Artifical selection has resulted in plants that are more disease-resistant, cows that produce more milk, and racehorses that run faster. One must wonder what will come next. Under what circumstances should humans be artificially selecting plants or animals, if any?

I have only ever had two types of pets, many different fish and I had a hamster for several years (R.I.P. Jim). I currently would do almost anything to get a dog, specifically a pug! When I got my other pets I had lots of different choices of what kind I wanted, this is the same with dogs. Man’s best friend comes in hundreds of different breeds! Thanks to evolution there are so many different breeds of dogs. Also, more recently thanks to artificial selection we have hundreds more breeds to choose from! For example, my best friend has a Puggle! Never heard of it? It’s a mix between a pug and a beagle!! This breed has become increasingly popular after its big break in the movie I Love You Man. Anyways, getting to the point...

Sure, this dog breeding seems cool, and it is. I don’t deny that it’s cool. There are even benefits having a cross-bread dog! But it is starting to cause lots of problems but the issue is not really getting the attention it needs by the media. Dog breeders are using artificial selection to change/modify the original characteristics of one breed of dog or even to combine these characteristics with another breed of dog. Let’s go back to my example of Bella, the Puggle, her face resembles a pug but she has the ears, colour and senses (she smells everything) of a beagle. All Puggles are generally very small and weigh no more than 30 pounds. There is a picture of Bella when she was about 8 weeks old, now she is about one and a half, I believe. It was ideal for my friend and her family to get a Puggle because they wanted a small dog that didn`t shed too much. Beagles can get quite big so thanks to the pug genes Bella is a pretty small dog. However, she still sheds because Pugs are terrible for that but it isn’t as bad as a pure-bred would be. My friend and her family are fans of Pugs but didn’t really care for them as much as my mom and I do so for their dog to be half pug was the perfect solution, right?! Sure... why not? Except to many animal enthusiasts this may seem like a very selfish thing to do.

First of all, there are thousands of dog breeders out there, many of which are not even fully educated on the subject. Most breeders are just in it for the money. They breed dogs much too often and sell the puppies at half the price of pet stores (thank goodness, because those prices are ridiculous, but that’s a whole other issue). By breeding dogs too often you make them very week and they become very needy. Also, it is quite possible to pass on diseases when breeding dogs! They can get sexually transmitted diseases and pass them on just like we can! Not to mention genetic diseases as well. Most breeders don’t do their full research just like we fail to do when we decide we want an artificially selected pet. Another reason it could be considered selfish to breed or to purchase a dog from a breeder is because there are thousands of homeless dogs in Toronto alone, not to mention other cities all over Ontario and even all of Canada!!

Artificial selection is giving us too many options that most people are happy to take advantage of. However, I’d say more than 90% of the human population is unaware of the damage it does on the dogs without homes and the dogs constantly being bread. Until this issue gets more attention from the media, or any similar issue, I do not think that humans will realise the slow and steady damage they are having on living things by artificially selecting them. Having said that, I do not think we will eliminate dog breeders but it would be great to at least eliminate the ones that are doing it immorally and unethically. So final answer: the only time humans should be able to artificially select anything (plants or animals) is when it is being done by professionals, someone with a long background in the field and preferably for scientific reasons! Another example of artificial selection is the one with racehorses and trying to produce the fastest one, this is completely immoral and should not be done!! But dog breeding I think I could let slide if it is done responsibly. After all, without artificial selection we would not have many things that we are so a costumed to today like, corn, broccoli, cabbage, kale etc. This is another acceptable example. On the other hand, an unacceptable example relating back to artificial selection in plants/food is above average sized fruits (oranges, apples etc) and different shaped fruits (square watermelon). There is no purpose for these things and it is just an example of humans abusing power and technology.

Let me know what you think! Dog breeding, do you agree or disagree? Or artificial selection in general, good or bad idea? I think it’s one of those things that, it’s too late to get rid of it because no one thinks it is a problem but, this could easily get out of hand in the near future!

I'll leave you with this short video about why many breeders are giving their pups away to adoption centres:

Sources:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0118084/Gene/Genetic_variation/artificialselection.htm

http://dogs.about.com/cs/generalcare/p/no_breeding.htm

http://www.learner.org/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1.html

"Designer Babies" is the term being used by the media to describe the future of modifying or selecting our children's genes for desirable characteristics (medical and cosmetic). Are things getting out of hand with our research into genetic precesses? In this blog investigate social and ethical implications of this research and technologies that have been developed from it.



