Eugenics good or bad? (my last post!)

This week the part in our reading about genetics interested me alot.
When we were talking about eugenics in the class, I remembered about mixed dogs, which are popular in Japan. Recently, designer dogs, the mixed dogs which are artificially produced by crossbreeding are having a boomlet in my country. There are a number of new kinds of dogs which are produced by crossing different kinds of purebred dogs, and they attract people who want a unique dog different from others'. Considering only poodles, there are tons of these crossbred dogs such as Cockapoo (cocker spaniel/poodle), Poo-Shi (Shiba inu/ poodle), etc
.

Poodles are considered to be beneficial to crossbreed because they are very intelligent and have a non-shedding, hypoallergenic coat, which people who are allergic to dog fur are often not allergic to. But the production of these designer dogs is controversial. Opponents argue that many of the breeds are not beneficial; the breeders of designer dogs just focus on producing mixed dogs which have unique looks. (To my surprise, when I am making this post, some strange guy talked to me; he wanted to take a picture of this image of poo-shi dog above on the right because it's cute! Appearance of a mixed dog can attract people this much lol.) In addition, sadly, many dogs' lives for crossbreeding in puppy mills are wasted because of failure in breeding.

I felt that crossbreeding is like a game now. It seems like the breeders play with the dogs' genes thinking "what if I mix this gene with that gene?" It might do improve species of dogs but it seems that dogs are used to appease human desire to have better dogs ......

Today we are close to the state that we can have designer children. On March 2nd of 2009, a Los Angeles fertility clinic, which offered a month before "to let parents choose their kinds' hair and eyes" shut the program down because of the public outrage (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/designerdebate/）. A transhumanist, James Hughes, says, "designing children is in the same category as abortion. If you think women have the right to control their own bodies, then they should be able to make this choice." He adds, "There should be no law restricting the kind of kids people have, unless there’s gross evidence that they’re going to harm that kid, or harm society."
As technology has developed along with human desires, the meanings of what used to be human nature has been changing. Birth controls enable women not to have a child -not to produce life. Plastic surgeries allow human bodies to be segmented and changed. People do not necessarily have a sex to have a child because Artificial Insemination is available. And now we can pick up only superior genes that the parents want and can have a perfect child?
They all have develop human lives. Sterile women can have a child with the AI. But with humans desire such as choosing traits to have a pretty or smart one, some scientific technologies might be going too far. What is the meaning of life, sex, body...? where is diversity? With the designers baby technology in the future, we all (or all "rich" people who can afford to enjoy the benefits of the tech.) will be able to have super kids.