Why haven't we seen more designer babies yet?

Question

I know He Jiankui (Chinese biophysicist who created the world's first gene-edited children in 2018) was recently released from prison but I feel like I haven't heard much in the space. I understand the moral conundrums of such research and the applications of it, but frankly I'm shocked that there haven't been people who still go through with developing designer babies given the allure of having more intelligent, healthy, etc. kids. Any ideas why this tech hasn't gotten more adoption? Or perhaps it is just that people will not disclose it now and there is actually a non-trivial amount of gene-editing of babies happening.

PaulHoule · Accepted Answer

It isn&rsquo;t easy.If you want to splice one gene that is feasible but there is only so much you can accomplish. If you were going to make somebody much more intelligent, stronger, taller, whatever you will have to splice a large number of genes and there is always the possibility&rsquo;s you screw it up and the child is worse rather than better, maybe catastrophically.What is feasible now is you could use IVR to make a large number of eggs, sample the DNA of the eggs, score the embryos based on what traits you think are desirable, and pick the best. That seems pretty safe but it&rsquo;s arguable how big of a difference it could make.An even more exotic possibility is this: it is possible to harvest gametes from an unborn fetus so one could do that selection, and then do the same selection again, applying several generations worth of selection to produce a very high scoring embryo.

goethes_kind · Answer

Because the people who could do something like this are already genetically gifted, and already successful enough that they would not feel the need to go to such risky extents to improve on their genetic makeup. And because simply marrying somebody who is genetically gifted is much easier, and you can do that if you're successful enough in other ways.

JoeyBananas · Answer

developing designer babies is probably like writing a program, except everytime you run the program and it doesn't work you end up with a defective baby

Dracophoenix · Answer

I'd argue we already have designer babies in the form of high-priced sperm donations, in vitrio fertilization, egg freezing, and gene therapy. Most people don't call those things that.Ultimately, the issue is one of "designer babies" is one of marketing.

ohiovr · Answer

Kahhnnnnnnnn

bediger4000 · Answer

I bet we have. It's just like human clones, though: the secret is kept fairly closely.
For just a few thousand dollars, other mammals, mostly pet dogs, can be cloned. Scientists have been cloning rats and mice for decades, really. There's absolutely no technical reason to not clone humans, and we know that other human fertility techniques get abused. How many stories have you seen about some creepy fertility doctor using his own sperm to impregnate hundreds of women?
Human cloning's been done. So has CRISPR editing.