Hoffmeyer 1
Ashlie Hoffmeyer
Ms. Anderson
English 11B
April 20, 2011
Persuasive Speech Outline
Attention-Getter: Bring your partner, grab a seat, pick up your baby catalog and start
choosing. Will you go for the brown hair or blond? Would you prefer tall or short? Funny
or clever? Girl or boy? And do you want them to be a muscle-bound sports hero? Or a
slender and intelligent book worm? Imagine a perfect world, were everyone was perfect
and designed a certain way. Designed how your parents wanted you to be like. Imagine
the feeling once finding out you where made into the child your parents thought was “the
perfect” child.
1. Personal Credibility: I am here to tell why I am against genetic engineering
babies. Genetic engineering, another name for it is designer babies. It’s where
your parents can choose your eye color, hair color, height, abilities, weight, or
even what type of taste buds you will have.
2. Thesis: Genetic engineering babies are truly unethical and there are
disadvantages to designing your own child.
Body One.
A. Genetic Engineering could harm future generations, our society and us.
I. Making babies and making sure their child won’t have any birth
defects may lead to everyone being “perfect”, which is not the way
the world is.
a) This may help such narrow minded, biased parents to
actually be able to choose everything about their child.
(Genetic Engineering in Humans, 2)
b) Being born smarter will lead children to have larger brains
and may be harmful to be born out of their mothers, which
becomes a real problem. (Genetic Engineering in Humans,
2)
i.
Humans can also be engineered to live longer, live
around the age 100 to 150 years old, to live a life
without disorders, which may take a little longer
from them to achieve this, but this may cause over
population. (Genetic Engineering in Humans, 2)
ii.
Why would you want to have a perfect child, would
you love them the same way if they weren’t perfect
or wasn’t made into the way you wanted them to
be? Not everyone is perfect, why start making
everyone the same now?
Hoffmeyer 2
Body Two- Transition.
B. Who gets to decide what’s good or bad?
I. Do you think parents have the right to decide what your child looks
like, or give them the opportunities to be good at something?
II. Who knows what your child would be like if they weren’t
genetically made.
a) There is a lot still to be done to complete this process and
scientists have a lot of work on identifying the specific
genes. (Future Human Evolution, 1)
b) Taking all that time and spending all that money on making
a child is a waste when you should love your child no
matter what they look like or what they decide to do.
i.
A study shows most parents prefer a boy child over
a girl, which may lead more boys than girls leading
to a great population of males. (Adams, 3)
ii.
“There is a great deal of uncertainly and fear about
what may happen once the scientist start to
“mess” with offspring’s DNA.” (Future Human
Evolution, 2)
Third Main Point.
C. How far should we be willing to go?
I. Many people may think, why not extend our technology? Why not
see what we could do in the future.
II. They may want to hand pick out their child and have their child
look or act like the way you want them. You also may say it could
help prevent diseases.
a) I have to say to that, there is something’s we should do
with our technology but making our babies “perfect” seems
to be going too far. This could lead to more problems then
curing diseases, messing with a person’s DNA is difficult to
sort out, no one has the understanding of how DNA
actually controls our behavior, or which gene is which.
(Adams, 2)
b) “Altering the genetic code of our offspring is no small
matter, we are indeed “playing God” and violating laws of
nature” (Adams, 2)
Conclusion.
I hope I made you realize the difficulties and how unethical
designing your own baby is. No matter what, a parent should love
their child for what they look like or what they decide to do with their
life. You should love them and know they are special because they
may not be the “ideal” baby, but they are your baby.
Hoffmeyer 3
Works Cited
Adams, Mike. “The Top Ten Technologies: #7: Genetic Engineering
of Humans” The
Top Ten Technologies: #7: Genetic Engineering of Humans.
July 14, 2004. Web. March 21, 2011.
Batual Nafisa Baxamusa. “Genetic Engineering in Humans”
Buzzle.com. Web. March
21, 2011.
“Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations” Designer Babies:
Ethical
Considerations. Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations,
2006. Web. March 29, 2011.
“Genetic Engineering” Future Human Evolution. Future Human
Evolution, 2010.
Web. March 21, 2011.
Johnson, Priya. “Pros and Cons of Designer Babies” Buzzle.com.
Web. April 13,
2011.