Ask the Experts: Can Babies Be Made-to-Order?

With all the developments in cloning, genetic testing, and fertility treatments, it was only a matter of time before they started offering tailor-made babies too. Reports of these "made-to-order" babies have been circulating for years, but one fertility company announced that within the next 6 months they will begin offering the option of these custom baby treatments. The gender is not the only thing they state they can control, but they are offering the option to chose your babies eye color and hair color. The fertility companies say that they can offer such options by means of Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis, also known as PGD.

Using PGD, fertility specialists use an IVF to stimulate egg growth so that the woman produces 10-15 eggs, as opposed to the typical one. The doctors then removed these eggs and bring them to the lab to be fertilized. Once the embryos have been cleared of the typical genetic testing for diseases like downs syndrome and cystic fibrosis, the doctors select one or two of the embryos and inject them back into the woman.

So how does this allow you to choose the babies gender? When the embryos are taken out, the doctors can conduct genetic testing beginning at the 8-cell stage. The doctors look in the nucleus for the DNA fragments containing X and Y chromosomes. The doctors use lighting probes to detect the difference between the two chromosomes, and have complete confidence in identifying the embryo's gender from this.

As for eye and hair color, researchers have invested a lot of time and money into identifying the genes that control these two traits. Though they understand that multiple genes can lead to these traits, they hope to discover when the genes are defined in the embryo and thus can be identified for the future parent.

With all these extended desires for building babies, doctors are going to have to increase the amount of embryos they take to get the results they desire. The embryos not being used can be discarded or donated to science, based upon the parents choice, which brings a lot of controversy. Many people feel that discarding these embryos based upon the fact that they aren't perfect poster children is a waste of a human life. Others fear that if the made-to-order baby craze becomes popular, every child is going to merge to look the same based upon the latest society desires.


- Alyssa Terestre (3)

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