Cartoon 798: Designer Children

A long time ago I was struck by the number of twins that celebrities seem to be having. Over the years it has escalated. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out something is going on. But perhaps this is a significantly wider occurrence among the economic elite. The celebrities are just the visible tip of an iceberg. We are aware of celebrities because their lives are less private.

Publicly there is the call to regulate human biological manipulation. Actually the sense in much of America is it should not be allowed. The stem cell issue was merely a surrogate for a larger moratorium. But despite the reluctance, pharmaceutical companies are involved to an ever increasing degree out of public sight. Universities get most of the derision because they are more public. The Pentagon, and clan distant organizations have major initiatives cloaked in secrecy. We probably will not come face-to-face with it until the military fields a cloned generation of better soldiers.

Today we have neon fish, and other creatures manipulated for commercial benefit at the genetic level. The biggest initiative is genetically modified crops. There is no reason to believe it has stopped there. If you are wealthy you can afford the best children money can buy. That means genetic manipulation. At some point we are going to start to wonder why children of the very wealthy are more humanly capable and realize it is “not natural”. Perhaps it will lead to a split in homo sapient, the enhanced that can pass on their traits and everyone else.

The whole thing will come out of the closet and we start seeing purple children with chartreuse hair. Whatever is the popular skin and hair color at the time. What about all those sports parents? How about a 9 foot basket ball player or a 500 pound tight end that can run 100 yards in a 10 second time frame? I am certain you can travel to South East Asia with your gold [traceable cash not accepted] and get some of these things today. There is a striving black market with expatriate skilled Westerners who live like royalty.

What would you want in a designer child? Perhaps foremost would be for the child to be healthy and not susceptible to a host of illnesses. Second would be not to have to go through multiple pregnancies to create a family of desired size. That implies twins, triplets or quadruplets. Third would probably be cosmetics, such as a certain skin shade, stature, hair type and color. Next would be innate abilities such as being athletic, highly intelligent, and artistically inclined.

You can see there are some things most of us would opt to do genetically if given the chance. Therefore an effort to prevent it is merely a delaying action that will ultimately fail.