"Designer baby" changed to French for "double hope baby"
by
Fagniez PL, Loriau J, Tayar C.
Service de chirurgie générale et digestive,
hôpital Henri-Mondor, 51,
avenue du Maréchal-de-Lattre-de-Tassigny,
94010 Créteil cedex, France.
pierre-louis.fagniez@hmn.aphp.fr
Gynecol Obstet Fertil. 2005 Oct;33(10):828-32.

ABSTRACT

Scientific advances during the last decades regarding potential intervention on embryos arouse many questions in society to prepare the ground concerning the limits that should be set for these practices. For the first time in 1994, a parliamentary proceeding allowed the definition of a French model of bioethics through laws of the same name. These laws, among others, authorized in a well and strictly defined setting the practice of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Because of technical progress concerning PGD, new questions arose, especially concerning the accomplishment of designer babies. The French Chamber of Representatives came in with a new law that banishes the concept of designer babies and replaces it with another concept: double hope babies, in French "bébé du double espoir". A first hope of a pregnancy giving birth to a healthy child and the second being that this child conceived with the aid of PGD could help treat an elder brother. Because of the issuing of two specific laws in a ten years interval, France occupies a privileged place in a Europe where bioethical issues continue to be debated, particularly PGD.

'Savior siblings'
Liberal Eugenics
Psychiatric genetics
Philosophy on steroids
Human self-domestication
Selecting potential children
Germline genetic engineering
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis
'The Principle of Procreative Beneficience'
Francis Galton and contemporary eugenics
Gene therapy and performance enhancement
Transhumanism (H+): toward a Brave New World?

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