Ethicist believes parents will soon choose babies from embryos
LOS ANGELES (AP) — With increasing rates of infertility around the globe, researchers are exploring new fronts in reproductive technology.
“Around 10 percent of reproductive-age couples in the United States have trouble getting pregnant or carrying a baby to term and we don’t understand why that is,” says Amander Clark with UCLA’s Broad Stem Cell Research Center.
Clark is working to convert human skin samples into eggs and sperm, a process known as in vitro gametogenesis or ivg. So far, that process has worked only with samples from mice.
“If the technology is proven to be safe and effective, then I think it should be used in specific cases as a way to overcome infertility,” Clark says.
It may not just address infertility. A prominent biomedical ethics expert predicts that parents could one day have dozens of embryos to choose from with different traits.
“They’ll go to a clinic, the man will give a sperm sample, the women will give instead of eggs, a little bit of a skin sample,” Stanford University law professor Henry Greely explains. “The cells in her skin will be turned into eggs, an unlimited supply of eggs, and then the sperm and eggs will be combined to make embryos.”
Instead of creating “designer babies” through changing an embryo’s dna, known as gene editing, Greely believes parents instead will choose an embryo to make into a child based on the genetic analysis.
“I think in 20-40 years it’s going to be widely available, it’s going to be effectively free because insurers and governments will want to encourage people to use it and it’s going to change the way we make babies,” Greely predicts.
But many are skeptical that Greely’s theory will become a reality.
“I do not think IVG will ever replace regular human reproduction, nor do I believe IVG will ever replace in vitro fertilization,” Clark says.
Researchers say there are still a host of safety concerns that need to be studied before this process can be tested in humans. Some experts also doubt that people would take advantage of technology to seek out a perfect baby.
“Here in California where there are some people who would like to have a baby with as few of problems as possible, there are many people in this state, and in fact they’re the ones having most of the children, they’re the ones who will tell you it’s in god’s hands,” said Stanford prenatal genetic screening and diagnosis researcher Dr. Louanne Hudgins.
But the prospect is forcing scientists to consider the ethics of parents selecting their offspring.