Aussies flock to designer baby technology
February 01, 2009 12:11pm
 Designer babies ... Australian couples are reportedly flocking to a US fertility clinic that allows customers to choose the sex, hair and eye colour of their child. |
- Australian couples use US fertility clinic
- Allowed to choose sex, hair, eye colour
- Most concerned by genetic diseases
AUSTRALIAN couples are flocking to a US fertility clinic that allows them to chose not only the sex of their child, but "cosmetic" features such as hair and eye colour.
California-based Dr Jeffrey Steinberg says he spoke to 14 Australian couples in January, as the latest controversial advances in the field of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) came online.
"It's an advance of the technology and whenever there's an advance you can see the good side of it and the bad side of it," says Dr Steinberg, of The Fertility Institutes.
"The good side of it is there are children born with albinism, they are unable to make eye pigment, they are vulnerable to ultra-violet light and a good number of them end up blind.
"We started out trying to help these albino children and in the process we're learning how to predict eye colour."
The controversial side, Dr Steinberg agrees, is that parents can now be told the likely hair and eye colour of a future child as they make a decision on which of their fertilised embryos will go to pregnancy.
Dr Steinberg has three clinics across the United States and one in Mexico, which now handle about 800 couples a year.
He says the majority are driven by concerns related to genetic illness, not gender, and this includes the 50 to 60 Australian couples he sees annually.
"I think we've got 14 new patients in January alone from Australia," he says.
"For example, I've just hung up with a patient from Australia who has Familial Hypercholesterolemia ... which can be life threatening because they get early heart attacks.
"The father has it and they have two boys and one of the boys has it.
"What they want, number one, is a girl but they also want to make sure that girl does not carry that Hypercholesterolemia gene."
But the PGD process is not cheap.
A basic scan for major genetic illnesses costs $US20,000 ($30,680) but Dr Steinberg says some couples, particularly from the oil rich gulf states, are prepared to spend up to $US500,000 ($767,000) to test for everything.
It works like this. Parents provide a number of fertilised embryos using the same techniques as in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
Cells are removed from the embryos, and advances now allow them to be scanned for 6000 different genetic traits.
Genes determining sex, hair and eye colour can be identified, alongside any DNA red flags for diseases such as muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and Down's Syndrome.
"Basically any genetic ailment, and there are thousands of them. We find the genetic error responsible for that in the embryo," Dr Steinberg says.
Only those embryos free of problem genetic markers and matching parental wishes, if stated, are then implanted in the mother.
Australian IVF clinics are allowed to make PGD assessments of an embryo for families with hereditary illness, but regulations prevent the selection embryos on the basis of preferred sex alone.
Dr Steinberg denies he's playing god, and says technology has handed parents the ability to ensure their child is as healthy as possible.
"To deny them the ability to do that when the technology is there is to me unethical," Dr Steinberg says.
"You can say eye colour and hair colour are not diseases, no they're not, and there is a cosmetic element to it, but we fix crooked noses all the time.
"It's new, it's scary and it's not for everyone ... but (people) shouldn't condemn it."
Bioethicist Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, of Melbourne's John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, is a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council.
He says he's concerned Australian women are risking their health by undertaking IVF overseas for "frivolous" reasons, using a process that raises the moral issue of "deliberate embryo loss".
"But the main issue is the idea of treating the child as an object, as product for which you are seeking quality control," Dr Tonti-Filippini says.
"It's a very unfortunate way to start parenthood because even the most perfect child turns into a screaming two-year-old."
Conservative group The Australian Family Association, which favours adoption over IVF and is opposed to abortion, is also a vocal critic.
"The brave new world of being able to make children to order, whether it is sex, eye colour or hair colour ... it's heinous," the association's national spokesman John Morrissey says.
"It means the creation of embryos in order to destroy them, and those embryos are human life however elementary."
California-based Dr Jeffrey Steinberg says he spoke to 14 Australian couples in January, as the latest controversial advances in the field of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) came online.
"It's an advance of the technology and whenever there's an advance you can see the good side of it and the bad side of it," says Dr Steinberg, of The Fertility Institutes.
"The good side of it is there are children born with albinism, they are unable to make eye pigment, they are vulnerable to ultra-violet light and a good number of them end up blind.
"We started out trying to help these albino children and in the process we're learning how to predict eye colour."
The controversial side, Dr Steinberg agrees, is that parents can now be told the likely hair and eye colour of a future child as they make a decision on which of their fertilised embryos will go to pregnancy.
He says the majority are driven by concerns related to genetic illness, not gender, and this includes the 50 to 60 Australian couples he sees annually.
"I think we've got 14 new patients in January alone from Australia," he says.
"For example, I've just hung up with a patient from Australia who has Familial Hypercholesterolemia ... which can be life threatening because they get early heart attacks.
"The father has it and they have two boys and one of the boys has it.
"What they want, number one, is a girl but they also want to make sure that girl does not carry that Hypercholesterolemia gene."
But the PGD process is not cheap.
A basic scan for major genetic illnesses costs $US20,000 ($30,680) but Dr Steinberg says some couples, particularly from the oil rich gulf states, are prepared to spend up to $US500,000 ($767,000) to test for everything.
It works like this. Parents provide a number of fertilised embryos using the same techniques as in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
Cells are removed from the embryos, and advances now allow them to be scanned for 6000 different genetic traits.
Genes determining sex, hair and eye colour can be identified, alongside any DNA red flags for diseases such as muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and Down's Syndrome.
"Basically any genetic ailment, and there are thousands of them. We find the genetic error responsible for that in the embryo," Dr Steinberg says.
Only those embryos free of problem genetic markers and matching parental wishes, if stated, are then implanted in the mother.
Australian IVF clinics are allowed to make PGD assessments of an embryo for families with hereditary illness, but regulations prevent the selection embryos on the basis of preferred sex alone.
Dr Steinberg denies he's playing god, and says technology has handed parents the ability to ensure their child is as healthy as possible.
"To deny them the ability to do that when the technology is there is to me unethical," Dr Steinberg says.
"You can say eye colour and hair colour are not diseases, no they're not, and there is a cosmetic element to it, but we fix crooked noses all the time.
"It's new, it's scary and it's not for everyone ... but (people) shouldn't condemn it."
Bioethicist Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, of Melbourne's John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, is a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council.
He says he's concerned Australian women are risking their health by undertaking IVF overseas for "frivolous" reasons, using a process that raises the moral issue of "deliberate embryo loss".
"But the main issue is the idea of treating the child as an object, as product for which you are seeking quality control," Dr Tonti-Filippini says.
"It's a very unfortunate way to start parenthood because even the most perfect child turns into a screaming two-year-old."
Conservative group The Australian Family Association, which favours adoption over IVF and is opposed to abortion, is also a vocal critic.
"The brave new world of being able to make children to order, whether it is sex, eye colour or hair colour ... it's heinous," the association's national spokesman John Morrissey says.
"It means the creation of embryos in order to destroy them, and those embryos are human life however elementary."
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