The implications of designer babies
Designer babies are not here yet. Gene-editing embryos to make babies is still forbidden, and the only case so far was a Chinese scientist's rogue experiment in 2018, which horrified the world. But the science is sprinting. In June, Columbia researchers edited early human embryos with unprecedented precision, which could pave the way to babies built for particular traits. Where science leads, money follows, and private companies are already lining up. The question is not whether, but when, and what happens next.
Start with the science, because it shapes the economics. Fixing a disease like sickle cell means correcting a single gene. Brains, beauty and longevity depend on thousands of genes, each nudging the outcome a fraction. Editing for intelligence is less like correcting a typo and more like redrafting War and Peace.
So the first market will be selection, not editing. Parents will screen a handful of IVF embryos and pick the pick of the litter. That is already on sale.
The rich will go first. They always do. Critics will cry "genetic aristocracy" and picture a master race of Old Etonians with perfect teeth. They have history backwards. Every medical marvel starts as a luxury and ends as a commodity.
Sequencing the first genome cost billions. Now it costs less than a weekend in Paris. IVF went from miracle to mainstream in a generation. Pioneers pay, then prices plummet. The real threat to fairness is the ban, not the bill. Prohibit it in Britain and only those who can fly to Singapore will benefit. Prohibition creates precisely the privilege it pretends to prevent.
Not every trait is worth the money. Height and looks are positional goods. If everyone is six feet tall, nobody is tall. Parents chasing them are running up a down escalator, paying more to stay in the same place. Health and intelligence are different. They are absolute goods, and they spill over. A healthier nation needs fewer hospital beds and works more years. A cleverer one invents more, cures more and creates more. One brilliant girl’s mind that conquers a disease benefits millions who never shared her genes. Your neighbour's designer daughter may be the doctor who saves your life.
The economic dividend could be huge. Chronic illness eats a vast share of health budgets. Cut it and the savings are spectacular. Longer lives stretch pensions, but they also stretch careers. More brainpower means more growth. Britain has spent fifteen years puzzling over flat productivity. The answer might lie in the maternity ward rather than the Treasury.
Fashion will be the folly. Parents choosing faces will choose the faces of their day, and fashions fade. Today's ideal will be tomorrow's flared trousers, and a generation of children might grow up looking like a period piece. That is a reason for parents to choose wisely, not a reason for the state to choose for them.
The deepest change will be moral. We have always accepted the genetic lottery as luck. Some are born bright, some are born beautiful, and nobody is to blame. Once nature becomes a choice, luck becomes responsibility. The argument shifts. It is no longer about whether it is fair that some are born gifted. It is about whether anyone has the right to stop parents giving their children the best possible start. Few politicians will want to stand up and defend the right to be born with a weaker heart.
There will be refuseniks, as there are with every advance. Some will reject it on principle, and for a while the enhanced and the natural may eye each other warily. That will pass. People once denounced anaesthetic as an affront to God's design. Today nobody insists on feeling the scalpel.
Better babies will mean a more worthwhile world. Since we can’t stop it, we might as well embrace it.
Madsen Pirie