Prof. Darren Griffin:``Designer Babies part deux: This time it's personal''
The definition of a ``Designer baby'' is ``a baby that has been designed by its future parents to have all the desirable genetic traits that the parents would wish for - presumably to give the resulting child the best possible start and advantages in life.'' The purpose of this talk will be to explore some of the facts that surround this much-vaunted media phrase and, in the process, dispel some of the myths that surround it. The practices of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), cloning and germline therapy will be introduced along with an appraisal of how the practicalities of these procedures justify the hype that accompanies them. Finally, I will explore the most practical means through which we can all try to have our own designer babies.
Darren Griffin is Professor of Genetics at the University of Kent. In the early 1990s he collaborated with Professors Alan Handyside and Robert Winston and became the first person to use a technique called ``FISH'' to diagnose sex in IVF embryos. This is a technique used to the present day and Professor Griffin's work has taken him into the genetics of human sperm, birds, fatness in pigs, sex determination and computer-based learning. More recently, again in collaboration with Alan Handyside, he has been a major contributor to the test dubbed the ``Genetic MoT for embryos.''