Ronald Bailey on the Moral Case for Designer Babies
(cc)
Should prospective parents seek information about gene variants that increase the risk their children will develop diseases as adults? Should physicians provide that information? Some bioethicists believe that such pre-birth testing is wrong, arguing that the information could stigmatize kids or lead parents to terminate pregnancies of genetically at-risk fetuses. Children, they contend, have a right to an "open future" unburdened by the knowledge of their genetic predispositions for adult onset illnesses. Ronald Bailey rejects the notion that genetic ignorance is somehow liberating and lauds genome sequencing as a means for people to safely reproduce when they would not have been able to otherwise.