|
As far as the boy/girl thing...deal with it lol. I've seen enough to convince me that sex and gender aren't the same thing, and as an overall point, you won't really know what your offspring will be like for years.
The sex of the child might be one of the first things that actually become changeable...IIRC a fetus is female until testosterone gets 'switched on' during development. Preventing that might be much easier than trying to get an eye, hair, or skin color, height, or any number of traits that are made up of several genes (rather than a single ongoing hormonal event like sex).
I'm not convinced we know nearly enough about the human genome to do much about designing humans. We've only just recently mapped it. In any case, 'excellency' is in the eye of the beholder, though it'd be nice to see things like Down's Syndrome that are obvious genetic defects prevented. Those echos can test for a few things...but whether the child will be healthy is going to take way more than that. It could have diabetes, asthma, a sensory defect, or any number of mental disorders that you can't know about until later. These are ethical considerations that we'll have to make in the coming years, but in the meanwhile - we've generally always had control of our childrens' upbringing. This will do more in terms of a 'designer' child than anything else.
|