Genetic mapping could open door to ‘designer babies’ in Dubai

Clinic says new technique could offer prospective parents "too much" information on their child, such as hair colour or appearance.

DUBAI // Would you like to know the colour of your baby’s hair or eyes before birth? A fertility clinic in Dubai is working on an advanced form of genetic mapping that, theoretically, could open the door to “designer babies”.

Fakih IVF allows patients to screen fertilised embryos for genetic diseases, and implants only the healthiest embryos in women hoping to become pregnant.

But a new form of genetic mapping could soon become available that may offer almost unlimited data about the future health – or appearance – of a fertilised embryo.

“The technology offers much more information than what we are getting now,” said Dr Ali Hellani, head of genetics at the clinic.

“It offers us perhaps too much data on the embryo, to a scary level. We need to find a way to streamline the information, to look at it in a more straightforward way.”

Specifically, Dr Hellani said the company wanted to avoid a situation where a mother decided against implanting an embryo on the basis of hair colour, rather than whether that embryo carried a greater than average chance of genetic disease.

Genetic screening is carried out at the stage where a woman's eggs are fertilised and are being grown in a laboratory, shortly before being implanted in the womb.

At this stage, it is not uncommon to have more than 10 fertilised embryos, not all of which can be implanted.

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, has been used by many clinics across the world to ensure that the embryos with the least chance of genetic disease are implanted.

That also has the effect of improving success rates in IVF treatment.

In parts of Europe, there are tight regulations over what criteria are applied when embryos are screened.

In the UK, which has among the strictest laws in the form of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, PGD cannot be used to screen for “social or psychological characteristics, normal physical variations, or any other conditions that are not associated with disability or a serious medical condition”.

In the US, where the rules are slightly less rigid, there have been cases where parents who have dwarfism deliberately select embryos that contain genes that could mean their child has the same disability.

Dr Hellani said that in the UAE there were guidelines but not strict laws in this regard. Selecting embryos on the basis of gender, for instance, was permitted here but not in the UK.

“There is family balancing, which is allowed here, but in almost every other respect we follow the same guidelines as in the West,” he said.

Although gender selection is allowed, it did not necessarily follow that everyone chooses male children, Dr Hellani said.

“It’s a little bit more towards males because this is the culture of the region, but we are seeing both sets of preferences,” he said.

It is believed that Fakih would have the facilities to use next-generation screening at the PGD stage by this time next year.