Sometime ago I wrote a post about the birth of a baby girl in London, who had been screened for BRCA-1, commonly called the “breast cancer gene.” I was more or less wondering out loud about the ethics of screening embryos, and where you draw the line.
I recently came across another story that takes the whole thing to another level. There is a clinic in the United States that offers pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select the gender of your baby. And they have started advertising the ability to choose other traits as well, including hair and eye colour. The Fertility Institutes, operating under Dr. Steinberg, is promoting the service and have some interested couples. Look on the clinic’s website under “What’s New” to see what’s on offer.
I’m not even really sure what to say to this. It’s one thing to screen for a very serious disease. It’s quite another to order the specific baby you want. It sort of runs counter to my whole conception of parenting and nature to select physical traits by screening embryos. Certainly, we all hope for healthy children. We want the best for our kids. But we also welcome our kids with open arms, as they are, knowing that life is messy and not everyone is going to be a supermodel or a rocket scientist.
Plus (keeping in mind that I have no knowledge of how genetics works) isn’t one of the strengths of the reproductive process the way that it creates diversity? The limitless combinations that can happen? I thought this was the sort of thing that ensured whole populations don’t get wiped out by a single virus, or allowed us to evolve. If we become a nation of Barbie and Ken clones don’t we lose the protections offered by nature?
I think that very few parents would actually screen for traits such as gender or physical appearance. PGD requires that you undergo in vitro fertilization, a process which is both expensive and grueling. On that basis alone few would choose it lightly. I also imagine that I am not the only one who finds it all ethically questionable. As I understand it many countries would not even allow such a thing to occur. But this is today – who knows where we will be in 20 years?
It’s an interesting place to be, at the juncture of science and ethics. It’s raising a lot of questions, and I’m afraid the answers might not be coming quickly enough. If there are even any answers at all.
Ive been seeing this all over the news this week… It is REALLY scarey.
Isn’t part of the fun of having a baby seeing what they look like.. who they turn out looking like?
I dont know very controversial huh?
Apparently you can convince a doctor to implant 8 kids when you already have a bunch at home and not a lot of means of supporting them. Ethically doctors have already crossed lines that as a society we probably wouldn’t want them to. You’re right though, most people wouldn’t go through the process, but there’s always one in every crowd.
Steve and I were reading on the link to the clinic and now you can have your sperm sucked out and still have a kid even if you have had vasectomy…..Steve’s theory is now the gov’t can ‘sterilise’ us all and grant us liscene to have children under their control…he has a sick and twisted mind though…but it is a thought.
It gives me great pause to read this and really, I think that more of society will choose to decide the sex of their child or determine their traits than wouldn’t. We are a designer society who like to be on the cutting edge of life and until recently, would spend vast amounts of money on hardly anything at all….and this might come again sooner than we all think!
Call me a prophet of doom, but this is opening the door to the birth of the super-man and the death of mankind.
This is just the first step in a long process…and I have no doubt it will go way too far.