Designer Babies

How would you like to pick out your own "perfect" child? It's your choice, boy or girl? Will they have blond hair and blue eyes? What if you could choose if your baby will have a genetic disease or not?

With advances in scientific knowledge of the human genome and our increasing ability to modify and change genes, this scenario of "designing" your baby could well be possible in the near future.

There are certain kinds of techniques already being used where embryos are chosen by sex and genetic disease bearing genes. If the preferred child is found then the embryo is implanted through In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) . This allows parents to screen their embryos before they are implanted to check for possible genetic abnormalities to give them the best possible chance to conceive a healthy baby. Doctors can look for certain gene combinations that carry a higher risk for diabetes, heart disease or cancer.

In the future there may also be the possibility to replace faulty genetic sequences with healthy DNA in embryos essentially curing many genetic diseases.

So, should parents be able to create their children?

Many countries have made genetic screening or altering of embryos illegal and there are a great deal of ethical concerns surrounding the issue.

Despite the controversies scientists believe that the research being conducted to correlate specific genes with specific characteristics could have massive benefits in regards to stem cell research. Peter Donovan, professor of biological chemistry and developmental and cell biology, and co-director of the Center, and his team discovered a greatly improved method for genetically manipulating human embryonic stem cells earlier this year.

"The ability to generate large quantities of cells with altered genes opens the door to new research into many devastating disorders."
"Not only will it allow us to study diseases more in-depth, it also could be a key step in the successful development of future stem cell therapies," says Donovan.

Medically I'm personally in favor of creating your own children but as far as choosing your baby's appearance through these techniques, I think that that's just going too far. I mean if you are aware that their is a genetic disorder that runs in your family and you want to make sure that your child doesn't have to suffer that fate then I am fully supportive. But on the other hand there will be people that would take advantage of the technology, specifically choosing every aspect that would make up the ideal child for them. That's totally under minding nature and could alter the human race. As long as people are responsible this could be an amazing thing for families as well as stem cell research.