In 30 years, we humans will be playing God according to a Stanford Professor who says we wouldn’t need sex to procreate. To him, sexual intercourse may become obsolete when it comes to procreation as people get more aware of their sexuality and medical technology makes breakthroughs
Professor Hank Greely asserted a few days ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival that selecting embryos to be grown in a laboratory setting will not only be far more common, but – somehow – even cheaper that doing it the analog way.
The process, at least in America, will be as follows. First, embryos will be cultured from the DNA of both parents, which will then be inspected by medical professionals and the potential parents. The embryos will be screened for genetic diseases or gene variants that would increase the baby’s chance of contracting a disease.
It’s also possible that cosmetic features, including hair and eye color, could also be selected. Genes that are linked to higher cognitive abilities could even be selected, or perhaps spliced in. Any editing will be performed by CRISPR – the ultra-precise gene-editing technique currently in use around the world in medical trials – or whatever its technological successor will be.
This isn’t the first time this idea has been suggested, but whenever it rears its head, it understandably brings with it ethical concerns. Although few would argue with removing genetic diseases from a baby’s genome, the idea of customizing cosmetic features, along with changes to the structure of the brain, err slightly closer to the field of eugenics than others.
Greely brushed this aside saying, “This is not designer babies or super babies,” Greely said. “This is selecting embryos. You take two people, all you can get out of a baby is what those two people have.”
“People, particularly where I live in Silicon Valley, will want to do it to get their perfect egg.”
