Stirring the Simmering “Designer Baby” Pot
By Thomas H. Murray,
Science
| 03. 14. 2014
In February 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee met to consider the possibility of future clinical trials that would test mitochondrial manipulation technologies for two purposes: to treat infertility and to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial disease from women to their future children. This meeting focused on scientific, technological, and clinical issues. The FDA acknowledged “ethical and social policy issues related to genetic modification of eggs and embryos” but chose not to engage with them, at least not yet (1). Good ethics begins with good facts, but the effort by the FDA to get the facts straight is just the beginning, not the end, of the conversation we must have on the wisdom of mitochondrial manipulation and other reproductive technologies that potentially provide parents with more of a say about the children they have. Preventing a lethal disease is one thing; choosing the traits we desire is quite another.
Read more at Science...
Related Articles
By Alondra Nelson, Science | 09.11.2025
In the United States, the summer of 2025 will be remembered as artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) cruel summer—a season when the unheeded risks and dangers of AI became undeniably clear. Recent months have made visible the stakes of the unchecked use...
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
By Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian | 09.23.2025
In March 2021, a 25-year-old US citizen was traveling through Chicago’s Midway airport when they were stopped by US border patrol agents. Though charged with no crime, the 25-year-old was subjected to a cheek swab to collect their DNA, which...
By Julie Métraux, Mother Jones | 09.23.2025