Sunday, May 2, 2010

Additction to perfecting the person

A common theme I noticed in many of the poster presentations was an infatuation our society has with perfecting the person, whether it is through designer babies, or cosmetic surgery in many different perspectives for accentuating physical features, or to take a personal disadvantage such as bad eyes and enhancing them to a cyborg state of precision. When is enough enough, where do we draw the line, and who gets to draw this line? Looking at the growing number of people that have cosmetic surgery and many that go back for more than one it seems that we are nowhere near drawing that line. Rather it seems like sooner than later there are going to be a lot of human Frankenstien's running around. While we can make physical changes to our bodies today, with the new hype of the designer baby, it seems as though we will be making these changes before the next generation even has a beating heart. But where are these additions taking us? Before you know it the olympics won't even be fun to watch because everyone will be the fastest, strongest, and best at whatever it is they desire.
We are creatures of habit, and wanting to be the best is only natural, but the line between habit and addiction is a very fine line. We know that a boob job today, lasic eye surgery tomorrow are popular procedures that don't seem problematic. But we don't know what could come from the technology of the designer baby. Is it something that we should consider stopping before it gets out of hand and we have created armies of perfect humans or is it something that will be legitimized like birth control, with a clear enough blurry line, not knowing exactly what is going on with the hormones besides the fact that it protects women from getting pregnant.

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