Can True Creation Happen in a Lab?

"Grade A: The Market for a Yale Woman's Eggs" by Jessica Cohen questions the process of a very picky couple in finding an egg donor for their child, but I took from it the controversy of whether people should be able to choose characteristics for their children through egg donors or egg selections in labs. In the essay, Cohen describes the specific qualifications she had to meet to be considered by the couple, including physical appearance, height, weight, race, religion, SAT score, grades in school, and much more. The would-be parents wanted specific traits for their "perfect child". However, there is no way to guarantee the preferred traits in a child, no matter whose egg is used and what traits it contains. Genetics is a tricky subject dealing with dominant and recessive genes and having a gene pool containing two peoples DNA (the parents), and there's no way to guarantee what traits will show in the child. No matter how hard a person tries, they can't create a child without some unpredictability. Only nature can choose what characteristics a child will have. Technology has come so far that some people can view what genes their fertilized egg has to avoid genetic diseases, but this has also opened a window to choose other things as well, such as hair color, eye color, and other physical traits. I think this is wrong. Tampering with creation in its most basic level like this is playing at God. I don't care what religion you are or what you believe, but being able to choose your child’s genetic makeup makes him or her something you assembled, not created. I know that this is being done more and more frequently, but I feel that choosing a child’s genetic makeup makes them not quite human. I know this isn't true; genetically altered eggs become perfectly healthy and normal babies, but it seems wrong. I can't imagine genetically altering my child’s egg to have certain physical characteristics and looking at them when they grow up and thinking: I chose that hair color. I've always known that, whether I liked the way I looked or not, it is the way God made me. What If I instead I had to say it's the way my parents chose to make me? It just doesn't sit right with me.