The Science and Ethics of Designer Babies

BBC's 2005 documentary "Who's Afraid of Designer Babies" explores the current techniques in selecting for specific genes and inserting target genes into the genome of an embryo. While the documentary is a bit dramatic, it brings to light some of the concerns with the potential of techniques such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), gene therapy, and cloning to be be used to generate a legion of perfect individuals akin to Hilter's vision of creating a pure "Aryan" race.

All of the current methods whose main purposes are to either help parents conceive a child free from serious genetic abnormalities or to modify a gene causing a disease into its more functional allele are currently far from being practically applied to the realm of creating designer babies. PGD, for example, can currently only be used to screen for a few genes in a given embryo and may require screening of hundreds of embryos to find one egg with the desired combination of genes. Even more crucial is that the process mandates that the mother go through fertility treatments regardless of her fertility status. A mother who utilized PGD due to a chromosomal abnormality that was causing her to miscarry argues that no woman would go through the traumatic experience that defines the fertility treatments just to create a child with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Gene therapy and cloning are also not currently viable options for producing designer babies because scientists do not currently understand enough about embryonic development to risk inserting genes into the genome of developing embryos. Gene therapy resulted in the death of an adult patient several years ago, something scientists had not anticipated,  while cloning has resulted in far more miscarried and abnormal fetuses than viable clones.

Thus, the conclusion of the documentary was that designer babies are not something that science will be able to generate and we will only be able to design our babies by "choosing who we get in bed with" and by shaping the environments we raise our children in. However, I believe that as science continues to move forward and advances are made in preventing children from being born with serious abnormalities, these techniques will eventually be able to be practically used to select desired traits, opening the door to a series of ethical debates. In the end, culture will shape how these technologies are applied and what traits are deemed favorable in offspring. The idea that humans will be the subjects of artificial selection and that more than likely only wealthy people will have access to such technology is what I find to be truly frightening. In this sense, I suppose I am indeed afraid of designer babies.