by Matt Barr

Designer babies

Just as man's industry and commerce are part of the ecosystem, not some unnatural encroachment on it, so is the ability to choose the sex of babies, better ensure their health, and even eventually choose traits and features on the genetic level part of a "natural" state. Our development of technology and knowhow is indisputably part of "nature."

Whether it's desirable in the grand scheme is a harder question reasonable people can differ on, but it's difficult to argue that new parents should be able to vaccinate their children against deadly diseases but not avoid embryos that are predisposed to Down's Syndrome and other terrible fates at the outset.

This seems to be the way Britain is headed:

A controversial Commons Science and Technology Committee report said more decisions on fertility treatment should be made by patients and their doctors.

The MPs also called for the regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, to be disbanded.

And they said "taboo" research, such as implanting human cells into animals, should be considered, with regulation.

The report covers only In Vitro Fertilization (IVF):

Fertility expert Lord Robert Winston said he could not see issues with parents being able to choose their babies' sex, and that the numbers who would want to do so would be very small.

He told BBC Radio 4: "People will not go through IVF to choose the sex of their baby and even if they did it would not in any way, I think, damage the fabric of our society."

I think this is probably naive. While you may not go to the trouble and expense of IVF just to choose the sex of your baby, you may very well to ensure his or her health. You would spare no expense to get your baby better if he or she became ill after birth.

Still, don't think the government's getting out of the fertility regulation business altogether:

[The report] calls for a new body, a Regulatory Agency for Fertility and Tissues, to be set up in its place which would ensure clinics and laboratories maintained set technical and management standards.

It also says there should be stronger professional regulation, and more government and Parliamentary consideration of ethical and legal issues.

There is a place for government oversight here. As I've said before, regulation is a proper substitute for market correction where market correction would cost lives or health. Certainly this is such a case.

The most obvious consequence if the report's recommendations were to be acted upon would be to "democratize" this new technology. When something is possible but regulatory hurdles are high, the richest and best connected will take advantage, but no one else. The more decisions are placed in the hands of the market, the more market participants there will be.

Lord Winston, further to this point:

"I don't think you can regulate it. Because eventually, within the next few years, we are going to have very simple methods of choosing the sex of your baby.

"I think it is going to be extraordinarily difficult to regulate that."

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