Dating apps are the new way of dating. They provide you with options and let you ‘choose’ you according to your personality. When you swipe through a dating app, what are your expectations? Good looks? Chemistry? Education? Personality? For a woman named Sanya (named changed) everything fell right into place because her parents were also on board with the guy she was seeing. This then led to marriage, but the couple’s first born child had a genetic disorder. Hence a Harvard professor named George Church who is a gene editing specialist pitched an idea of a dating app which matches people through their genes.
An app named digiD8 which is co-founded by George Church, will not match two people with the same genes. Though there are some genes which are not at all harmful in fact, they are good for the society such as brain diversity. But if a child has a rare disease, which causes a lot of suffering and pain, takes a lot of money to cure and also the child might die young is something that Church wants to prevent. Diseases such down syndrome, sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis are rare and incredibly hard to deal with.
Well this app promises to prevent these ailments but it also received a lot of criticism. People are saying that this app promotes the idea of selective breeding and improvement of the human species through technology. Some people might use this app to study gender related genes and try to eliminate Trans people.
The improved technology here is not the problem, the way we use it is. Different cultures around the world expect different things from their children and hence they could use this app to literally mold their child.
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