There’s a controversial proposal floating around the British Parliament to allow couples who ‘conceive’ children by means of in vitro fertilization to choose the sex of the embryo being implanted into the mother. Parliament’s bipartisan Science and Technology Committee advocated such a law in a report it released today. “Half of the committee’s 11 members rejected the findings as ‘unbalanced and light on ethics,’” according to ABC News. (Don’t ask me how ABC determined what ‘half’ of the 11-person committee is, it turned out that there were five dissenters.)
The committee believes that the policy is sound, and that its detractors should bear the burden of proving otherwise. Those critics have expressed concerns that the proposed law would turn babies into “consumer items”, and could lead to more trait selection, such as hair and eye color. Anti-cloning group Comment on Reproductive Ethics compared gender selection to the world of designer babies envisioned in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World.”
The committee said Britain’s fertility regulator — the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) — had “no role” in determining how an embryo is screened before being implanted into a woman’s womb and should lose its powers.
The report, which makes recommendations into the future of Britain’s 15-year-old fertility laws, also said “taboo” research, such as implanting human cells into animals, should be considered, subject to regulation.
Under current law, sex selection is allowed if there is a risk of gender-linked disease such as muscular dystrophy or hemophilia. Several recent cases have tested those legal boundaries and provoked a heated ethical debate on the merits and pitfalls of embryo selection.
Nathan Novak at 1:28 pm
