Want a "Perfect Baby"? You're Gonna Have To Make It The Old-Fashioned Way.
That's right, Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, who announced last month that they would be offering PGD for eye and hair color and other cosmetic traits, has now announced via their website that they are backing off of their plans, says Fox News. Some say due to ethical criticism, other believe it may be because they never had the capability to offer trait selection in the first place.
Whatever the reason, one cannot doubt that Steinberg and colleagues certainly benefited from the attention their international clinics received--and that alone may have been the reason that they promoted their new service. Also, one can be assured that parents have asked for trait selection on Glenn McGee's "under the hood" model, but the question is whether Steinberg's clinic promised it to them and whether he and his colleagues could have delivered prior to the media and ethical storm that ensued.
Have no worries though--Fertility Institutes are also running a spring sale on a single cycle of IVF as a deal to their patients in these lean economic times! (I'm not kidding.... and no, I'm not linking to it.)
If you can't have a perfect baby, at least you can try to have one that costs less--apparently.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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Perhaps more disturbing is the effort by the Georgia state legislature to impose limits on IVF (GA SB 169). As a part of this effort, they are seeking to define "ex utero embryos as human beings �, so court disputes must be decided in the best interest of the embryo, not either parent fighting over the embryo." Here is a link the the Bioethics Defense Fund website http://www.bdfund.org/octomom.asp The legal and ethical implications of defining ex utero embryos as human beings are enormous.
- by Jeff Bedard on Mar 20, 2009 at 3:29 PM | link
It is a a great news for parents who wish their child to have certain traits. There is also a possibility of legal and ethical complications.
Joel
- by Vasectomy Reversal California on Mar 23, 2009 at 6:30 AM | link