Score one for the home team — Alan Trounson, an IVF pioneer and director of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco, was quoted in a gee whiz article in Nature, expounding on the possibilities for tomorrow’s “designer babies.” The article is only available online to subscribers, but Trounson’s big quote is:
“If you remove all the expensive stuff and use low-cost drugs (such as clomiphene) and remove just one or two eggs, and only transfer one embryo, it can be done for less than US$100.”
IVF for less than it costs for a decent pair of shoes? Whoa.
Canadian news source The Star spells out a few other possibilities, such as lab-made sperm and egg cells developed from stem cells, handy for those too old or unhealthy to make their own baby building-blocks. One developmental biologist told Nature that both newborn babies and grandmas could have babies with this technology: “It could easily happen in the next 30 years.”
Also in the pike: genetic material that could be inserted into embryos to correct flaws or cure diseases, highly sophisticated screening tests for embryos, artificial wombs, and more. So those “gender selection” kits that have caused such controversy? That’s just the tip of the iceberg.