Choosing Tomorrow's Children: The Ethics of Selective Reproduction

Abstract

Advances in reproductive technology raise a host of difficult ethical questions. The development of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) mean that it is now possible, at least in principle, for prospective parents to select what children they will have. These techniques are already commonly used to screen against certain diseases. Far more controversially, they can also be used for sex selection, to screen against disability, or even to screen for disability. In one famous case, parents sought to use PGD to sex select a girl, after the tragic death of their young daughter.1 In another, the parents of a girl with Fanconi anaemia, a serious hereditary condition, used PGD to create a ‘saviour sibling’ so that cells from its umbilical cord could be used to cure their existing daughter.2 And a lesbian deaf couple deliberately solicited sperm from a deaf donor to ensure that their child would also be deaf.3 These and similar cases have already generated intense ethical and legal debate. But more troubling possibilities lie ahead. As behavioural genetics advances, it is likely that in the not so distant future reproductive technology could also be used to select and implant embryos that are more intelligent, or extroverted, or better looking—to create, as this is sometimes put, ‘designer children’.