Designing Babies: Overview : SBS Insight

Overview

Where should we draw the line on genetic screening?

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Is there anything wrong with choosing your baby's health, sex, personality, even intelligence?

Every day, mothers are being screened to see if their future children could be at risk of diseases including Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy and spina bifida.

But sex selection for non-health reasons is not allowed here so many Australians are going to IVF doctors overseas to choose to have a boy or a girl.

In the not-too-distant future, parents might even be able to choose elements of their baby’s personality and intelligence.

Insight looks at the ethics of so-called designer babies. Should humans embrace the new genetic technologies to ‘breed out’ disease? Or are we, as one guest puts it, in the grip of “gene mania”?

Producer: Meggie Palmer
Associate Producers: Saber Baluch and Sarah Allely

Meet the Guests

Melissa and Brad Hunter

Melissa and Brad Hunter are both cystic fibrosis carriers. Desperate to have a healthy child, they turned to IVF and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to make sure their baby didn’t get the recessive genetic condition. The eggs were transferred last year and baby Myles was born in February this year.

Louisa Walsh

Louisa Walsh has cystic fibrosis which has meant the loss of most of her lung function. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long on the donor list and received a lung transplant two years ago. She recently won several medals at the Transplant Games. Louisa doesn’t feel she’s suffered in her life and believes her illness has enhanced her life, not made it worse.

Debbie Waller

Debbie Waller says she loves her son Keeden but he should never have been born. Debbie used IVF to fall pregnant, but Keeden inherited a blood clotting condition from his father and quickly developed epilepsy and cerebral palsy. She wishes she had had genetic screening of the embryos or used a sperm donor so that this would never have happened. Debbie says the pain and suffering that Keeden and his family endures is too much to bare.

Leon Sugrim

Leon Sugrim’s daughter Rachel has Down syndrome. He says he and his wife would have gone through with the pregnancy even if they’d known about her condition. He thinks society is rich because of its diversity not because of its perfectionism.

Julian Savulescu

Professor Julian Savulescu is an ethicist who argues parents have a “moral obligation” to create the best humans possible using the available technology. He would like to see genetically inherited diseases bred out.

Rob Sparrow

Rob Sparrow is a philosopher and says we’re not obligated to have the best child possible and that society is “in the grip of gene mania”. Rob is also opposed to sex selection, which he thinks is sexist.

Danielle Morris and Corey Leighton

At the time of Insight’s recording, Danielle Morris and Corey Leighton were in Thailand about to undergo a sex selection process for their embryos. With six daughters and one son between them, the couple is keen to add another addition to the family, and Corey would like it to be a boy. They think sex selection should be available in Australia.