Babies made to order?

THE announcement last week that the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is to consider relaxing its rules – though only to allow couples to choose a baby whose tissue could save the life of a sibling – has led to dire warnings that this is the start of a slippery slope. In countries where the rules are less strict, such as the US, a few fertile parents are already choosing to undergo IVF so they can use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select children of the desired sex. And this week, researchers unveiled a new way of doing PGD that could greatly increase the scope…