Source www.bionetonline.org
What is a designer baby? | ||
Advanced reproductive technologies allow parents and doctors to screen embryos for genetic disorders and select healthy embryos.
Recently scientists have made rapid advances in our knowledge of the human genome and in our ability to modify and change genes. In the future we may be able to "cure" geneticy diseases in embryos by replacing faulty sections of DNA with healthy DNA. This is called germ line therapy and is carried out on an egg, sperm or a tiny fertilised embryo. Such therapy has successfully been done on animal embryos but at present it is illegal to do this in humans. However, it is legal to modify the faulty genes in the cells of a grown child or an adult to cure diseases like cystic fibrosis - this is calledbody cell gene therapy. |