How would you feel about a couple doing IVF just in order to find the embryos most likely to to be gay… and chuck them out? Does that sound like eugenics to you?
What about the other way round: what if a gay couple wanted to maximise their chance of a having gay baby — would you let them screen for and select embryos with the genes that made it more likely they were gay? Then bin the rest? It’s time to make your mind up because after decades of panic about ‘designer babies’ (remember Gattaca?) the future is finally here.
On the one hand, as I write in the Spec this week the genes that contribute to different human traits are rapidly being identified. For instance, a recent study of gay men concluded that that male sexual orientation is influenced by genes.
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