EVERY year children die by the millions from preventable
diseases like pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, HIV and
malnutrition. Poverty and the lack of clean water, hygiene and
prenatal care all contribute to the toll of premature death. In
the face of this holocaust, why would Ronald M. Green, a
professor of ethics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, spend
279 pages of well-crafted prose defending the claim that it is
ethical for parents to create "designer" children? How much
effort is it ethical to devote to improving the lot of the yet-
to-come when balanced against the needs of those in the here and
now? Unfortunately, Babies by Design never directly addresses
this question - the hardest ethical question facing proponents
of the genetic engineering of embryos. Green is so distracted by
the pace of science in genomics, stem cell research, gene
therapy, and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis that ... To
continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to
all of newscientist.com, including 20 years