (PGS). PGD is the process in which the doctors screen the embryos to see if any genetic disorders are present. Many of the disorders that are screened are life changing, disabling conditions. PGS is the process in which they â€Å"hand pick† the embryo without any genetic disorders and implant it back into the mother. This is the first red flag many people see in how genetically designed babies came about. This may be the only (mostly) uncontroversial part of genetics and IVF. The only ones who criticize this are those who believe that life starts at contraception. I believe that this is okay to do since it promotes bettering ones life, but this is where the line should be drawn. Another technique that is often used along with this is gender selection. The only reason I believe that it is morally correct to choose a baby’s gender is preventing disease. For example, if all the women in the family die from breast cancer, or cervical cancer by the age of 40, then it is morally acceptable to want to increase the chances of having a male child. If the only reason one wants to have a certain gendered child is for convenience then it is unacceptable. Also along these lines comes having a child to better another child’s life. Like in the book, My Sisters Keeper, the older sister was dying from a rare cancer, and the parents only choice to keep her alive was to have another child to use as â€Å"spare parts†. I believe that this is done with good intention, but it is not ethical. An article, Designer Babies: Eugenics Repackaged or Consumer Options, discusses one child being sick and his brother gave him his red blood cells before he was even born, and the sick brother was cured. They questioned this process: â€Å"Is this the beginning of a slippery slope toward â€Å"designer† or â€Å"spare parts† babies, or is the result that there are now two happy, healthy children instead of one very sick child a justification to pursue and continue procedures such as this one? †. This is the exact question I would expect anyone to ask. Although there are miracles, and high percentage rates that if a child would receive particular â€Å"parts† from a sibling then they can be cured, but there are mistakes and the unfortunate occasions where it does not work. This puts the healthy child at risk and causes them to go through unnecessary pain. I believe that the risks may outweigh the benefits in many cases. The child conceived or â€Å"designed† to better the other child’s life is just as much human as the sick `child, therefore, it is their human right that they shall be treated just as any other human being. The other ethical position would likely believe that it is the parents choice to do as they please, in means, to their children. The article The art of medicine: Designer Babies: choosing our children’s genes, discusses the absurdity of the parents to not want the best for their children. This is shown in the following statement from the article: â€Å" †¦. That is exactly what parents are supposed to do. To get our children to be healthy, well mannered, intellectually curious, and well behaved, we control what they eat, have them vaccinated, teach them manners, read to them, and discipline them when they misbehave. It would be absurd for a parent to say, I never attempt to influence my childrens development. I just love them for who they are. Thus, it is not influencing our childrens traits that is objectionable, but rather the means to accomplish this, that is, choosing their genes. † . This statement is true, in fact, its absolutely correct for one to think in this manner. But it is the lengths that parents go to ensure that their child will be perfect that is unethical. Although parents should shape their child’s live to be well behaved, healthy, and curious, it is up to the children to decide who they would like to be, and not be predisposed to be something in particular. The topic is so controversial, the same article that believes it is ethical to genetically design babies, The art of medicine: Designer Babies: choosing our children’s genes stated that: â€Å"A more serious objection stems from the idea that people who want to choose, in advance, the traits their child will have, and are willing to spend so much money to get a child with certain traits, demonstrate a kind of desire for perfectionism that seems incompatible with being a good parent. An insistence on having a child of a certain sort, whether a musician or an athlete or a politician, amounts to parental tyranny. †. This is also true, the idea that a parent would spend significant amounts of money to sustain perfection is ridiculous. Parents have the right to want their children to be almost â€Å"perfect† but it is their job to teach them the right way to live. By spending all of their money to ensure perfection, they are almost