Gat­taca

Would you genet­i­cally engi­neer your baby? Now you can.

A Los Ange­les fer­til­ity clinic is offer­ing a new ser­vice that would allow cou­ples to choose their baby’s phys­i­cal traits, includ­ing eye and hair color.

This is straight out of Gat­taca and I really believe it’s the future. We have the tech­nol­ogy. We know how. We just need to get over the moral hur­dles we have placed in front of ourselves.

In a recent U.S. sur­vey of 999 peo­ple who sought genetic coun­sel­ing, a major­ity said they sup­ported pre­na­tal genetic tests for the elim­i­na­tion of cer­tain seri­ous dis­eases. The sur­vey found that 56% sup­ported using them to counter blind­ness and 75% for men­tal retardation.

First genetic engi­neer­ing will be used to weed out dis­eases. Then it won’t be long before genetic engi­neer­ing bleeds over to con­trol­ling phys­i­cal traits like eye color and more com­pli­cated things like height. And with just the right com­bi­na­tion I’ll be able to make my son Hapa.