Would you have a child to save the life of another?
Imagine you have a child who is diagnosed with a disease that requires a bone marrow transplant. Because your options are limited, the doctor tells you that the donor could be a sibling. With the same technology used in prenatal DNA testing to analyze chromosomes, specialists can “design” a child with the right chromosome load to be the donor for your other child. Once the baby is born, laboratories extract the needed cells to save its sibling’s life. Would you do it? If medical advances allow people to buy a home DNA test kit on the Internet and have it delivered to their home, why do some people refuse certain aspects of this evolution? If neither child’s life is at risk, nor the birth of one baby will help save the life of another, why is it so difficult for some people to accept this as a positive thing?
It is already done
In countries such as the United States and the European Community, health personnel carries out medical procedures in which doctors and parents plan the birth of a baby to serve as a donor for a family member. While this type of procedure can be costly for some people, and it is not 100% effective, not everyone can afford it. In addition, people with strong religious convictions often refuse these medical procedures because they consider them a challenge to God. Human beings have been endowed with superior intelligence, and as a society, we must understand that as long as we use our intelligence for good, it is worth taking advantage of it. For example, parents who are prone to generate babies with genetic problems have found a solution in this medical procedure. Their babies can be born without risk of congenital diseases.
Still, there is a long way to go
The medical community still has a long way to go to achieve medical procedures that are 100% effective and accessible to everyone. Over the years, scientists will discover new and better ways of altering DNA to eradicate congenital diseases or physical deformities. Experts say that illnesses such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Down’s syndrome will be gone in the short term, thanks to genetic manipulation. The scientific community must also convince politicians and the public of the positive effects of these medical advances. Can you imagine a world in which people never get sick and their bodies are resistant to viruses? Believe it or not, that possibility will come in the short term.
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