Most people agree that parents should be able to “design” babies without Tay-Sachs disease. And many would understand why parents with severe diseases that are passed through the Y chromosome would select a female embryo. But what about choosing based on what eye color we like best? The question is no longer whether we can design our offspring, but if we should—and what happens when we try.
It may seem like creating the perfect child will eventually be a matter of who can pay for it. But predicting whether a couple’s offspring will be the next Mozart or Einstein is about as easy as predicting the precise location and airspeed of a hurricane nine months in advance. Even if we know that a combination of genes might result in a 12% increase in musicality, parents have better odds just by signing a child up for piano lessons.
That’s because our genes are too complex to predict.
Read the full, original story here: You Can’t Predict Destiny by Designing Your Baby’s Genome
- “Do Genes Influence Personality?,” Psychology Today
- “My Genome, My Self,” New York Times
- “Are We Too Close to Making Gattaca a Reality?,” Scientific American