The term “designer babies” first made its way into the Oxford English dictionary in 2004. The definition is as follows:

"a baby whose genetic makeup has been artificially selected by genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of particular genes or characteristics.”

But it seems as though this definition can be expanded to give a slightly more accurate quick reference. There are two different ways to go about choosing a child’s genetics. The more well known way is mentioned above in the dictionary definition sometimes referred to as “test-tube babies”. The second way is called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) which is used strictly for parents that have a high risk of passing on a serious genetic disease. It is an extremely expensive procedure. There is also an alternative method, cloning, but I won`t go into detail about that...

So, these ‘test-tube babies’ which are created via genetic modification lead us ask a couple of simple questions, such as, are the technologies safe enough to use on humans and is it a moral process? Personally, I think genetic modification is immoral because generally there is no genuine reason to follow through with such a procedure. We should be happy with our children the way they are. I think that if we were to start relying heavily on this procedure we would immensely distort our image of natural beauty and we would lose all perspective of what is so great in one another and what makes us unique. I think that our world is slowly spiralling down and this is not something we should be concerning ourselves with. I think it will only negatively affect the human population so why not deal with negative impacts we already have, such as global warming, than create new ones. Also, don’t you want a child that you can say is a 100% natural product of you and your loved one? I would be embarrassed to admit that my child was some science experiment. Anyways, not only are these kinds of designer babies unethical and immoral but there can be several complications to genetic modification! By introducing a new gene somewhere in a human (or any living thing) you can be affecting the way other genes work, some that may be necessary to survive, also, genes do more than just one thing, so by introducing one gene to do one job may start to do something else later on! Another complication is that in order to affect a specific gene we need to use a certain combination, so the process is much more complex than it actually seems to the average person!



Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, on the other hand, does not seem unethical in my opinion. I feel as though I cannot talk on behalf of someone that is in a situation to consider such a procedure because I have no idea what that would feel like. I dream of growing up and having my own family and if there was a chance that I could pass on something terrible like a genetic disorder to my children I would probably want to do anything to help them. But I think I’d rather just not know of such a thing and deal with whatever comes next. I think that life might have been better back in the day before technology started getting out of hand because no one knew any better. No one knew such ridiculous thing were possible! Anyways, getting more on track, this process also had several complications and is not 100% safe. Like I mentioned before it is also very expensive!! The whole process is as follows: a collection of embryos is created for the couple by in vitro fertilization. The embryos are then grown to the eight-cell stage, this is when a couple of cells may be removed and examined for genetic variants connected with the particular disease. Only the embryos without the particular variants are put into the womb. This process does not deal with genetic modification so it does not have the same risks as the process mentioned before, the biggest risk of PGD is the negative effect on the well-being of the person created via PGD due to the removal of cells from the eight-cell embryos. FYI, PGD has been around for less than a decade so take that into consideration before you decide to try it (hopefully no one reading this will have to make such a choice anytime soon... or ever for that matter). For more detailed information check out this video on youtube! It is a BBC documentary about the study done at Princeton University: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN9ep4B9Hw0

On a more personal note, considering we go to a Catholic school I am assuming that most of us are content living in God’s image. I don’t want to get all corny and cliché but we are all unique and we shouldn’t want to change that for ourselves or for our future children. I believe that God put each of us on this earth for a reason and we are all meant to be the way we are. Our features and personalities will all affect other people’s lives and make us who we are. I do not think that we should be interfering; I think it will only hurt us in the long run. Also, after recently learning about Hinduism I found the concept of Dharma very interesting. The belief that we are born to be what we become. For example, your family doctor... it was his dharma to become a doctor. Like how people would describe a good soccer player to “have it in his blood,” that type of thing. I think that we shouldn’t try to change ourselves because we are all born to be something special.

For me this is such a huge topic and it isn’t easy to cover in one little bio blog but I tried my best. I could probably go on and on about designer babies for a while... I think it would slowly start to make less sense though! So I’ll stop here before I get too caught up. Happy New Year everyone!! :)

Sources:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html
http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/images/1/10/Designer_baby.jpg
http://www.goldprodukt.de/wearables/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/designer-babies.jpg