A Texas company has started producing batches of ready- made embryos that single women and infertile couples can order after reviewing detailed information about the race, education, appearance, personality and other characteristics of the egg and sperm donors.
The Abraham Center of Life LLC of San Antonio, the first commercial dealer making embryos in advance for unspecified recipients, was created to help make it easier and more affordable for clients to have babies that match their preferences, according to its founder.
“We’re just trying to help people have babies,” said Jennalee Ryan, who arranged for an egg donor to start medical treatments to produce a second batch of embryos this week. “For me, that’s what this is all about: helping make babies.”
But the embryo brokerage, which calls itself “the world’s first human embryo bank,” raises alarm among some fertility experts and bioethicists who say the service marks another disturbing step toward commercialization of human reproduction and “designer babies.”
“We’re increasingly treating children like commodities,” said Mark Rothstein, a bioethicist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. “It’s like you’re ordering a computer from Dell: You give them the specs, and they put it in the mail.”
Prospective parents have long been able to select egg or sperm donors based on ethnicity, education and other traits. Couples can also “adopt” embryos left over at fertility clinics or have embryos created for them if they need both eggs and sperm.
But the new service marks the first time anyone has started turning out embryos as off-the- shelf products.
Before contracting for the embryos, clients can evaluate the egg and sperm donors and can even see pictures of them as babies, children and sometimes adults. A fertility specialist will then transfer the embryos into a client’s womb or a surrogate, which Ryan can also arrange.
Ryan is using only egg donors who are in their 20s and have at least some college education and only sperm donors who have advanced education, such as a doctorate or law degree. All must undergo a standard round of health tests required for all egg and sperm donors, as well as screening to make sure they have no criminal record or family history of mental illness, Ryan said. They answer detailed questionnaires that ask about their childhood temperaments, favorite books, adult hobbies and family histories.
“People will say, ‘You’re trying to create the perfect human race.’ But we’ve always done gene selection just by who women choose as their husbands and men choose as their wives. This is no different,” Ryan said.
The ability to vet donors is attractive to Ryan’s clients – potentially not only infertile couples and single women but also gay and lesbian couples.
