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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 33 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