Friday, August 01, 2003

I hope no genetics knowlegable read this

Some say before the end of this century, sex will be only a means for pleasure. People will not resort to sex and natural pregnancy for the purpose of reproduction. Babies will be produced in laboratories primarily from sperm and egg received from couples. But over time genetic engineering tools and advance cloning techniques equipped with sophisticated computer programs will be employed to combine genes from two (or more?) people to compose a baby as they wish. What gender would you rather for your baby? Which one of you guy's eyes it should have? what about its chins? or its nose? or mouth? Do you want it to be as poetic as its mom? or as inquisitive as its dad (I am just assuming opposite sex parent for the sake of simplicity. The idea will work as perfect for same sex parents)? etc. etc.
I was brainstorming on this idea the other day and I came down to the issue of economical and political aspects of human reproduction centers. How will different societies run such centers?

1. Centralist or socialist countries: This countries will regulate the process of human reproduction by putting the h.r. centers under government control. Government will announce related anual plans in terms of more necessary gender, sort of talents needed, etc. each year. Applicants will have to submit written requests and wait in a queue for their turn. If the gender they ask for is not approved then they have the option to cancel their request (paying related fees) or to go for the other gender. Each new baby, in addition to parent genes genes, will have some government supplied genes or gene modifications to comply with specific future needs of the society reflected in the government's latest version of 'roadmap for social improvement' report.
At one point the government decides to modify genes of the new babies so that they will not be capable of natural reproduction when they grow up.

2. Liberal capitalist societies: Artificial reproduction will be a profitable business. Two giant companies Baby Plus (their slogan: When it comes to babies we mean business TM ) and New Age Superman (Slogan: We can make a superman out of you TM ) compete in this field. BabyPlus ridicules New Age Superman for being sexist while New age Superman accuses BabyPlus of being too materialistic and emotionless in their creed.
Government will tax reproduction applicant based on desired gender to balance the percentage of men and women in the society. Discarding natural reproduction capabilities in created babies will be scientifically possible but human rights activists will argue for a long time whether to grant freedom of choice to parents to decide if their child should not have such ability or to leave the freedom for the human to be.

P.S. I was just kidding.

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