cheating at being a parent. Another objection to â€Å"designer babies† would be genetically designing perfect children can create a social gap in society. The art of medicine: Designer Babies: choosing our children’s genes stated that: â€Å"†¦this would exacerbate social differences and the gap between rich and poor. I seriously doubt that genetic interventions would have more of an influence than existing causes of inequality, such as rotten neighborhoods and lousy schools. In any event, prebirth genetic enhancement could be used to combat social inequality, by giving children from disadvantaged backgrounds a leg up. †. How would you tell a child the reason they aren’t as smart or as attractive as some of the other children is that they don’t have special enough blood or genes? There is already enough separation in our society. Not only rich and poor, but jocks, musicians, geeks, race, sexuality and many other groups also exist in schools. How would one like to hear of one of the new cliches in school, the â€Å"enhanced children†? I can’t imagine how it would feel to be one of the children whose parents couldn’t afford to have them â€Å"custom made†. Eventually weak and poor individuals would be terminated using this new technology. Weak children would all eventually be used as spare parts to the sick children that have been genetically designed. Parents would have children just to benefit an already existing child, and once the child was cured, the spare parts child would not have any use. Parenting would also be a thing of the past. Parents wouldn’t have to worry about teaching their children the correct ways to function in society, their children would already be predisposed to be perfect and act the correct ways. Instead of moving forward in society and technology, technically we are reverting back to the days of Hitler. Hitler terminated all the individuals that he believed were lesser human beings. The act of Hitler terminating Jewish descent individuals and the act of genetically designing babies is all in the search for perfection -the perfect human being.

Essay Comparing Eliot’s Parody and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra

Comparing Eliot’s  Parody and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra The first major difference between Eliot’s Parody and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra comes with the very first simile. In Shakespeare’s original the barge in which Cleopatra sits is compared to a burnished throne burning on the water, whereas in Eliot’s parody it is only a chair that she fills like a throne, glowing on the marble. Eliot’s character comes across, therefore, as far less ‘enormous’ and larger than life than Shakespeare portrays Cleopatra who seems very great, even in comparison with her barge, which she fills as if it were a throne - her majesty makes the barge seem tiny in comparison; Eliot’s character only makes a chair look like a chair. Again, with the water on which Cleopatra’s barge floats burning, and the marble on which the chair stands glowing, Shakespeare’s image if far greater than the one Eliot creates, being strange and somewhat mystical, as opposed to Eliot’s chair’s ent irely possible glow. Cleopatra, in the same way, has ‘pretty dimpled boys’ fanning her, ‘like smiling cupids’, whereas in the passage from The Wasteland, there are merely golden Cupidons, observing the scene, one peeping out at her, another hiding his eyes behind his wing - instead of serving an immediate, yet subtle purpose, as Cleopatra’s are, fanning her. Other images of Eliot’s, in contrast, are much larger than Shakespeare, but again succeed in making Eliot’s character look small and insignificant in comparison. Eliot describes the enormous amount of adornments around the room, including her ‘vials of ivory and coloured glass’, which contain many perfumes, which are described as ‘drowning the sense in odours’ and again it is the lack of subtlety t... ...speare tends to prefer the use of metaphor to that of simile - whilst Homer often used extended simile to illustrate his point, and often went off on very distinct tangents, Shakespeare tends to prefer the more modern construction of metaphor, rather than having to protect himself as an author with words like ‘like’ or ‘as’. Eliot may well have chosen this passage for its eccentricities, and it succeeds in creating a powerful and provoking parody, as well as being a very good contrast to other parts of The Wasteland, poetically, including the very next part, which is more modern, and simple. It is also interesting that Eliot chose to almost blend the Shakespeare in with other more ordinary bits of literature - the passage begins with only slight changes to the words of Enobarbus’ speech, but soon becomes considerably different to the original Shakespeare.   

