SA | The official policy
of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine is as follows:
“Whereas preimplantation sex selection is appropriate to avoid the birth
of children with genetic disorders, it is not acceptable when used
solely for nonmedical reasons.” Yet in a 2006 survey
of 186 U.S. fertility clinics, 58 allowed parents to choose sex as a
matter of preference. And that was seven years ago. More recent
statistics are scarce, but fertility experts confirm that sex selection
is more prevalent now than ever.
“A lot of U.S. clinics offer
non-medical sex selection,” says Jeffrey Steinberg, director of The
Fertility Institutes, which has branches in Los Angeles, New York and
Guadalajara, Mexico. “We do it every single day. We did three this
morning.”
In 2009 Steinberg announced that he would soon give
parents the option to choose their child’s skin color, hair color and
eye color in addition to sex. He based this claim on studies in which
scientists at deCode Genetics in Iceland suggested they could identify
the skin, hair and eye color of a Scandinavian by looking at his or her
DNA. "It's time for everyone to pull their heads out of the sand,”
Steinberg proclaimed to the BBC at the time. Many fertility specialists were outraged. Mark Hughes, a pioneer of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the whole idea was absurd and the Wall Street Journal quoted him
as saying that “no legitimate lab would get into it and, if they did,
they'd be ostracized." Likewise, Kari Stefansson, chief executive of
deCode, did not mince words with the WSJ: “I vehemently oppose the use
of these discoveries for tailor-making children,” he said. Fertility
Institutes even received a call from the Vatican urging its staff to
think more carefully. Seifert withdrew his proposal.
But that does
not mean he and other likeminded clinicians and entrepreneurs have
forgotten about the possibility of parents molding their children before
birth. “I’m still very much in favor of using genetics for all it can
offer us,” Steinberg says, “but I learned a lesson: you really have to
take things very, very slowly, because science is scary to a lot of
people.” Most recently, a minor furor erupted over a patent awarded to
the personal genomics company 23andMe. The patent in question,
issued on September 24th, describes a method of “gamete donor selection
based on genetic calculations." 23andMe would first sequence the DNA of
a man or woman who wants a baby as well as the DNA of several potential
sperm or egg donors. Then, the company would calculate which pairing of
hopeful parent and donor would most likely result in a child with
various traits.
Illustrations in the patent depict drop down menus
with choices like: “I prefer a child with Low Risk of Colorectal
Cancer; “High Probability of Green Eyes;” "100% Likely Sprinter;" and
“Longest Expected Life Span” or “Least Expected Life Cost of Health
Care." All the choices are presented as probabilities because, in most
cases, the technique 23andMe describes could not guarantee that a child
will or will not have a certain trait. Their calculations would be based
on an analysis of two adults’ genomes using DNA derived from blood or
saliva, which does reflect the genes inside those adults’ sperm and
eggs. Every adult cell in the human body has two copies of every gene in
that person’s genome; in contrast, sperm and eggs have only one copy of
each gene and which copy is assigned to which gamete is randomly
determined. Consequently, every gamete ends up with a unique set of
genes. Scientists have no way of sequencing the DNA inside an individual
sperm or egg without destroying it.
“When we originally
introduced the tool and filed the patent there was some thinking the
feature could have applications for fertility clinics. But we’ve never
pursued the idea, and have no plans to do so,” 23andMe spokeswoman
Catherine Afarian said in a prepared statement. Nevertheless, doctors
using PGD can already—or will soon be able to—accomplish at least some
of what 23andMe proposes and give parents a few of the choices the
Freemans made about their second son.
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