ARIN KIM2: Future Emergency Project

FUTURE EMERGENCY

Before coming up with a future emergency we started off thinking about what kind of problems we have today.

As science and technology develops rapidly through time the standards of aesthetic perfection has increased and more people are demanding for perfect looks through plastic surgery. So we predicted that maybe in the future rather than changing your appearance through plastic surgery people would start to change their aspects before they are actually born.

But... can this even be possible? Well, according to scientists it is already possible when done by genetic modification. Parents will pick out what and how they want their child to look like, similar to picking out an outfit. After modifying the embryo's genes the child will be born flawless.

RESEARCH (EVIDENCE):

Genetic engineering is defined by The American Heritage Dictionary in the year 2000 as the “scientific alteration of the structure of genetic material in a living organism. It involves the production and use of recombinant DNA.” Genetic alterations are made by either modifying an organism's own DNA, or by combining it with the DNA of another organism. Until now we have seen genetically modified animals and plants, such as Dolly the Sheep that was cloned in 1997. Also in 1995, the genetic engineer Ward F Odenwald said that he manipulated the genes of male fruit flies to make them 'bisexual' and 'homosexual'.

However the question is, could we be soon dealing with genetically modified humans?

Not long ago, the United States reported to have created the first group of babies to be genetically modified. The scientists announced that 30 babies were born with modified genes. Moreover, two of the babies were found to have the genes from 3 different parents.

Scientists have been working to find out which gene dominates each features of a person. These features includes physical, behavioral and disease-controlling characteristics.

Geneticist claim that in the future "genetic modification methods may be used to eliminate the negative characteristics and replace it with a desired characteristics gene before the child is even born, such as strength or high intelligence". This process is known as genetic screening.

Nowadays parents are able to select the child's gender beforehand, with a rather high accuracy.

According to Doctor Stuart in The British Medical Journal, when scientists are able to modify and eliminate genes in sperm and embryos, they would most likely be able to create “perfect humans” being disease-free and have favorable physical and behavioral characteristics.

FUTURE EMERGENCY:

After deciding our topic to be gene modification we pictured how our future would look like in the extreme case. We assumed that the modification of genes will expand, no longer being a surprising event anymore. Genetic modification alters features that plastic surgery are limited to do such as hair, eye and skin colour and other traits such as shyness, alcoholism, deafness or obesity. Our society will become obsessed with genetic perfection.

Maybe this is what the world might look like if genetic modification took over society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC6ZA1dFkVk

It is a trailer form the movie GATTACA (1997). It is set in a time where society analyzes your genes to determine where you belong in life, including job and with who you have to marry. Therefore while rich people afford money to modify their genes, naturally born babies, like the protagonist Vincent, will be discriminated to have no chance of a career.

For all that, scientists say that 'ordering' a child, as portrayed in the film, is "not very far from today."

PROBLEMS:

We started to look at the various problems that gene modification can cause into more detail.

§ Sex selection. In places like India and China the discrimination of gender is severe. If sex selection gets real the ratio of men and women will unbalance massively and may cause violence against women

§ Three-parent babies. The creation of “three-parent” embryos, in which the mutated DNA from Mom number 1's egg is replaced with healthy DNA from Mom number 2, which is then fused with Dad’s sperm. This technology could cause all kinds of devastating problems.

§ Sick children. it may be impossible to predict how genetic modification will affect a child until it is born. This means that genetically modified human experiments may lead to very sick children or birth defects

Amongst all the different problems that gene modification creates we wanted to focus on the Discrimination of Genes as we thought to be the most serious case.

There might be a day where only the rich, elite and superior people can afford to genetically perfect children. Rich people would be the ones to afford more money in creating a perfect baby causing them to be more intellectual and therefore richer and an endless cycle of social inequality. In this case people must not be seen as a simple person, but determined and discriminated by their genes like the movie presented earlier.

WARNING BROCHURE:

We thought the best solution to prevent further expansion of genetic modification would be to alarm people about the situation.

We created a brochure in a form of an electronic device because we assumed that in the future there will be a greater reliability of electronic devices than today, therefore it is more approachable to people.

We imagined how people would 'order' a baby in the future, so we showed the stages of a parent ordering and designing their child's through ebay, which is one of the most famous online shopping website. The last slide, which is the stage where you make your pay, we added a mention saying: "Are you sure you want to buy this baby or have a baby?" reassuring the audiences before they make the decision and asking directly to them so they can think for themselves and realize how unnatural and dehumanizing the process is.

REFERENCES:

· Collins, V., Williamson, R. 2003. “Providing services for families with a genetic condition: A contrast between cystic fibrosis and Down syndrome.” Pediatrics. 112(5):1177.

· Derbyshire, S. 2002. “Debating Matters. Designer Babies: Where Should We Draw the Line?” British Medical Journal. 325:974.

· GATTACA, screenplay by Andrew Niccol. Released October 1997. Directed by Andrew Niccol. Produced by Danny DeVito. Screenplay written by Andrew Niccol.

· Lawler, A. 2003. “Massive DNA identification effort gets under way.” Science. 294(5541):278-279. Travis, J. 1995. “Bisexual bugs: Added DNA changes Fruit Fly Behavior, Stirs up Controversy.” Science News. 148:13-15.

· Wilson, C. 2002. “Ready for your Close-up?” New Scientist. 175:34.

· http://realizethelies.com/tag/human-genetic-modification/

· http://www.anh-usa.org/gmo-human-embryos-have-already-been-created/

· http://www.hgalert.org/

· https://phil2100dsu12a.wordpress.com

· http://singularityhub.com/2009/02/25/designer-babies-like-it-or-not-here-they-come/

· http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-43767/Worlds-GM-babies-born.html