Designer Babies

Earlier this week, The Today Show did a story about a fertility clinic in California which is offering clients the option to increase their odds of select traits such as eye color, skin tone, and hair. This is in addition to already selecting the sex of the child.

Some wonder if this is the first step towards "designer babies." You know, babies where parents decide nearly every physical and emotional trait of their children. Personally I don't think we'll ever get to that point nor do I think many parents would want to choose every aspect of their children. There's something fascinating about waiting nine months to see if your baby will have brown eyes or blue, have curly or straight hair (or any hair at all), and if they'll have your fingers or those of your partner. And then watching them as they grow older, noticing personality traits and skills of yours or your partners or personality traits and skills that come from neither of you. Why would any body want to pick these things out before? I know I wouldn't.

However, I don't have any problem with people who want to choose the sex of their child. Some couples might want to balance out their family or maybe they have five boys and desperately want a girl. Or maybe the parents know they are carriers for a certain disease and would prefer to have a child without subjecting them to that disease. In that case, this is where this type of "pick and choose" works out in the best interest of the child and family.

I once watched a show about a couple who had a terminally ill son who needed a bone marrow transplant and no one in the family matched. This couple went through two rounds of IVF to find an embryo that would match their son and then had to wait nine months for the birth all while hoping and praying their older son would live long enough to be able to use the new child's stem cells from the umbilical cord. The son did live, received the transplant and is healthy this day all because of a younger brother his parents decided to have to save his life. People judged this couple saying that they were "playing God" by creating a life to save another; that they were "using" their new child. But this couple loved their new son as much as their other children, even though the circumstances for his birth were not considered "traditional."

While I don't think we'll ever get to the point of making true "designer babies" I hope that people are wise enough to realize it's one thing to pick the sex of your child, but an entirely different thing when it comes to picking other traits. Sometimes it's best to just let things be decided by the old-fashioned way. As I always tell my kids: You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.