More Brain Points

The Ideal Baby
Natasha Amershi 

            We all dream of an ideal baby, but what if I could tell you there is a new way of getting exactly that for your child. I’m talking gender, eye color, hair color, hair type. You name it, you have it. And if that weren’t enough, researchers at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland have found possibly a new way to prevent any type of genetic disorder from their mothers to their offspring.

            The process is simple; take three DNA samples and remove the nucleus DNA from the donor’s eggs (who would obviously be a healthy, disease-free donor) and replace that with the DNA of the mother. The child will inherit their mother traits, but not have her mitochondrial DNA that is where genetic disorders are created. So far there have been success stories when researchers tested this strategy on monkeys. This process has the advantage of reducing the child’s risk to any type of disorder all the while have the opportunity to be the ideal child.

In the book, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It, Lisa Eliot has a section on “the moment of chance” where she speaks of in vitro fertilization, preimplanation genetic diagnosis and Microsort. PGD is also used to detect disorders that are sex-linked such as hemophilia. Microsort separates the greater X-carrying sperm to another group than those who don’t shine as bright- thus picking the desired sperm. All these processes are becoming more and more popular as couples are beginning to see the bliss in knowing the gender or even how the baby will come out. For many couples, these processes couldn’t have been handier.

Such systems have been created in hopes of successful fertilization all with the same intention of creating a healthy, happy baby but its when we pick and choose what we want our child to inherit, that we’re asking for an ethic call. It is amazing how far technology has come, and it’s largely for the greater good. Modern technology now gives us the ability to detect disorders, distinguish genders, and above all ensure that the child will be healthy. So why is it so bad? What could possibly be so bad in having this sort of information- shouldn’t we be taking advantage of this?

Read more: FDA Considers 3-Person Embryo Fertilization | TIME.com http://healthland.time.com/2014/02/24/fda-considers-3-person-embryo-fertilization/#ixzz2uV3XUBlf

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208388/Danish-sperm-donor-passes-rare-genetic-disorder-43-babies-thought-fathered-different-countries.html