Salad-bar babies

Reproductive roulette is coming to an end.

Humanity is on the brink of create-your-own-kid consumerism. No longer are we stuck with a tot that looks more like Chewbacca than charming. You want Baby Schnooks to have brown hair and blue eyes? No problem.

In a salad-bar society, why not salad-bar babies?

A recent decision in Great Britain inches us closer to pick and choose. Last week, Great Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority approved, in principle, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, a method by which fertilized embryos are examined, accepted or rejected according to certain genetic traits.

For now, preferred traits are genetic characteristics compatible with family members in medical crises. A suitable embryo is selected and implanted in Mom. Then, hopefully, the resulting baby provides blood, tissue and who knows what else (spare parts?) to sick siblings or parents.

An American youngster, in the person of little Adam Nash, has already been created for just such a purpose. As an embryo, Adam was screened, selected and implanted in his mother’s womb. His sister, Molly, suffered from Fanconi anemia, a fatal genetic disorder.

Thanks to the blood from Adam’s umbilical cord, which matched Molly’s blood type, her bone marrow regenerated, and she is healthy.

Apart from the unanswered ethical question over Adam and Molly’s other microscopic siblings – discarded for their genetic incompatibility – it’s hard to quibble with so noble an endeavor.

But who knows what’s next?

One wonders if unbridled creativity won’t kick in as doctors fiddle around with the gene pool. Critics fear that genetic screening for birth defects – or an infant’s genetic usefulness for sick siblings – will evolve into designer babies.

“Now that the human genome, or genetic code, is fully mapped, there is no limit to our ability to diagnose and prevent genetically related disease, but also to select traits that appeal to our society,” says OB/GYN, Dr. Kenneth Johnson, director of the Women’s Health Center at Nova Southeastern University College of Medicine in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

“We are not trying to choose eye and hair color. We are trying to prevent an illness,” says British doctor Mohammed Taranissi, who plans to open an embryonic-screening clinic.

Bully for him.

But it shouldn’t be long before haute couture kids are offered by some enterprising soul. We’re already into sex selection.

At a February 2001, conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lausanne, Switzerland, it was revealed that many American couples use in vitro fertilization and a “sperm sorting” procedure that enables them to pick their child’s sex.

One couple had only boys and wanted to balance out their family by engineering girls so they could “buy little dresses.” Another gent wanted “to leave his vineyards to a “son” rather than a daughter.

Scientists have always pushed the challenges of discovery. Scientific innovation has produced victories over disease. But no doubt, there is another potential Victor Frankenstein out there.

“Control the outcome” and “micromanage” are modern-day mantras. We prefer choice and control – not the chance for serendipity.

When planning new homes, we select colors, cabinets, countertops and flooring. And once word gets around on designer babies, who knows what industries will emerge or how we’ll look in generations to come.

Some may want offspring who sing like Streisand, shoot hoops like Shaquille and are built like Barbie. But 100 years hence, as styles trend away from stick-straight Twiggy to Rubenesque, we may rue the day we plucked chubbette traits from the gene pool.

Genetic tinkering is well-intended for medical advancement. Are we edging toward sophisticated eugenics, a field that hankers to fashion-perfect people?

“Don’t be afraid,” says Dr. Johnson, “The genome is God’s divine gift to man; look at the benefit that will come from it. If man chooses to abuse the gift, as he has done with others since the beginning, God is still in control.”

Good. He better be.