Brave New World, V2.0

Although could be a serious issue, there is another use for genetic testing that's starting to emerge, with disturbing implications: designer babies. Prenatal screening for genetic abnormalities in high-risk parents, such as those who carry the genes for Tay-Sachs disease, is commonplace these days; although the moral dilemma that a positive result can create is still a difficult issue. But as more and more traits are testable through SNPs and other genetic markers, it is becoming possible to design the child you want.

In its more benign form, this takes the form of sampling a cell from in-vitro fertilized (IVF) embryos and choosing which one to implant based on the results. So, if the parents want a blue-eyed child, only blue-eyed embryos would be implanted. Parents can already choose the gender of the child to be implanted, sometimes to prevent a gender-linked disease from being passed on, and sometimes to create "family balance."

The more sinister scenario is the use of amniocentesis or ultrasound studies of a fetus to abort undesirable children. This is not science fiction; it's a growing problem in India and China. Selective abortion of girls has led to an increasingly out of balance gender ratio, with 20 percent more boys than girls being born in China.

As the price of genome testing falls, and more and more traits are identified, we face the possibility that other traits, such as blond hair or green eyes or height could be similarly skewed. Today, very few children are born by IVF, but the allure of creating the "perfect" baby may be hard to resist.