From BBC website:<\/p>\n
“This is the inevitable slippery slope of a fertility process which results in many more embryos being created than can be implanted.” Josephine Quintavalle of Comment on Reproductive Ethics<\/p>\n
A US clinic has sparked controversy by offering would-be parents the chance to select traits like the eye and hair colour of their offspring.<\/p>\n The LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year.<\/p>\n His clinic also offers sex selection.<\/p>\n UK fertility experts are angered that the service will distract attention from how the same technology can protect against inherited disease.<\/p>\n The science is based on a lab technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD.<\/p>\n This involves testing a cell taken from a very early embryo before it is put into the mother’s womb.<\/p>\n Doctors then select an embryo free from rogue genes – or in this case an embryo with the desired physical traits such as blonde hair and blue eyes – to continue the pregnancy, and discard any others.<\/p>\n Dr Steinberg said couples might seek to use the clinic’s services for both medical and cosmetic reasons.<\/p>\n For example, a couple might want to have a baby with a darker complexion to help guard against a skin cancer if they already had a child who had developed a melanoma. But others might just want a boy with blonde hair.<\/p>\n His clinic is offering this cosmetic selection to patients already having genetic screening for abnormal chromosome conditions in their embryos.<\/p>\n “Not all patients will qualify for these tests and we make NO guarantees as to ‘perfect prediction’ of things such as eye colour or hair colour,” says the clinic’s website.<\/p>\n Dr Steinberg said: “I would not say this is a dangerous road. It’s an uncharted road.”<\/span><\/p>\n