Designer Babies: Model Status Gene Pools | Andre Blair | TEDxSantaClaraUniversity

Andre Blair, a first-year student from Santa Clara University, poses the ethical repercussions of genetic modification in humans. Andre Blair is a first-year Santa Clara University student from a suburban town, McDonough, GA. He is studying business and plans on majoring in Finance and OMIS with a minor in music. Andre loves playing the piano and viola, singing in his A Capella group – Supertonic – and he loves playing pick up basketball on campus. He has always been dreaming of giving a TED talk because of the weekly tradition his family had of watching them every Sunday. Today, movies and TV shows continually display science being used to modify humans and make them better and stronger like Captain America and The Incredible Hulk. This is clearly science fiction, but if it were possible to design humans how we see fit, should we do it? Well, scientists have recently gained the power to edit the DNA of humans, thus changing their characteristics, but the negative, ethical repercussions of its usage is greater than we may see at face value. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx