dream child

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Sep 21, 2006

Once you decide to have a designer baby, where do you stop?

Would you prefer a healthy baby or a sick one. Healthy, obviously. But why stop with that question?

If it's ethical to take a peek at the genetic code, and eliminate the babies with known propensities to illness, what about characteristics that are not actually illnesses, but generally considered undesirable? Do you want your child to suffer the humiliation of premature baldness? A tendency to be overweight? Near-sighted?

And why not consider other factors that could make life easier for you and the family? Wouldn't you like to have children who are about the same size, so they can share clothes? Do you really want a left-handed child bumping elbows at the dinner table?

Finally the big question: If you already have a girl, and you're planning to stop at 2, don't you want a boy now?

It can be arranged. It is being arranged, right now, in American fertility clinics.

Ethicists find it troubling. But you'll notice that they can't explain why this particular choice should not be offered, when other choices are.

It's hard to concentrate, with that loud whooshing sound in your ears, as you zoom down the slippery slope.