PICK YOUR BABY AS YOU PICK AN APPLE FROM THE MARKET!

PICK YOUR BABY AS YOU PICK AN APPLE FROM THE MARKET

Confused? Don’t be. You will soon be able to choose the looks and the characteristic of your babies. Why not? If Hubbell can take images of the birth of our universe, anything is possible.  I’m sure most women will do all they can to ‘improve’ their babies’ chances before they’re even born. From playing music to babies in the womb (music can apparently affect your baby’s foetal development thus improving their future academic skills according to a recent study) to knocking back handfuls of omega 3 (proven in some studies to improve your baby’s intelligence) and sticking to a strictly organic diet (proven to improve a baby’s attention span), increasing numbers of women are taking a multitude of approaches. Why do we want a perfect baby so badly?  Maybe we don’t want to spend time to make our children intelligent and capable to ‘fit’ in. Maybe because women want to concentrate more on their career. Whatever cause, a study by the New York University School of Medicine, 10% of parents said they would approve of genetic testing to ensure their child was athletic, 10% would test for height and 13% for superior intelligence.  

Unsurprisingly, a potential boom industry is waiting in the wings of reproductive technology, eager to tap into a market of well-intentioned parents. Within a decade or two, it may be possible to screen babies for an enormous range of attributes, such as how tall they’re likely to be, what body type they will have, their hair and eye colour, what sorts of illnesses they will be naturally resistant to, and even, conceivably, their IQ and personality type. If gene therapy lives up to its promise, parents may be able to go beyond eliminating undesirable traits and start inserting the genes they do want – possibly even genes that have been crafted in a lab. The 21st century may well see parents going to fertility clinics and choosing from a list of optional extras. Selling your genes will become incredibly lucrative with the rich and famous becoming even richer by peddling their attributes to those of us dumb enough to mortgage ourselves to the hilt to equip our offspring with  hair by Wayne Rooney and big tits by Jordan and David Cameron.  Then again why stop at human genes when you could give you babies, teeth by alligator, penis by horse and attitude by Vinnie Jones.  The next generation will be able to fly like an albatross, dance like a rattlesnake and sing like a supergrass.  We could have the eye’s of flies, the cunning of a spy, the robber baron instinct of a conservative cabinet and a pint of blood for seedy uncle Dracula at the pub on pay-day. But more likely everyone in the world will end up looking like  Clooney, Banderas, Washington, Beckham or Moss and Campbell. “It’s the ultimate shopping experience: designing your baby,” says biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin, who regularly speaks out against designer babies. “In a society used to cosmetic surgery this is not a big step.”