Is it ethical to choose the color of your baby's eyes?
Is it ethical to choose the color of your baby's eyes?
Blair and James are trying to start a family. Like many parents, they expect their future offspring to be healthy. They would also like the baby to have blue eyes.
The couple, both 35, describe themselves as type A personalities who investigate everything. When they decided to try to have a baby, they examined the DNA tests to rule out the genetic mutations that cause diseases that could be passed on to their child. Then they learned about a test that could help predict the color of a future baby's eyes.
The blue eyes, says James, who has brown eyes, "are the icing on the cake". (The couple asked not to reveal their last names to maintain their privacy).
Many prospective parents already use DNA tests to detect possible genetic abnormalities that could lead to serious medical conditions. But as technology advances, they can also learn about features that have less impact on future health, such as eye color.
In the area of reproductive medicine, parents exercise great discretion in making decisions about their future children. But the idea that parents might one day select embryos based on what some consider aesthetic preferences, a future child that has a certain height or is good for sports or looks a certain way, raises challenging ethical questions. Perhaps, some ethicists argue, DNA testing will create a society that values more certain types of children more than others.
Many in vitro fertilization clinics that once offered embryo genetic testing to prevent medical disorders related to sex now also allow prospective parents to select the embryo genus due to personal preference.
What eyes have it?
How different combinations of eye colors of parents predict the color probabilities of their babies' eyes.
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The color of the eyes pushes the debate even more. Like many human traits, it is not determined by a single gene, but by a complex interaction of many genes. The test taken by Blair and James came from the work of forensic scientists who tried to predict the color of eyes, hair and skin for unknown suspects in criminal cases for which minimum amounts of DNA are available. In published articles, these researchers determined that testing six key DNA markers allowed them to predict whether someone had brown or blue eyes with more than 90% accuracy.
The scientific advances that allow predict traits Which involve multiple genes go beyond the color of the eyes. A company called Genomic Prediction received regulatory approval in New Jersey in September to market its expanded pre-implant genomic tests in many states. It will cost $ 400 per embryo. Genomic Prediction says that you can accurately predict which embryos are at high risk for complex diseases, such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease.
The company's researchers demonstrated how the approach could be used to predict the height In an article published this year in the journal Genetics. Someday, the new techniques could make it possible to predict the probability of the future academic potential of an embryo.
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A doctor specializing in fertility receives calls from people who want to know if it is possible to select embryos with aptitudes for music or athletic ability.
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In a blog post, Stephen Hsu, founder of Genomic Prediction, posed an ethical question: An IVF doctor has two healthy and viable embryos and must choose which one to implant. One has a hypothetical risk score that indicates that the embryo has a high risk of having academic difficulties in school. The second embryo has a score that indicates that the future child will probably have no problems. Do you tell the parents?
"It seems ethically not defensible to hide information from parents," he says, "and ethically defensible to reveal it to them."
Some IVF doctors say it is too early to routinely offer people risk scores on their embryos. Mandy Katz-Jaffe, reproductive geneticist and scientific director of CCRM, a Denver fertility clinic, says the results are often a mixture of genetics and the environment. In addition, the data sets on which the algorithms are based involve geographically and demographically narrow groups.
Nathan Treff, scientific director of Genomic Prediction, says the company only offers risk predictions related to diseases and has no plans to predict the color of an embryo's eyes or the level of educational attainment. "It's not always black and white what people consider a disease," he says, "but we pay attention to what the community believes is ethical."
Jeffrey Steinberg, founder of the fertility institutes based in Encino, California, believes that his group is the only one that offers the test that Blair and James took. His team is working to develop the technology to test embryos for genetic markers related to eye color at the same time as the detection of genetic diseases. For now, the clinic only offers eye-color testing to some future parents. The institute charges $ 370.
Paula Amato, a fertility doctor at Oregon Health & Science University, and an ethics specialist, says the general opinion in this field is that genetic testing to prevent disease is ethically permissible. This is the selection of sex, although it is more controversial.
No one has asked about the color of the eyes in Dr. Amato's clinic. But thinking about sex selection has changed over time, and the same thing can happen with other traits, he says. Still, when it comes to eye color or other non-medical traits, she says: "There are not many clinics interested in entering that business."
Josephine Johnston is a research director at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute based in Garrison, N.Y. She studies genetic tests in embryos. For her, selecting embryos based on features such as the color of the eyes "may seem terribly close to a eugenic mentality, where we think we can classify the worthy and fit the unworthy and unfit".
Parenting often comes with "the understandable desire to give your child advantages," such as height or musical talent, she says. However, people are part of a society that fights against prejudice. "These kinds of decisions can fuel discrimination, not fight against it," she says.
While genetic testing of embryos is considered safe, there may be unexpected long-term effects. Many people feel uncomfortable selecting embryos for aesthetic features, concerned with the difficulties of drawing a line about what should be left to chance. Dr. Steinberg, for his part, says that he already receives calls from people who want to know if it is also possible to select embryos with aptitudes for music or athletic ability. (He says he still does not tell them).
One September afternoon, Blair and James meet with Dr. Steinberg and colleagues at the Ferny Clinic in New York City, where Dr. Steinberg also sees patients, to learn the results. "We have very good news for you," Dr. Steinberg tells the couple. Based on the results of the test, he says: "You can have a blue-eyed baby." Doctors say they estimate that in a group of five of their embryos, it is likely that one has blue eyes.
For now, the couple plans to try to get pregnant in the traditional way. "We will be happy to start our family," says Blair, regardless of the color of the eyes.
When they told their parents and friends that they were doing a DNA test to determine if they could have a baby with blue eyes, they got confusing answers. James's father was fascinated. But Blair says some family and friends thought using technology to learn about the color of a baby's eyes was a step too far.
She sees things differently. "It is being examined to see what is possible," she says. Your husband agrees. Once you start looking at an embryo to rule out diseases, he says, what is one more thing like eye color?
"You're already there," he says.
Write to Amy Dockser Marcus in amy.marcus@wsj.com
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