Designing Your Baby
The technology is in place to order up a child’s physical traits or intellect. The issue is how far we want to take it.
By Scott McCredie for MSN Health & Fitness
It started a decade ago with Dolly the Scottish sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal. Then a year later came Lucy the Canadian mouse, the first mammal with artificially implanted genes that could be inherited by her offspring. Since then, the world has expressed a mixture of confusion, horror and optimism at the potential of genetic engineering to prevent diseases in humans and “enhance” physical or cognitive traits.
So where does this technology stand? Are we any closer to creating so-called “designer babies”? And is there a developing darker side in which parents intentionally alter a baby’s genetic makeup so he has the same condition, such as deafness or dwarfism, as his parents?
If the last question shocks you, be clear that a survey published by the medical journal Fertility and Sterility showed that about 3 percent of U.S. fertility clinics—four out of 137 responding clinics that perform embryo screening—already have performed procedures to help couples create children with a disability such as dwarfism or deafness.
First, a few definitions are needed. According to Marcy Darnovsky, associate director of the Center for Genetics and Society, in Oakland, Calif., when people say “designer baby” they often mean different things. Some refer to the ability to select the sex of an embryo; others interpret it as selecting the embryo (fertilized egg) itself. Embryo selection is increasingly used for in vitro procedures when couples are at high risk for certain genetic diseases, such as cystic fibrosis. It allows them to screen out embryos carrying genes associated with the disease.
Most scientists avoid the “designer baby” phrase altogether, preferring “germline engineering” or inheritable genetic modification (IGM), defined as the altering of genes that pass on to future generations. This contrasts with non-inheritable gene therapy, such as when altered genes are added to body tissue, say, a diseased lung, in efforts to improve function.
