It’s a controversial topic, but it appears that designing your own baby could be the norm in the not-too-distant future.
A US scientist has claimed that in twenty to thirty years time, sex will not be used for reproduction.
It’s already in practice in limited circumstances, but Professor Hank Greely of Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences in the US told the Aspen Ideas Festival this week that it will be the accepted norm for prospective parents to select embryos to be grown in a lab, reports IFLScience.
He told the festival that it will be cheaper and easier in the future to create embryos from parents’ DNA and screen them for potential diseases, and that certain features, like eye colour, could be selected.
Professor Greely downplayed the concern that creating one’s ideal baby in a lab was unethical.
“People say, ‘How can we let this happen?’ I think we will.”
“This is not designer babies or super babies,” Greely said. “This is selecting embryos. You take two people, all you can get out of a baby is what those two people have.”
“People, particularly where I live in Silicon Valley, will want to do it to get their perfect egg.”
He argued that reducing the risk of disease before a child is even born will tackle healthcare costs for families and countries in the future, but it remains to be seen what breeding out ‘flaws’ from the human race or even within certain countries would mean for humanity.
