Custom-Made Babies
"Build-A-Baby? What?" many people would say, but as absurd as engineering a perfect baby may sound, the possibility is not out of sight, and may be an accessible technology in the near future. By building a baby, I mean that a scientist or medical doctor would be able to pick and choose which genes that they, or the parents-to-be wanted their child to have. This is not solely based upon a child's appearance, by use of healthy stem cells, it would be possible to prevent birth deformities, and even mental handicaps, that could completely change that child's life had they been born with their naturally occurring genetic markers. Anything could be manipulated, how smart they will be, their hair color, their height, eye color, interests, and endless other traits that are naturally decided through fertilization and development. Being able to do this could potentially eradicate cancers, deformities, health problems, negative genes from parents and so on. The human race would soon become physically flawless and perfectly engineered, in a sense this would bring about a new age of super-humans. The procedure of producing these perfectly designed young ones would consist of taking a fertilized egg from the mother, and having the DNA inside the embryo edited to make modifications. By picking out even a single nucleotide in the genes DNA genetic code, scientists would be able to delete, then insert what ever gene was wanted. In the early stages of the gene and DNA modification ages, it would be very dangerous to actually take a human embryo, snip into the cell, and insert desired genes and traits. Already there are animal trials being done, where selected genes are being supplemented for others, and are being inserted into female marmosets to see any sort of results. The future of gene editing and modification is far from transparent, with many ethical and biological barriers to pass, but scientists and researchers are quickly closing this gap, making the absurd notion of super humans seem not so absurd anymore.