Science May Pave Way For Designer Babies

ByABC News via logo
November 6, 2002, 8:41 PM

Dec. 26 -- Picture a world where you can have a perfect baby, not by nature, but by design.

Hollywood imagined it in Gattaca, the 1997 movie starring Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, about a world dominated by a genetically programmed elite, for whom traits like baldness and nearsightedness were done away with through genetic engineering.

Now, it may become reality at a clinic near you. Existing technology used to detect diseases could also allow parents to select their babies' most important physical traits from eye color and hair color to brain power and even the shape of the babies' nose.

Critics fear that the era of "designer babies," where parents choose baby features as though ordering from a menu, could be on the way. Yet, the technology is not new.

For the past few years, an embryonic analysis known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, has been used to identify unhealthy embryos in couples that have a history of genetic disease, such as cystic fibrosis, or hemophilia. Now, a small number of fertility specialists in the United States are using the technology to allow parents to choose one life-changing trait: gender.

'We Want a Boy'

A couple that visited Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, one of the few fertility specialists who offers PGD for gender selection, spoke to Good Morning America.

"We have two girls we are happy with," said the patient, who, along with his wife, didn't want to be identified. "They are great kids and we've decided to have another one, and we want a boy."

That's where PGD comes in. In vitro fertilization techniques are used to obtain eggs from the mother, which are then fertilized in the lab with sperm obtained from the father. Through a sophisticated method called micro-manipulation, one or more cells are then removed from the developing embryo two to four days after fertilization. The removed cell or cells are used for analysis, with results obtained within 12 to 24 hours.

After analysis, the desired embryo is implanted into the woman's uterus, to develop into a normal pregnancy.