Fertility doc backs off on custom kids
By United Press International,
United Press International
| 03. 04. 2009
A New York fertility doctor says he will be limiting his genetics work to dodging diseases rather than customizing physical traits such as hair and eye color.
Dr. Jeff Steinberg caused a stir this week with claims that he could help parents predetermine various characteristics of future offspring but the New York Daily News said Wednesday he is holding off for the time being.
"We are going to limit it to people with genetic diseases because we just cannot keep up with what's going on," Steinberg said.
Steinberg's clinics in New York and Los Angeles will be focusing on such disorders as color blindness and albinism, the newspaper said.
The Daily News said word of Steinberg's ability to select embryos with desirable physical traits and gender appalled some New York parents while others thought it was a great idea.
Related Articles
By Peter Wehling, Tino Plümecke, and Isabelle Bartram
| 03.26.2025
This article was originally published as “Soziogenomik und polygene Scores” in issue 272 (February 2025) of the German-language journal Gen-ethischer Informationsdienst (GID); translated by the authors.
In mid-November 2024, the British organization Hope not Hate published its investigative research ‘Inside the Eugenics Revival’. In addition to documentating an active international “race research” network, the investigation also brought to light the existence of a US start-up that offers eugenic embryo selection. Heliospect Genomics aims to enable wealthy couples to...
By Dalton Conley, The New York Times | 03.13.2025
Since Francis Galton coined the phrase “nature versus nurture” 150 years ago, the debate about what makes us who we are has dominated the human sciences.
Do genes determine our destiny, as the hereditarians would say? Or do we enter...
By Jamie Ducharme, TIME | 03.06.2025
After struggling for eight years to have a baby, Shannon Petersen and her husband decided to try in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2022. Their fertility doctor recommended a test that sounded like exactly what they needed. It promised to help...
By Jason Wilson, The Guardian | 03.03.2025
A natalist conference featuring speakers including self-described eugenicists and promoters of race science, apparently including the man behind a previously pseudonymous race-science influencer account, and the founder of a startup offering IQ screening for IVF embryos, will be held at...
