It is good that designer baby anxieties have abated somewhat, now geneticists have realised that the fundamental law of a one way flow of information is, er, not quite as absolute as they believed
Perhaps more generally the realisation is percolating through that:
(a) we will never be able order up a baby composed of a selection from all possible genes, only at best make a selection from a small number of fertilised eggs composed of genetic material of the parents
(b) it will be the end of making babies the old fashioned way. IVF for all
I forget which society beauty it was who was supposed to have proposed to Winston Churchill that they should make a baby together.
Just think – with my looks & your intellect!
Ah madam, Churchill replied. But what if it has my looks & your intellect?
The thing which has bothered me most about this public debate is how, almost immediately a discussion starts (in this country at least) someone will use the phrase blond, blue eyed as shorthand for the imaginary designers choice
Is this irony? Or does it reveal deep-seated Freudian yet Aryan yearnings?
