Designer Babies — One Clinic Says the Future is Here & Now

One of the interesting things about the uproar over designer babies…over picking eye color and hair color…is that in one sense it’s already happening.  When couples enter into financial agreements for egg donation they are often presented with options — would you prefer if your donor has a certain height, eye color, educational background  — the hope being that a certain trait will be handed down. The latest wrinkle to all this involves a fertility clinic in New York and Los Angeles that says in the next 6 months they will be able to offer prospective parents the chance to pick eye and hair color of their infant.  Now, the disclaimer is that it’s not 100 percent, they are promising to greatly increase the odds of achieving your wants.  But nonetheless the pitch is sparking controversy. Ethicists have been quick to chime in with a warning:  First eye color then what?  Will we be modifying  intelligence?  What if you don’t get the mix of smarts and looks that you wanted?  It’s all a slippery slope. Dr. Jeff Steinberg heads the clinic that is making the latest promise.  "Genetic health is the wave of the future", he told the New York Daily News which broke the story this morning.  "It’s already happening and it’s not going to go away." We have reached out to several geneticists and fertility experts today to ask the simple question:  Possible? There was some difference in opinions, but generally it seems it is conceivable that the clinic can do what it’s promising.  No one knows for sure what this doctor has worked up.  That would require peer reviewable research.  But it seems that – in general – the understanding of genes has advanced to the point where yes, it is possible that a doctor is on the verge of achieving this. Whatever the state of the science is today, it seems that society needs to work out – right now – where we stand on this.  Laws need to updated to reflect the reality.  The future is closer than many think.