Bring your partner, grab a seat, pick up your baby catalogue and start choosing. Will you go for the brown hair or blonde? Would you prefer tall or short? Funny or clever? Girl or boy? With rapid advances in scientific knowledge of human genome and our increasing ability to modify and change genes, this scenario of ‘designing’ your baby could be possible in the near future.
Early this year, an US clinic offers parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their baby. This trait-selection is based on a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). A technique of genetic screening that has already being used since 1989. For PGD, parents are require to provide a number of fertilised embryos created through In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF). The embryo grows for a few days before a single cell is removed, and tested to find out if abnormal genes are present. Only those free of certain disease are implanted in the mother’s womb. Similarly, in trait-selection, the doctor will select an embryo with the desired physical traits such as blonde hair and blue eyes – to continue the pregnancy, and discard any others.
With no doubt, PGD is a sophisticated way to avoid a growing number of genetic diseases, as well as opens up a whole new set of possibilities in genetic alteration. However, the main issue is the idea of treating the child as product for which parents are seeking quality control. So, the question arises: should we be doing this? Should parents be allowed to create their babies? The potential for misuse of this technology could have dire consequences for the human race.
Jacqueline Hu 42061618
http://www.bionetonline.org/English/content/db_cont1.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7918296.stm
