WIKIMEDIA, SCA SVENSKA CELLULOSA AKTIEBOLAGETThe patent awarded to California-based genetic testing company 23andMe for its “Family Traits Inheritance Calculator” sounded to some bioethicists a lot like a green light for making designer babies based on the genetic profiles of couples seeking to procreate. And for good reason. The patent application, filed by 23andMe more than five years ago, basically lays out a blueprint for how prospective parents could use the company’s technology to choose which gametes to use in an in vitro fertilization scenario to get just the baby they wanted. A child’s eye color, lactose tolerance, and earwax consistency are just few of the traits that 23andMe’s calculator can predict, according to the patent.
“What 23andMe is claiming is a method by which prospective donors of ova and/or sperm may be selected so as to increase the likelihood of producing a human baby with characteristics desired by the prospective parents, the selection being based on a computerized comparison of the genotypic data of the egg provider with that of the sperm provider,” wrote Sigrid Sterckx, a bioethicist at Ghent University in Belgium, and a trio of coauthors in an opinion piece published yesterday (October 3) in Genetics in Medicine. “We cannot elaborate here on this debate, but it is clear that selecting children in ways such as those patented by 23andMe is hugely ethically controversial,” the authors continued. “The use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis to avoid implantation of embryos ...
