Designer babies: Chinese company working on technology to allow parents to pick ‘smartest’ embryos
by Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Natural News
Jan 25, 2014
(NaturalNews) Eugenics is quickly becoming big business in China, where at least one genomics company is attempting to pave the way for parents to literally pick and choose the “best” embryos to obtain the smartest possible children. Quartz reports that the cognitive genomics (CG) division at the Shenzhen-based genomics company BGI is currently working on the controversial project, which could one day allow for pregnancies with “designer” babies.
Like the plot of a bizarre sci-fi flick, the goal is to create detailed maps of the genes of smart individuals (e.g., math geniuses, thinkers and the like) for the purpose of identifying and selecting those genes in the embryos used for in vitro fertilization. Since as much as 80 percent of what determines IQ level is believed to be inherited, researchers believe that it may be possible to identify certain “smart” genes in human embryos that could be used to predict intelligence later in life.
In this case, the BGI team is looking for genes directly associated with intelligence. Once identified, these genes could potentially be used as markers for choosing only those embryos that possess them in the proper sequence. Embryos that do not meet the intelligence threshold, on the other hand, could simply be discarded as “defective,” a controversial proposition that stands to open up a Pandora’s box of both ethical and moral dilemmas.
“Imagine what a couple might pay to ensure that they get the best out of 10 or 50 possible offspring, optimizing over their choice of heritable attributes,” writes Stephen Hsu, a CG lab member currently working on the project, on his blog.
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