Designer Babies: Can We Now Play God? March 5
Reproductive technology has certainly come a long way. While we may be thankful for the hope that research and technology has provided parents who are unsuccessful at their attempts at bearing children, we have, more often than not, been plagued with the consequences of the other side of the coin. In the world of science, can we really say, whoops, we have gone far enough?
Some of these technologies have been regarded as blessings. We have test tube babies. Women who find love and start to live life after menopause now have the option to have children using their eggs. If there is an inherited disease in the family, we can now opt for embryo selection to eliminate the possibility of passing that on to our children. Embryo selection can also be used to provide donor material for a sibling who has fallen ill. Sperm sorting can allow parents of all boys to finally conceive that long-awaited daughter.
In the wake of the single mom who gave birth to octuplets, another announcement from the world of reproductive medicine has triggered the question of when is technology going too far. The Los Angeles Fertility Institutes has revealed plans for a new service: for eighteen thousand dollars, you can, setting all niceties aside, ‘design’ the look for your new baby. Talk about Kate Hudson’s character photoshopping her and Matthew McConaughey’s would-be children in a photo album on How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days – scary or great?
A technique called pre-implantation diagnosis or PGD, which was created in the 1990s originally for the purpose of preventing parents from passing on genes for life-threatening diseases, will be used to allow prospective parents to choose their children’s physical traits. Couples who are planning on conceiving through in vitro fertilization can choose to avail of the service and determine beforehand their child’s gender, eye, hair, and skin color, among others. The Institute revealed that there are already about five requests for the procedure, and the first ‘designer baby’ may be born next year.
Tags: designer baby, fertility, pre-implantation diagnosis, reproductive technology
hairclippy Mar 6
Babies are god’s gift, so like a gift we don’t know what it is until we finally receive and open it. The thrill of anticipating the baby’s gender will be gone.
Softball Mar 9
i totally agree!