Health & Science

Engineering human babies; Reading to kids pays off; Gruesome, but eco-friendly; Washing away allergies; Why most small businesses fail

Engineering human babies

In a highly controversial breakthrough, scientists have successfully engineered a human embryo to glow fluorescent green. Though the embryo was designed to die just a few days into its gestation, the experiment is being decried as the first step toward “designer babies”— implantable embryos whose genes have been manipulated to make children taller, smarter, or otherwise “better” than they would have been naturally. Scientists who designed the embryo insisted that this was not their intention. “None of us wants to make designer babies,” says Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, a researcher in reprodutive medicine at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center. “This particular piece of work was done on an embryo that was never going to be viable.” He says his team was attempting to use the fluorescence gene as a marker to track cell division during development. But the technique—inserting a gene into a developing embryo—could be used to “improve” human offspring by adding genes for height, intelligence, blue eyes, athletic ability, etc. “These scientists, on their own, decided to step over that boundary with no public discussion,” Marcy Darnovsky, director of a scientific ethics watchdog group, tells The New York Times. The next big breakthrough, she warns, could be a fully viable designer baby.

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