Designer Babies: Examining the Ethics of Genetic Testing

If you could choose the healthiest embryo to carry so that your future child could avoid deadly diseases, would you do it? Would you choose an embryo that is more likely to be happy and less likely to have mental health problems like depression and schizophrenia? What about choosing your child’s athletic abilities or IQ?

If you could hand-pick all of your child’s physical, mental, and emotional traits before getting pregnant, where would you draw the line?

This scenario that used to only exist in science fiction is already partially a reality with a company called Genomic Prediction offering something that they call an “Embryo Health Score” or PGT-P test, which allows people to test their embryos to see which are more at risk of certain diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and schizophrenia. Future parents can then “compare overall disease risks among embryos and make decisions about which embryo to prioritize for transfer.”

Despite The American College of Medical Genetics saying “preimplantation PRS testing is not yet appropriate for clinical use and should not be offered at this time,”...