Designer Babies Life Science Project

The Life Science class is mid-way through the Designer Baby project.  This group of sixth and seventh graders were instructed to create a blog.  In their blogs, the kids are answering several questions:

   1. What is a designer baby?

   2. What is In Vitro Fertilization or IVF?

   3. What is Pre-Genetic Diagnosis?

   4.  What are 'savior siblings'?

   5.  Where do you stand?  Should parent's design their babies?  What does the existing technology allow?  Where do experts see designer babies heading in the future?

Some students breeze through these types of assignments; so, I added a little for them.  Jodi Picoult's novel, 'My Sister's Keeper' centers on a 'savior sibling'.  Her novel, 'Handle With Care', addresses the issue of 'wrongful birth' law suits.  There are plenty of web sites that discuss these two books.  I asked the kids to see if they could locate case studies, too.

The kids have creative freedom and may add videos, web sites, images, and links to their blog posts.  This project has benefits for students with learning differences, who may gravitate to videos for their explanations.  Gifted students might do compare the case studies and post their opinions.  My goal is to inject a bit of technology and get the class to write.