The 'designer baby' patent describes an “Inheritance Calculator” for using genotypic information from donors and recipients to compute the probability of observing particular phenotypes, from eye color to predisposition to cancer. Sigrid Sterckx, professor of ethics at Ghent University in Belgium, considers the donor selection method to amount to an “instrumentalization of both babies and reproductive partners, promoting a 'check-list' approach to viewing other human beings.” Whereas all patent laws contain morality provisions, they are rarely applied by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). “There is case law from the nineteenth century in the United States to the effect that US patents should not be granted for inventions the use of which is contrary to 'sound morals' [(see Bedford v. Hunt (CCD Mass. 1817) for example)], but this aspect of the 'utility' requirement under US patent law nowadays unfortunately appears to be largely ignored,” she says.
Dietrich Stephan, founder of personal genomics company Navigenics (which was acquired by Life Technologies in 2012) and Silicon Valley Biosystems, and now chairman of the department of human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, sees the patent as “heretical.” Already technologies like pre-implantation genetic diagnosis are being used to avoid having children with horrible diseases. “So what is a horrible disease? Is a horrible disease a child dying a year after birth? Is a horrible disease deafness? Or not being a basketball player?” he asks. Where you draw the line, according to Stephan is normal quantitative traits, like intelligence and appearance.
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