Designer Babies

The majority of people in develop countries will stop having sex to have children, a professor has predicted.

21:46 31 March 2016

A leading academic, Professor Henry Greely, has predicted that in the next 20 years, the majority of people in developed countries will stop having sexual intercourse to have children and that most children will be conceived in a laboratory.

 

Prof Greenly, Director at the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University, said: “In 20 to 40 years, when a couple wants a baby, he’ll provide sperm and she’ll provide a punch of skin.”

 

He explained that the female skin sample could be used to create stem cells, which can in turn be used to create eggs. Once the eggs have been fertilized, the would-be parents can select the embryos.

 

He added: “The prospective parents will be told, ‘These five have really serious diseases, you don’t want them’.

 

"Of the other 95, they will be given the pluses and minuses,” he said.

 

“Parents will get the embryos grouped by categories,”

 

“One category will be very severe, untreatable, nasty diseases. This will affect one to two per cent of embryos. 

 

“Another category will be other diseases. 

 

“The third is cosmetics: hair, eyes, shape, whether the hair goes white early. We don’t know much about this yet, but we will. 

 

“A fourth category is behavioural. I think here information will be limited. We won’t be able to say, ‘This child is in the top one per cent of intelligence’. We probably will be able to say, ‘This child has a 60 per cent chance of being in the top half’.”