Institute For The Future

Fertility Treatments and Cosmetic Traits

On the heels of the public controversy over a mother of six using fertility treatments to have octuplets, comes a story from the Wall Street Journal that highlights the “ethical gray zones” brought about through fertility treatments.

 

A Los Angeles fertility clinic is going to begin offering parents the ability to select for babies with higher probabilities of having cosmetic traits such as eye or hair color. Using the same techniques that fertility doctors have used to screen embryos for life threatening diseases, coupled with recent advances in DNA analysis, makes it “technically feasible” for doctors to select babies who are more likely to have a particular eye or hair color.

 

Is designing green-eyed babies the tip of the iceberg?  Potentially. In a recent survey of 999 people seeking genetic counseling, 10 percent said they would like to use fertility treatments to select for taller or more athletic babies, while 13 percent said they’d use treatments to have smarter children.  Because traits like height and intelligence arise through environmental factors and the interaction of many genes, however, this isn’t possible, and probably won’t be for at least a while. Screening out for negative traits is far more accepted. Seventy-five percent said they would use fertility treatments to screen out babies with mental retardation.