Troy v, Iliad

Guidelines for the Comparative analysis of the movie â€Å"Troy† and â€Å"The Iliad† Your comparative essay should be typed in single space paragraphing (font 12 Times New Roman) and it should be at least 500 words. (I will use the â€Å"word count† feature in Microsoft Word to check the number of words. ) Try not to exceed 1000 words at most. Your essay should be the result of your own contemplations, observations and conclusions. You can read other sources for this assignment but you should not copy at any form or to any degree the sources you have read. You can just use the ideas gained through sources in your own words. If you do so, however, you should definitely cite the references to your sources. In case you use a source and forget to cite it or even worse if you copy from a source the score for your paper will be zero. So please beware of intentional or unintentaional plagiarism. In writing up the paper first watch the movie completely and if needed take notes. (The DVD of the movie is provided to you. )Then, compare what you have seen with what you have read and try to find out the reasons for the differences. The followinig notes may help you: ?Note the changes in value systems in the past and present ?Note the reasons for the changes and modifications that have taken place in the creation of the movie. (including commercial, political, values, †¦) ?Focus on justification premises for the atrocities and savagery that is depicted as valor and courage in the Iliad. ?Explore the contributions (messages) that the two works make to human culture in their own context. Iliad vs. Troy Movie. Neither Athena with her matchless wisdom, nor Apollo with his talent of prophecy, could foretell that someday Prometheus’s fragile creature, human, would become rude in a scale that not only would turn his back to the gods, but also would distort their presence and effects in the human history. â€Å"Briseis: Well, then your men did. The sun god will have his vengeance. Achilles: What's he waiting for? Briseis: The right time to strike. Achilles: His priests are dead, and his acolyte's a captive. I think your god is afraid of me? Briseis: Afraid? Apollo is master of the sun, he fears nothing. Achilles: Where is he? †(Troy) The movie â€Å"Troy†, which is an adaptation of Homer’s Iliad, is an obvious twist of it, both historically and literarily. There are numerous differences between them that can be observed and revealed. Here, I am going to highlight some of inordinate modifications of Homer’s Iliad in Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy; and, then, try to go beyond the surface to discover the reasons for such changes. The movie duration is about 163 minutes; and it takes 50 minutes to reach to the starting point of the Iliad. Although there are, also, several rotations of the classical myths events in the first 50 minutes that even an amateur classic mythology reader can remark it fallacies, I will not enter that domain. I will just refer to the changes that are in contrary with the Iliad and can be retrieved by the information that Homer presents. For instance, in the Iliad we see that it was Paris’s doom to go to Sparta and fall in love with Helen. But the movie gives no account for the background of the story and the destination’s role. Another incident which is not mentioned in the Iliad is Achilles’s rapid action to siege the beach of Troy and invading Apollo’s temple. The major modification of the Iliad is the absence of Gods in the movie. There is no information about them but some names that elder characters mention and some statues. The only Goddess that we can see in the movie is Thetis, Achilles’s mother, who is a nymph according to the Iliad, half human, half fish. But the director of the movie does not want to put emphasis on the divinity part and although Achilles meets her in the water, picturing her fish part is cleverly avoided by the director. Apollo in the movie is just a wretched God who is not able to avenge the offence that Myrmidons have done to him. In the minute 42 of the story, Achilles beheads Apollo’s statue. While in the Iliad, Achilles respects Gods and makes sacrifices for them. In another scene, in the minute 29, while Hector is urging Priam, his father, to return Helen to Sparta to avoid a war, Priam tells him not to worry because, â€Å"Apollo watches over us. Even Agamemnon is no match for the Gods. †(Troy) But Hector replies, â€Å"And how many battalions does the Sun God command? †(Troy) This is not the only place in the movie that Hector, who is protected and respected by gods in the Iliad and highly believes in them, mocks the gods. It happens again in minute 54 of the movie when the high priest announces that two farmers have seen an eagle with a serpent in its talons, a good sign from Apollo. Hector mocks the priest and saying, â€Å"you want to plan a strategy based on bird signs? He concludes from Apollo’s inability to take vengeance on Achilles for insulting his statue and says, â€Å"The gods won’t fight