Germinal choice technology and the human future
by
Stock G.
UCLA School of Public Health,
Los Angeles, CA, USA.
gstock@ucla.edu
Reprod Biomed Online. 2005 Mar;10 Suppl 1:27-35.

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the likely impacts of emerging technologies that will give prospective parents the potential to directly influence the genetics of their offspring. My primary focus is on advanced prenatal genetic diagnosis (PGD) for both disease and non-disease traits, since this is likely to emerge before such possibilities as direct germline engineering. I place these technologies within the larger context of today's revolution in the life sciences and consider the progress likely to occur in this realm in the next few generations. I take a common sense look at the types of screening choices people are likely to make once these possibilities become possible, their broad consequences for human society, and the advantages and disadvantages of plausible regulatory paths in this realm. I also reflect upon today's debate about cloning and other such issues in the life sciences, looking at the driving forces behind these discussions and the tensions likely to develop in the next few decades.

Gene doping
Eugenics talk
Heritable HACs
Liberal Eugenics
'Designer babies'
Private eugenics
Personal genomics
Psychiatric genetics
Human self-domestication
Selecting potential children
Genetic moral enhancement
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis
'A life without pain? Hedonists take note'
Francis Galton and contemporary eugenics
Design constraints for the post-human future
Inherited neuronal ion channelopathies and pain
The neurological basis of the emotional dimension of pain
Germline genetic engineering, freedom and future generations

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