Faculty of Design

Illustration

Geneviève Groulx

Mold Your Own Baby

Human gene manipulation and Makerism.

“In our modern world, many important topics vie for our attention. Within some of the most prevalent movements of our time are the Makerism culture and human genome manipulation. Surprisingly, these two completely different topics share a common feature; the act of crafting/altering material to create something desirable.Makerism is defined as a cultural movement that promotes specific crafting skills, such as sculpting, 3d printing, coding and robotics, knitting, woodworking, and many others. This movement also fosters ‘‘makerspaces’’, which are areas used for crafting in groups or ‘‘get-together styles’’. This idea of Makerism greatly promotes the mindset of creating something unique with hands-on techniques/crafting styles.As for gene manipulation, within the past few decades, scientists have gained increasing knowledge on features of the human genome and on ways to modify it. Today, techniques of genetic screening are already being used, where embryos are checked for their gender and for certain diseases, and pregnancies are either carried on or terminated upon receiving certain information. Additionally, with a technique called ‘‘germ line therapy’’, certain genetic diseases could be ‘‘cured’’, or removed from DNA codes by being replaced with healthy strands. And so, with fast advances occurring in this area of scientific research, the idea of changing an embryo’s genetic features to our liking, or “designing” our own baby, could very well be possible to parents in the near future through a technique called ‘‘inheritable genetic modification’’ . In my piece, I played with the idea of manipulation by hand and producing/self-creating, which were the common features linking my chosen topics. I wanted to combine these two separate topics/movements into one seemingly normal/plausible idea. I also chose to emphasize the strangeness of possibly designing/molding a child’s features to a parent’s personal preferences… How would people respond to this controversial idea? If available to the public in the future, would this promote certain features as more desirable and promote a sort of ableism upon eliminating certain ‘‘undesirable genes’’? How would it affect our views on childbearing and the haphazard and unique way humans’ genetic features are attributed?”