PART TWO: Designing Our Babies
Already we are using ultrasound and other technologies to ensure “quality control” of our unborn babies. This is eugenics in action! Many people think that if you are carrying a handicapped baby, it’s a “good” reason for an abortion. And in vitro technology is being used to give us only the “best quality” embryos — and make sure that “substandard” embryos get destroyed.
Wouldn’t you secretly like to clone yourself? Or your favorite relative — or sports star? So far we have only cloned animals, but around the world people are trying hard to clone people.
Did you know that you can already go a long way toward designing your own baby? You can buy sperm over the Internet and choose the kind of “father” you want. Eggs are more difficult to get, but campus newspapers all over the country carry ads for attractive, clever young women who will sell their eggs so you can pick the “mother” too. Meanwhile, science is preparing us for much more sophisticated design options, changes in the “germline” of human life itself — the ultimate genetic engineering.
This section starts with “quality control” — weeding out imperfect babies. Then we look at cloning, which could give you a choice to pick the person you want your baby to replicate. Then we look ahead to the third step in this logical process: from deselecting the defective, to copying the one you pick, to designing your baby just as you want him or her to turn out.