Made-to-order Babies
[Barometer] Babies made to order
In the October 2001 issue of the Reader's Digest monthly magazine, there is an interesting article by Lori Andrew under an amusing title of "Designer Babies." In brief, it seems to say that, in the future, babies can be made to specific orders of their natural, legal or nominal parents or non-parents.
In other words, people will be able to choose the color of their children's hair, height, weight, or other features and vital statistics, for example. "But too many people now approach procreation with a shopping-list mentality. Making a baby is starting to resemble buying a car, with choices about which features and extras to request," the author says.
A mother herself, she concludes her article by discreetly warning parents not to "saddle their babies with admission standards for birth." Otherwise, perhaps test-tube babies will be getting their own children by mail order. The question would be then: Is it right or wrong to do so?
Ultimately, this will create a world where, on the positive side, perfect and not so perfect humans will be living together happily and not so happily; but where, on the negative side, they will also have more Frankenstein's monsters around.
But what if, on their arrival in this world, tailor-made babies do not like what their parents or other adults have chosen for them? As a matter of fact, there are some interesting episodes in the Andrew article above, which goes on to tell us what few parents would be pleased to hear, as this passage from it shows:
"An even more troubling precedent: in California a court suggested that a disabled child could sue her parents for not aborting her. In future, a daughter might sue her folks for not making her prettier by paying for a 'better' donor - or for not using genetic enhancement to make her smarter."
Likewise, with a stretch of imagination, one might wonder what would happen, if a baby's parents were assured by a computer that their child would grow up to definitely be a serial killer?
So much about scary stories. Now let me turn to something more real or pleasant about children. Here are some amusing quotations from the December 2000 issue of Holland Herald, a KLM in-flight magazine:
"It is not easy being a mother. If it were easy, fathers would do it.' - Dorothy, a "Golden Girls" sitcom character.
"People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one." - Leo J. Burke. Does this mean that only parents who have babies can sleep like parents?
"We spend the first 12 months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 12 telling them to sit and shut up." - Phyllis Diller, a U.S. comedian.
"Before I got married, I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories." - John Wilmont. A voice of experience couldn't be a sigh of relief.
Finally, the saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt," is made more human or even humane by an American humorist, Mark Twain, when he extends it with "children, too."
Now this: An old couple had a lazy teenager son. One day, soaked in sweat, he was mowing the lawn. Amazed, his mother asked his father, "This is a miracle. How on earth did you get him to do that?" Smiling, he replied, "I just told him I lost the car keys somewhere in the grass."
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Dr. Park Choon-ho is a distinguished professor of international law at Konkuk University, a judge of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, and a member of the Institut de Droit International. - Korea Herald Ed.
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