Super-Smart Designer Babies Could Be on Offer Soon. But Is That Ethical?

November 21, 2018

(The Guardian) – In the US it’s a very different picture. Restrictive laws about what can be done in embryo and stem-cell research using federal funding sit alongside a largely unregulated, laissez-faire private sector, including IVF clinics. PGD to select an embryo’s sex for “family balancing” is permitted, for example. There is nothing in US law to prevent PGD for selecting embryos with “high IQ”. But what exactly does that mean? The work of Plomin and others has shown over the past few years that correlations exist between the code in our genomes and pretty much any trait you can think of, including IQ and academic achievement.