Designer Babies

Leaving aside the situations where genetic modification is life-saving, the topic of designer babies brings up an interesting question. Does the consent of the baby actually being "designed" matter? Of course, it is impossible to ask a fetus for consent, it does not have the capacity to hold consent in the same way that young children or animals cannot give their consent to something. But if this is true, would that not make designer babies immoral? Or is it because they cannot give consent we are okay to genetically modify our children?

Suppose a scenario where a couple want to have a child with blue eyes. Of course, this is a recessive trait and therefore is usually harder to obtain. The couple decide to "design" their child. Then when the child is of age he/she remarks how they wish they had brown eyes instead. Here when the child was finally able to give consent, he or she would have not given it because the result is not to their preference. Because we cannot know of their actual desire beforehand it makes the question a difficult one and most likely we should not design our children for traits that we have a preference for. There are however, situations that we can more clearly guess the consent of the child.

In the case of a life threatening disease, the answer is clear cut. The consequence of such a situation is pain and suffering, so of course it would be safe to assume that the perceived desire would be to genetically modify the genome to save the child's life. Of course this may have its exceptions. The child who was modified may grow up and develop strong religious beliefs that prompts him or her to believe that the modification of humans must be left to some higher power. When this person realizes he or she was a designer baby, they may perhaps feel horrified. They may have preferred a life of suffering instead. This situation however, is a very small exception, and if the child had not been designed, he or she most likely would have never grown up to even be able to develop these opinions, so in the case of disease genetic modification should be okay.

Then there is a gray area where the trait may seem clear cut but its not as clear cut as the scenario of the life-threatening disease. Can we modify a baby's intelligence to a level that is preferable? In these types of instances, it seems  okay to assume consent would be given and therefore we would probably have the okay to continue.