Designer Baby

Comment: Modern genetics can now enable scientists to change the genes of babies so that they will be healthier, more beautiful and clever when they are born and thus augment all of humanity.

Technology will also allow us to control the genes that are passed on to the next generation. Is it right to program the future child?

Answer: Science offers us many options and the question is how we use them.

Comment: Parents don’t want their child to suffer.

Answer: If we are given this option, I am in favor of determining in advance whether a child is healthy in the first place. If we could discover the gene of happiness and luck, it would be quite good. But that is not in our genes. Happiness is on a level higher than the level of biological research. When we have the chance to make people healthier physically and mentally, then of course we should use this technology.

People may object to this, especially religious people who claim that everything stems from the Creator, but if this is the case, what is the point in taking any measures and why should we go to the doctor, etc? It says that a doctor is given the permission to heal people since the treatment includes both a diagnosis and other elements that affect our body, and so we should determine and do it. If we could determine in the early stages of pregnancy that a baby has certain defects that cannot be corrected, the pregnancy should be terminated.

First, there is the time during which the embryo is formed and we should determine his attributes before it is formed. First there are the three days of the absorption of the semen and then another forty days of the creation of the embryo during which it is not considered an embryo yet. If we can determine what will happen to it during this time, then from a Kabbalistic, medical, and religious perspective it is not considered murder or the termination of life. This is the reason that we should use these technologies. I don’t mean that we should go against the upper nature in any way! On the contrary, I believe that after forty days, when the embryo receives its soul based on the roots and branches in our world, it is forbidden to intervene with its development. But we can determine all its attributes before that.
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From KabTV’s “News with Michael Laitman” 2/15/16