Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Shannon LC Cate — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:17:12 GMT

Well those are interesting ways to interpret what I said, Julio. I doubt many readers took away that I think blonde hair is truly superior.

And it seems that you are confusing democracy with capitalism, which is a really common mistake. But they are quite different things, I assure you. Democracy doesn't mean anyone can spend their money on anything they want.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Julio — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:47:31 GMT

I understand what you're saying, Shannon, but the key point I made is that it's a freedom of choice, because first of all- hair and eye color should give no advantages or disadvantages to a child unless you're implying that certain hair colors are superior to others, which I don't agree with. Also, these are the parents own genes. It is not modification. It is screening. So unless you're saying that the state owns people's DNA, in effect that the state owns people themselves, then why shouldn't they have the right to pick out of their own genes?? Lastly, the point about Nadya Suleman is completely different. Her octuplets are being paid for by taxpayers' money, and it might be a form of child abuse if 14 kids are being raised by one possibly psychotic woman. But for PGD selection, the parents aren't imposing any costs on anybody else, not even the KIDS (because cosmetic traits are superficial, and do not affect intelligence or physical ability), and they didn't do anything to harm anyone. They are the ones who are going to be spending time and resources raising these children; why should anyone else have the right to tell them what they can or can't screen for in their own genes? So you're making either one of two arguments. You believe that "blonde, blue-eyed" as you title your post, will give the child an advantage and thus will create inequality, which implicitly means you believe blondes are superior. Or, like me, you find hair and eye color negligible for a child's success in school and work, and thus could care less if some other parents might want to select a gene that's been muted down the line (aka give recessive genes a fighting chance). I believe in our society today, most people tend to think the second way, that hair or eye color don't imply any superiority, unless you're one of those people who believe race determines intelligence (which I find ludicrous!). Hmm..also, in closing, your point about how the wealthy can or can't spend their money does not sound like democracy to me.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Sara — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:18:00 GMT

I agree with you about this:

"I think public health care should cover everyone, should include reasonable and safe fertility treatment that includes IVF"

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Shannon LC Cate — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:16:23 GMT

I know, I know. The upshot is completely negligible. But the fact that in the U.S. we just say "oh well, there's a market for it, so what are you going to do?" really troubles me. I do think that insisting on serious conversations about this kind of thing and serious regulation on how and on what fertility specialists can make money (and maybe even how much money they can --gasp!--make) would eventually lead to a shift in our society's assumptions about how to spend our resources.

It's not like banning this particular procedure will feed the hungry. But some public outrage about the waste won't hurt the general drift of attitudes one bit. I don't want my children to learn that they live at the whim of the free market and have no agency to change the priorities of their culture.

After all, Nadya Suleman's 14 kids have a negligible impact on the social safety net budget too, but everyone feels perfectly free to highlight her as an example of how public money is being wasted on welfare/foodstamps/housing for the poor, etc. Why not take aim at unnecessary waste of money by the wealthy (and yes, anyone undergoing IVF out of pocket--esp. with PGD, and ESP. with PGD for frivolous trait selection--is wealthy) in a discussion of resource allocation?

Oh, because this is private money being spent? I posit it should not be. I think public health care should cover everyone, should include reasonable and safe fertility treatment that includes IVF with perimeters around its healthy and ethical use, not to include non-medical trait selection.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Sara — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:59:37 GMT

You know as well as I do that the funds that are spent developing this kind of technology are not available to be appropriated for anti-poverty measures. alas. Saying that we should spend our society's resources elsewhere is about as reasonable an argument as saying that we should ban designer handbags and give the money that people would otherwise spend on them to Doctors without Borders. The investors expect that their investment in R & D will be recouped in profits from the sale of the technology, which is why they choose to spend their money that way. That doesn't work for nutritional support for the poor, alas.

