BBC News reports that a British couple have just had a son that was selected so that he stands a chance of being able to save his older brother’s life.

I’m currently in two minds over this. I know that during IVF embryos are discarded and so implcitly a choice is made, so I don’t really see a problem with choosing the embryo that will save a life. The argument against it seems to be that it “devalues” the child who’s been “selected”. I don’t agree personally as I think that most parents would only go through this sort of thing if they wanted another child anyway. The fact that they can save the life of their current child is a bonus that means that they will go through the pain of IVF for that chance, not that they are only having the baby for the first child.

What I find worrying is the obvious developments. In this case, the embryos were studied and the one with a tissue match was chosen. The next step will be to modify the embyro so that it’s tissue does match and then we’ll be getting to the point where we are choosing the embryo that’s got the genes that match the parents’ vision of thier child. This is where it gets problematic in my view. I wouldn’t want a child to be modified just so that it has blue eyes, but paradoxically, I wouldn’t have a problem modifying a child so that it won’t get a brain disorder.

I don’t have an answer, but I do know that pretending that it will go away is going to cause us more problems later.