Is embryo selection allowing parents to ‘build-a-baby’?

IVF is responsible for about 2% of all births in the United States each year. The revolutionary technology has not only reshaped society's beliefs about fertility, but enabled geneticists and expectant parents to screen for certain genetic conditions and to select and implant the healthiest possible embryos.

Prenatal genetic testing has been championed as a scientific marvel, allowing parents to spare their offspring from certain debilitating, untreatable, and sometimes fatal genetic conditions. But some critics warn that the selecting for genetic characteristics bears a resemblance to eugenics – a discriminatory pseudoscience popularized in the early twentieth century, focused on maximising particular characteristics in the human population.

Geneticist Adam Rutherford from University College London joins us to consider the ethical complexities of genetic screening.

Producer: Xandra Ellin

Executive producers: Bridget Harney and James Shield

Mix: Travis Evans

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Studio manager: Mike Regaard

Senior news editor: China Collins

Photo: File photo dated 19/05/08 of a woman looking through a microscope. Credit: David Davies/PA Wire