Lots of people do IVF (over 1% of children born in the US these days are products of IVF), but how many of them have embryos to spare? To the best of my knowledge, most couples driven to IVF by infertility end up with nothing in the freezer, which means that every decent embryo was transferred, so no picking and choosing could be done without radically reducing their chances for success. And couples that are using PGD to select against heritable diseases have bigger fish to fry than hair or eye color. There ARE some infertile couples that do produce large numbers of embryos, and perhaps some of them also have the funds and inclination to use this technology, but I have a lot of trouble getting worked up about that. I agree that the underlying assumptions are deeply problematic, and that they become perhaps more so when donor gametes are involved. Still, the actual impact on society is likely to be negligible, other than parting some fools from their dollars.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Shannon LC Cate — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:02:13 GMT

"What hurts a kid more than hair or eye color is being born into poverty. This often results in malnutrition which causes brain damage in children."

This being the case, Julio, shouldn't we spend our society's resources alleviating child poverty--providing all pregnant women with nutritional and other support, etc., rather than squandering it on silly, petty stuff like providing rich people the opportunity to pick their babies' eye color? Having parents who could afford this little side-service of IVF (not to mention IVF itself) will most certainly affect a child's chances in life.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Julio — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 05:16:54 GMT

I see nothing wrong with this technology. I honestly don't believe that everyone would select for the same traits, like people said, the effect on actual world expressed characteristics would be negligible. Besides, this is PGD, it's choosing from within the couple's gene pool, what makes it so different from having sexy times? The final embryo implanted will be a combo of both parents' genes, so this embryo could have resulted just by chance during love-making, thereby erasing the whole natural-unnatural argument. Finally, people already choose hair and eye color when they marry, and this procedure isn't even 100% sure, maybe some parents want to give their kids genes that they themselves couldn't get (red hair, blue eyes, whatever) because it's recessive. And if the children did look different from the parents, like two brown-haired parents with a blonde child, so what, same as transracial adoption where the kids look different from parents. Anyways, I see nothing harmful about this technology. What hurts a kid more than hair or eye color is being born into poverty. This often results in malnutrition which causes brain damage in children. And we never outlawed extremely poor parents from procreating, so what justification is there for not being able to choose hair or eye color - a trait that shouldn't even affect the kid's chances in life??

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

genevieve — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:06:30 GMT

hmmm....thought provoking

I agree that with the cost and hassle of IVF it's hard to imagine why someone would go through it if it wasn't necessary to achieve a healthy pregnancy (or avoid a genetic disorder)

Personally, in choosing an egg donor i care little about eye color, but if given a choice, intelligence will be a consideration.

as was mentioned above - we choose a mate based on charactristics we value. when we are put in the position where we have to use a donor egg - why wouldn't we try to give our child the best chance we can - both by health, intelligence, and even looks? that said - it's hard to imagine that just choosing green eyes would make my baby mroe attractive.

What amazes me is that this Dr. could claim an 80% success rate for selecting a particular trait. My Dr. can only offer a 70% chance of ANY pregnancy occuring even with healthy young donor eggs.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Shannon LC Cate — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:47:19 GMT

I guess we all have our donor gamete anecdotes, gpgirl. In the cases I know of friends who've needed donor sperm, it has been truly a donation from a friend.

One consideration I rarely hear in this conversation (when people start defending eugenics-based reasoning for donor gamete choices) is "who wouldn't want a smart, socially-approved beautiful child?" But there are plenty of people do not actually choose on this basis at all. They want to choose based on relationship to the donor and the relationship the donor will have to the child (which in turn is more about the child and his/her rights, rather than parents' rights and preferences).

I think that's something the entire reproductive health industry should start prioritizing. Human relationships are going to make a much bigger difference to a person than an inch or two of height. Personally, I have never noted the height of a CEO in whatever fleeting moments I may have seen one. I will tell you that the powerful men in Washington, DC are hardly all good-looking by my own standards.

But then I have to ask what's so great about being a CEO? I guess some people want their kid to grow up to be a rich, powerful business man. I'd prefer mine grow up happy and healthy, both physically and mentally. I think quality relationships (and knowledge of the intimately personal matter of whose genes they carry) are far more important towards that end than the SAT scores of their genetic forebears.

