Designer babies
Who Developes and uses the "Designer Babies" service? What factors drive technological innovation in the biotech community?
The development of designer babies has been under ago for over a decade. Scientists/doctors from all over the world have been contributing to the final product.The first one to successfully make a designer baby was Jacques Cohen who is an embryologist. The main client of designer babies would be parents who have a disease or are a carrier of a one and don’t want to risk their child getting it. Another reason to make a designer baby is that the parents just want the perfect child with all the right traits. For example, the parents could want their baby to be athletic and smart and have blonde and blue eyes. As of right now, only the rich/ upper class/ are able to design or get started because of how expensive it is. The total cost could be up to $100,000. In Vitro Fertilization can be $10,000 – $15,000 depending on how old you are and how many eggs you get extracted. For a cycle of IVF it is around $12,400, meaning that it you go nine times, each operation is $12,400. The parents knowledge of the babies health is the main factors that helps drive this technological innovation.
Services Related to "Designer Babies"
One service that is related to “designer babies” is in vitro fertilization. IVF is the process of manually combining an egg and sperm outside of the body. “IVF helps infertile women who have damaged fallopian tubes, male factor infertility, endometriosis, or unexplained infertility.” (-Genetics and IVF Institute). Over 6.1 million people in the United States are affected by infertility. “This is about 10% reproductive age population.”
(-Discover Biology). IVF helps this problem in a great way!
Another product related to the technology of
designer babies is nuclear transfer. This product is
a form of cloning. The steps include “removing the
DNA from an oocyte, unfertilized egg, and injecting
the nucleus which contains the DNA to be cloned.”
(Wikipedia) In limited instances, this new cell will divide normally, “replicating the new DNA while remaining in a pluripotent state.” If these cloned cells are placed in a uterus of a female mammal, a cloned organism grows to term in rare instances. Dolly the sheep was made this way along with other cloned species.
Nuclear Transfer
In Vitro Fertilization
Video: Explains the basics of human cloning and the issues that may come with it
Picture showing the process of Nuclear Transfer
Ooplasmic Transfer
Ooplasmic transfer is another service that is related to designer babies and helps infertile women. Ooplasmic transfer is an experimental fertility method that includes injecting a small amount of ooplasm from the eggs of fertile women into the eggs of women whose eggs are compromised. The sperm will then fertilize the modified egg. “Ooplasm is the cytoplasm within an egg” (-Center for genetics and Society). This process cannot be used to modify any genes in the cells nucleus. Although, ooplasmic transfer can still be considered a germline genetic modification. “Germline genetic modification is a form of genetic engineering which involves changing genes in eggs, sperm, or very early embryos.” (-Wikipedia). This type of transfer can still be considered GGM in the form that the mixed mitochondrial DNA (from both mothers) would be passed on to all of the future generations.
