Good morning,

My name is Michael B. Michael, I am laying on my death-bed reminiscing about my life as a Designer Baby and how my "perfection" ultimately lead to my death.

It all started when my parents were talking about having another child, this would be me. When my brother was still in my mother womb, he developed a very genetic disease, Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type II which meant that once my brother was born he would most likely die within the first year due to respiratory failure. My parents were extremely saddened, my father wanted my mother to have an abortion, but my mother didn't want that, she wanted to baptize my brother so he could go to "Heaven." My mother was not a religious woman but she did believe in the after-life, she grew up catholic and the only thing she wanted was to baptize her kids and then let them decide if they want to follow the religion.

After arguing, my father understood my mother's point and they waited until term. The weeks leading up to the birth of my brother were discouraging for my father knowing that his first son will die and he could not do anything about it. When the birth of my brother came, all the worries that my father and mother had suddenly went away, the only thing they cared for was their son's birth. They named him Bartholomew, he was then baptized and my parents never once left his side. Unfortunately, Bartholomew passed away two months after birth, my parents were devastated, specially my mother. She stopped going to work and became depressed, my father used his work to try and keep himself busy. My mother threatened to leave my father, not because of anything he had done but because every time she looked at him it reminded her of Bartholomew. My father quickly called a therapist for married couples, specially couples that have gone through the loss of a child. They went through a year and a half of therapy until they could finally look at each other and talk normally, the loss of Bartholomew was still there, it’s something that you can't get rid of but it is something that gets better with the years.

A few years had passed by after Bartholomew's passing, my parents were getting older and they were reaching their child bearing years. My father wanted a child, someone he can see grow up and be proud of but he didn't know how to bring it up to my mother. There was no way around it, he had to be blunt about it, she was hesitant about the idea but did not shut it down. The only obstacle was my mother's thought of going through the same pain she had gone through with Bartholomew. My father was a very successful businessman, many of his friends were at the top just like himself. They would often meet and talk about business, one day he mentioned the situation that he had with my mother, when suddenly one of his friends offered a solution. His friend had an engineering company which focused on biology, to keep it short, he mentioned CRISPR Cas 9, which was a genome editing machine that could potentially edit out the DNA which hold the Osteogenesis Imperfecta. He did mention that initial tests were great and everything was working fine, the only thing they were unsure about were the long-term effects of genome editing. My father wasted no more time and went home to tell my mother, she was scared of the idea but my father kept reassuring her about it, after a couple of days of discussing the situation my mother said yes.

The process begins with the doctors extracting one of my mother's egg and my father semen and running them through the machine and cut out the bad DNA and edit-in good DNA. After all the editing is done, they will fertilize the egg and then insert back into my mother. After that, it will be like any other birth, she would carry me until term. They did pregnancy testing to see if there were any complications but everything came out clean, my parents were extremely happy to know this.

When I was born they gave me the name Michael B. Michael, my middle name being Bartholomew, they wanted a part of my brother to be with me and themselves, it was more of a memoir towards him. Once I was born, I was just like any other baby, except for the fact that I was a "perfect" baby, there wasn't any bad DNA in me. Any baby that was genetically modified is considered a "Designer Baby," even though my parents didn't alter any of the aesthetics about me.

I grew up like any other privileged child, I went to private schools all my life. I would always have to go back to the doctor to make sure that everything was fine with my DNA, to make sure that there weren't any late on-set mutations. Making friends for me was never an issues, the issue can when I was trying to connect with a girl on a relationship level. I blame my perfect DNA, unconsciously I couldn't move forward with another person unless I knew they were also perfect, on a molecular level. This was the biggest issue in my life, not being able to find somebody that I could fully connect to.

My father trained me and helped me understand the business that he was in so that one day I can take over the company and run it myself.

Once I turned 25 years old, my father handed the company to me, both of my parents were old, my father nearly 70 and my mother 65. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, but it was caught early and she was treated with chemotherapy, until she was cancer-free. Fighting cancer took a lot out of my mother, she was not the same since, she was ready to give in. The day came were my mother had passed away due to natural causes. My father passed away the year after due to natural causes, in my opinion, he couldn't live without my mother.

I was only 26 years old when I no longer had my parents. This was a very depressing time, I was all alone, the only thing that I had left was my father's company. During this depressing time, I stopped going to the doctor to get my regular check-up.

When I turned 30 years old, breathing started becoming difficult and I felt weaker. I immediately visited the doctor to get checked up. The doctor told me that he had found my mutated DNA that had a late on-set. This mutated DNA was holding Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type II. The prognosis for this disease is usually a year, so that is the amount of time that I had, and the time is almost running out.

I am laying on my death-bed reminiscing about my life as a Designer Baby and how my "perfection" ultimately lead to my death. I completely had cut all ties with my friends when my parents died and I was depressed. I am completely alone in this hospital room waiting to die. Being a "perfect" person was not worth the ultimate isolation that I had to go through, I would've rather had my parents try without the genome editing and hope that I wouldn't have developed the disease because at the end, their solution backfired. The only positives things that are coming out of this is the fact that my parents have passed away already and don't have to see another son pass away and that I am the last person in my bloodline with this mutated genes, another person won’t have to go through the same pain that I went through.