The technology may be just a side-effect of a shallow society, but it isn't some kind of natural, necessary thing to let it grow unchecked. We can choose or not, to change how it serves us.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

gpgirl — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:57:03 GMT

This is a fascinating topic. I agree with Jody that I can't see this having a large impact on the overall population, as most people would never choose IVF. For those who do use IVF, most probably wouldn't want the added cost, unless it was to weed out a disease. Then again, I could be wrong.

I also find interesting what you say about donor gamete market. The few women I have known who have used donor eggs (after many rounds of unsuccessful IVF) have tried to get donors that look like them. The secondary factor was high IQ/education level, although as you say that is quite murky from a genetic standpoint.

However, as much as I hate to say this, I think most people, given the choice, would want the best set up for their child in life. Unfortunately, "beautiful" (in the standard sense) people tend to have an easier time becoming financially successful. How many short CEO's have you seen? In fact, for women, I have never seen someone at the executive level who was not at least somewhat "attractive", again in the common sense. The problem is more with what our society expects, even in positions where looks should not matter. The fact that this technology exists is more of a side effect of the main problem.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Shannon LC Cate — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:47:29 GMT

I totally agree that the impact on the human gene pool from this would be negligible, Jody. But 20 years ago, IVF was really, really rare. It's considerably more common now and here we are in a state without proper regulation on its practice. So it's not such a bad idea to start thinking about regulations on PGD.

Really though, for those who are shocked by this, the much more scary thing is the "donor" gamete market which is sold to people almost exclusively through eugenic fantasies of creating a genetically superior baby. The ethical problem to me is not that such babies are created through gamete donation (because they aren't), but the impulse in our culture to seek out such babies. Also problematic is the association of genetic perfection with tall, blonde, white people, a la Uma Thurman in Gattica.

So it's not even the science that bugs me. It's more the thinking and lack of information behind the desire to do it in the first place.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Jody — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:01:40 GMT

These stories always overlook the fact that IVF, to put it in a word, SUCKS. It starts with drugs to shut down your reproductive system, and ends with progesterone suppositories and/or injections of progesterone suspended in oil, and in between, the fun is even greater. How many people are going to sign up for this regime, if the standard reproductive options are still available? (In fact, how many would choose IVF before trying drugs plus insemination? IUIs have a higher risk for multiple conceptions, but they're also far less invasive.)

The folks pursuing IVF may take advantage of these types of procedures -- in for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose. That would, presumably, include lesbian couples who forego insemination procedures and all the gay couples who choose gestational surrogates. But what percentage of the population is that, really?

I just don't see the possibility of trait-selection pushing the masses, or even the elites, into an unnecessary, emotionally and pysiologically brutal procedure, when other options still exist. Maybe I'm naive, but I doubt it. I have yet to read a single IVF blog in which the patient(s) would choose that procedure in the absence of dire need.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

TolaniLucia — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:57:10 GMT

Part of the joy of having a child biologically is waiting to see what they look like. If you already have the need to mold your child into your personal idea of physical perfection in utero perhaps better to hold off on becoming a parent. The level of shallowness that this type of science allows people to achieve is frightening. So I am with Jennifer when it comes to comparing the situation here with Brave New World. Very Creepy.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Shannon LC Cate — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:12:49 GMT

Exactly, Alice! I know I selected MY mate because of her baby blue eyes and her natural blonde hair...wait a minute. We're lesbians. Can't reproduce biologically. Doh! I should have selected the RICH one.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

mchaos — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:09:31 GMT

Selecting for a specific look seems ludicrous when you consider how many other serious issues there are to worry about. That said, my mom is disappointed that my blue-eyed husband and me (green-eyed) are very unlikely to have babies with her dark, nearly black eye color. If one likes blue so much - buy a new blouse, not a new baby.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

Alice — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:01:15 GMT

I see nothing wrong with it. We already select traits we want our offspring to have when we select a mate. It is freedom of choice to do with our bodies what we see fit. But I would not prefer a child that was more prone to cataracts and skin cancer.

re: Want a Blonde, Blue-Eyed Baby? Order One from Dr. Steinberg!

jennifer — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:08:14 GMT

Brave New World - here we come!