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Short Feature
SAMIYA FATIMA
Designer
Babies
Do We Need Them?
S
KY is the limit they say. Well, we have
reached much beyond it. The fruits of
a technology developed sometime
back, have just arrived in the market. A
fertility clinic in Los Angeles, USA claims that
it can help produce the kind of baby you
want. If you always wanted a blue-eyed
girl, you no longer have to hunt for a partner
with that feature and wait until nature does
its trick. Instead you just go to the clinic,
pay them a huge fee, give them the details
of how you want the baby to be, and you
will get it. Producing designer babies just
got simpler!
A room filled with blonde, fair skinned,
blue eyed babies with IQs of 140 is not
what you will only see in a sci-fi movie any
longer. Imagine a school with students
having the same IQ level…competition
and ranking will be a thing of past as all of
them will excel in their academic
Embryo
performances. All this is going to be reality
soon.
The word designer baby has been
defined in Oxford dictionary as a baby
whose genetic makeup has been
artificially selected by genetic engineering
combined with in vitro fertilisation to ensure
the presence or absence of particular
genes or characteristics. The technology
behind designer babies is based on Preimplantation Genetic Disorder (PGD). The
embr yo is created through In Vitro
Fertilisation (IVF). A single cell is removed
from the embryo within five days, and it is
then genetically tested. The parents then
decide whether to discard the embryo or
implant it.
The pioneer of IVF is Dr. Jeff Steinberg,
who came up with the science behind IVF
in the 1970s. He was a part of the team
that created test tube babies. He
took this technology a step ahead and
made it a cosmetic technology. He claims
that the LA fertility clinic that he owns can
give its customers/parents what they want
in their babies, be it sex or eye colour or
hair colour or height or intelligence or
athletic ability. Dr. Steinberg is expecting
to see a trait selected baby to be born
quiet soon.
Critics, however, are not sure about
the safety of this cosmetic technology. Their
major concern is the waste of embryos; if
the embryo developed is not as desired,
will it be discarded? How many embryos
will be killed till parents get their desired
trait? Potential human beings will be killed
for obscure matters like having straight hair
instead of curly; this will be as cruel as
murdering babies or abortions, which is
considered illegal in some countries. Dr.
Steinberg admits that it is not a dangerous
but uncharted road.
Ethicists are also afraid that the
supporters of designer babies and doctors
like Dr. Steinberg are trying to play extra
smart and outdo nature. They argue that
the whole science involved in embr yo
development and human body have not
been completely understood. Doctors and
researchers are not sure about many traits
like intelligence or height or athletic ability
which the LA fertility clinic claims it can
assure parents get what they want
Embroyes identified with
markers
A woman’s eggs are
fertilized with sperm in
a lab, creating several
embryos.
Only embryos with the
biomarkers for the
required traits are placed
in the woman’s womb.
A single cell is removed from each
embryo, and then tested for
biomarkers associated with the female
gender, green eyes and blond hair.
SCIENCE REPORTER, OCTOBER 2011
32
The procedure virtually guarantees that
the child will be female and increases
the probability it will have green eyes
and blond hair.
including those traits. Researchers argue
that such traits have not been fully
understood and are not solely governed
by genes. Eye colour or hair colour trait,
however, can be pre-implanted as the
genes involved for those have been
identified.
Designer babies come with a positive
side too. Since the embryo is screened at
a very early stage, any dreadful genetic
disorder such as Down’s syndrome, Cystic
Fibrosis, or Huntington can be detected
at the right time and treated properly,
thereby giving the child a healthy life
ahead. This is like a boon for individuals
with such genetic disorders wanting to
have their own children; they no longer
have to feel guilty about their defective
genes being transferred to their offspring.
This technology can also be used to create
an identical healthy baby to treat an older
sibling.
In fact, there have been such cases
where desperate parents had children to
treat their older kid. Adam Nash was the
world’s first known designer baby born by
the revolutionar y pre-implantation
process in the year 2000. Scientists
genetically selected his embryo so that
he would possess the right cells to save
his dying sister’s life. His sister suffered from
Fanconi’s anaemia (blood disorder)—the
chances of Adam getting the disorder
was also ver y high. An embr yo was
chosen, which did not have Fanconi’s
anaemia. Adam became a donor to his
sister, which doubled her chances of
survival.
In 2002, a British couple, Mr. and Mrs.
Whitaker, genetically selected an embryo
that would be a near perfect match to
their four-year-old son Charlie who had a
life threatening blood disorder, Diamond
Blackfan Anemia. This was done after
taking permission from the Human
Fertilisation and Embr yology Authority
(HFEA), UK.
Man is trying
to select what
is best suitable
in this world.
There will be
no natural
selection or
survival of the “It was a matter of vital strategic importance for the company! We
had to develop our own MBA graduates breeding in-house.”
fittest.
The other and rather discriminative
benefit of this technology is sex selection.
Parents can decide whether they want a
boy or a girl before the embryo is fully
developed. This is a blessing for families
who have been longing for a particular
gender baby and have been let down by
nature. This however would encourage
gender discrimination. At the end, it will
be a battle for the fairer sex.
This technology was primarily
developed to find out and possibly cure
genetic disorders in babies before it’s too
late and give the parents and the child a
happy and healthy life. This is a very noble
use of science, whose main motto should
be enhancing life by treating or curing
dangerous diseases rather than using all
the resources for unnecessary cosmetic
science.
However, there is a general fear that
children would be considered as
commodities. If a couple wants an athlete,
they will insert the necessary trait in the
embryo and eventually leave no room for
choice making the child an athlete. What
if he/she does not want to be one?
Freedom to live will be more or less
snatched away.
Supporters of this technology argue
that if one has the right of choosing the
partners with whom they want to have a
child, they should also have the liberty of
choosing the best embryo and genes to
produce the future generation.
Designer babies are like artificial
selection. Man is trying to select what is
best suitable in this world. There will be no
natural selection or survival of the fittest; as
everyone coming out will be fit (at least
according to human understanding).
Since parents want to give the best to their
children, they would want to give them
the best start in this world even if they have
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to take some drastic steps to
achieve it. If shelling out some
money guarantees the best future
for the child, the rich would
definitely fall for it. This might bring
out more discrimination as children
of the poor might not get that
advantage.
Here’s what a journalist had
to say: “Imagine ordering a baby
like dinner, ‘ we’ll take the boy in
Greek god model, but can you
make him 6"4’ instead of 6 feet?
And gimme green eyes instead of
blue, ash-blond hair…a little curly,
but not too much, olive
complexion, 140 IQ, heavy on
fast-twitch muscle.’ The world will
be filled with the most handsome
and beautiful looking boys and
girls. Every individual will be near
per fect, identical looking and
having similar abilities. Adolf Hitler
was on a quest to create a race
of Aryan blond, blue eyed and tall
people. Creating designer babies
is believed to be on the same
lines. A world filled with zombies
would be better! It’s the flaws and
faults which make this life
beautiful.”
Humans are trying to play god
and making every imaginable thing
artificially. Artificial sweeteners,
transgenic plants, cloned animals,
artificial rain, artificial blood, and
artificial organs, are we ready to
see an artificial baby? It’s time to
take a stand and decide how far is
too far.
Infants who have already chosen their profession
Short Feature
Ms Samiya Fatima, c/o Badruddin Khan,
H.No-16-2-55, Akbar Bagh, Hyderabad500036
SCIENCE REPORTER, OCTOBER 2011