this war for us† (Troy). The whole story is in contrary with the Iliad, because it is indicated that the Trojans see that sign while trying to push back the Achaean host to their ships, and predict it as a bad omen from Zeus who is the owner of the eagle, though. Moreover, in the Iliad, it is g ods’ war more than human’s. It seems that there is an intention beyond these manners of mocking gods by two of the best characters who the audience would love best and sympathize with. First assumption would be that the director of the movie wanted to make a realistic shot of the Iliad. But, after deepening in the story, another assumption may be that the director does not believe in God’s or divinity at all and try to inject his view through his best characters and he is doing this cleverly. Almost in the first scene that we see Achilles, when the messenger boy asks if the stories about him is true and if he cannot be killed, Achilles responds, â€Å"I wouldn’t be bothering with the shield then, would I? (Troy) a very logical and clever way to wipe out tendencies of believing in divinity from audiences mind in the beginning of the story and to appeal the skeptic generation of 21st century! Another major difference between Iliad and the movie is again in the process of adaptation of the Iliad according to the appetite of the audience. Every Iliad reader can understand in a glance that the honor codes and bravery values of those days is in contrary wi th todays. The most devouring and slaughtering characters were the most praised heroes of the Iliad. Achilles, Hector, Ajax and Diomede were a few samples of ancient world heroes. But, is it possible to picture those animalistic brutalities within Iliad these days and expect to attract people to pay for watching it? Of course not! Instead, we need to show a sentimental view of our heroes, heroes who despise war; heroes who are sorry for killing people. For instance, Hector while returning from Sparta provokes Paris who wants to fight with Menelaus and says that, â€Å"there is nothing glorious about it, nothing poetic† (Troy). But it is indeed glorious in the Iliad to fight. In fact Homer calls Hector the pair of bloodthirsty Mars as an honor. On the other hand, we need a kind, loving and caring Achilles with a masculine attractive figure to attract more audience. What about softening the violence with some romance scenes to guarantee our investment, no matter what was the story and what was the truth. So, let’s dismiss Diomede who is a brutal killer, kill Ajax and Menelaus at the beginning, and omit Aeneas and so many other valiant heroes to make the story more appealing and brief. But, let’s picture Agamemnon as he was to make people despise him. So tricky! Simply put, it seems that cinematographs own a mightier weapon that Zeus’s thunder bolt and Poseidon’s trident by which have sent myth gods and their offspring to the underworld. But, what if someday, they claim war against Semitic or early religions’ God? What if they twist the reality and feed that in a colorful tempting way to the people? (As Islamic Republic of Iran does it in regard to Baha’i faith). Do the audiences of those movies would accept what is being presented or investigate after the truth?

A Woman s Experience With The Law Essay - 1416 Words

Law is a tool, a tool of resistance, power, or even oppression. A woman’s experience with the law can potentially see the law as a tool of oppression. Internationally, across many states like Ohio itself, a husband can legally rape his wife if his wife is subdued by drugs, or any substance that lessens her chances of resistance and encourages consent (Allen, 2015). Across many legal institutions, and systems a woman suffers from discrimination or oppression due to her ‘multiple identities’ (Lockhart Mitchell, 2010, p.8). Legal institutions and their processes overlook and ignore the experiences of people, in particular women who are subjected to dimensions of â€Å"race, class, gender and sexuality†¦ in relation to their struggle against racial, sexual, sexual orientation and class oppression† (Lockhart Mitchell, 2010, p.7). Law and legal processes hardly examine other characteristics of women because these institutions are centred on â€Å"objectiv ity and universalism† (Marchetti, 2008, p.156); only one characteristic or experience is examined to determine the outcome of a case. The objective of this essay is to explore the intersectionality of women, in particular women of color and immigrant women and their experience with legislation that either overlooks or fails to recognise intersectionality of a woman (Lockhart Mitchell, 2010, p. p.xxiii). Intersectionality was first developed by Kimberle Crenshaw (1989) to showcase the difficulty law has in identifying theShow MoreRelatedThe Mother Of Law Asks The Daughter1109 Words   |  5 Pagesmother-in-law asks, â€Å"has Nature shown/ her household books to you, daughter-in-law,/ that her sons never saw?† (Rich 67-69). 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