Made-to-Order Babies Coming Right Up
port1080.
Posted to Etcetera on Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 09:10:23 PM EST (promoted by 1fastdog). RSS.
Last Friday US FDA investigators interviewed Jennalee Ryan of San Antonio, Texas about her business. Ms. Ryan creates custom embryos from sperm and egg donors of the highest stock and then sells them to clients who wish to produce superior children.
Ms. Ryan stacks the odds in her client's favor by only accepting sperm and eggs from young, good looking, and intelligent donors. Anyone who can pay the fee can buy one of these embryos (they run about $5,000 a pair). Ryan claims that she is in the business for one reason only, as she states, "For me, that's what this is all about: helping make babies." Critics, however, question the wisdom of custom created children. Bioethicists have been particularly disturbed, with one noted member of the field (Robert P. George of Princeton University) claiming:
"This is just more evidence that we haven't been able to restrain this move towards treating human life like a commodity. This buying and selling of eggs and sperm and now embryos based on IQ points and PhDs and other traits really moves us in the direction of eugenics."Other scientists, however, note that this is not much different than what already goes on at traditional sperm banks, where clients separately select the male and female donors. Ryan's major innovation is to combine the process and take it a step further. It actually makes a lot of business sense, and as Slate's William Saletan notes, Ryan is bringing the logic of the wholesale business to her end of the deal.
While Ryan's business brings up a lot of disturbing questions about how and in what ways we value and sanction the creation of new life, the FDA's verdict was swift - "a supervisor for the federal agency said it didn't appear the business was in violation of any regulations."
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