Made to order (gene editing) (B1/B2)

cover slide

Warmer

Imagine your parents could have “designed” you before birth. Think silently first, then share what you wish to:

picture

1. Which one aspect of your appearance might they have changed — and would you want them to have?

2. Which one aspect of your character?

3. Are you glad they couldn't — or do you wish they had?

Words to steal

Cross out the one word that does not fit:

1. You can have / win / defend / build / demand the right to choose.

2. It's a basic / legal / moral / straight / fundamental right.

3. Parents want to screen / edit / select / invent / test embryos.

4. The treatment carries a serious / slight / heavy / genuine / real risk.

Use two of the surviving collocations to state your own first position on this topic — one sentence.

Two documents. Read the price list the way its customers would — then read the letter the clinic received.

DOCUMENT 1 · CLINIC PRICE LIST

DOCUMENT 2 · A LETTER TO THE CLINIC

GENESIS FERTILITY — OPTIONS & PRICING

Screening for 400+ serious genetic conditions … €2,900

Extended health panel (lifetime risk scores) … €5,900

Sex selection (where legally permitted) … €1,500

Trait & potential panel (height, body type, cognitive indicators) … ask your consultant

All choices remain fully yours. Genesis does not edit embryos; we help you choose among your own. Results are probabilities, not promises. Finance plans available from €99/month.

Dear Genesis, I have Gilber syndrome — one of the 400 diseases you offer to delete. I run a company, pay taxes and was best man at my consultant's wedding, though he seems not to remember which category I belong to. I understand why parents sit in your waiting room; watching a child suffer is a price no one should pay. But be accurate in your brochure: you are not only offering choices. You are publishing a list of lives your customers should avoid, with mine near the top, reasonably priced at €2,900. When you rank embryos, someone real is always standing at the bottom of the table. I heard you. I wanted you to know that I heard you. — D.

Comprehension

Discussion

1. What does the clinic not do — and why does it advertise that so clearly?

2. Find the sentence in the price list written by lawyers. And the one written by salespeople.

3. What single word does D. object to most, in your view: the menu, the prices, or "avoid"?

1. "Finance plans available from €99/month." What does that line do to the whole document?

2. D. accepts why parents come, and objects anyway. Can both positions be right at once?

picture

Where do you stand?

Draw your own line. Number the list 1–8 from most acceptable to least — then find where your partner's order differs and argue only about that gap:

1. screening out a disease that kills in childhood

2. screening out a condition people live full lives with

3. choosing a boy or a girl to "balance the family"

4. choosing deafness, proudly, within Deaf culture

5. buying ten extra centimetres of height

6. selecting for "calm temperament"

7. selecting a child to be a medical match for a sick sibling

8. choosing nothing — while knowing everyone else at the clinic is choosing

What would you say?

In each situation, someone explains their choice. Respond to each in one or two sentences — agree, refuse, or complicate:

"Our first child died of a genetic disease at nine. We are not philosophers. We are not going back into that room."

"Short men earn less and date less. Call me shallow — but you're calling the whole world shallow, and it's the world my son has to live in."

"If I don't choose, my child starts behind every child whose parents did. My hand is being forced by everyone else's freedom."

"I'm the consultant. I sat with the parents from line one of that menu for six years before I took this job. Judge the menu if you like — I judge the waiting room."

Discussion

1. The clinic "only chooses, never edits". Is that a real moral line or a marketing one? Where would editing change your answers above?

2. An ethicist predicts no super-babies — just the rich buying small statistical advantages, compounding quietly for generations. Is the boring dystopia worse than the dramatic one?

3. Who should draw these lines: parents, doctors, parliaments — or D., and people like him, with a seat at the table?

Homework

Write the clinic's reply to D. — the honest version, not the lawyers' version.

picture

Every era thought it was improving its children — by prayer, diet, discipline, tutoring. This is the first that can put it on a menu with finance plans. Is the menu the moral difference — or just the honesty?