Designing the $100,000 baby
 

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...0000-baby.aspx

What kind of baby can money buy?

Just down the hall, conferees packed a seminar room to hear a talk titled "From Cells to Super Babies." By spending staggering amounts of money, as much as $100,000, picky parents would soon be able to design superior physical, mental and psychological attributes for their babies-to-be, the audience learned.

"Doctors, attorneys and mental-health professionals are all picking and choosing each and every genetic component in order to build a super baby," says Elaine Gordon, a clinical psychologist who specializes in counseling on such issues. "One day you'll be able to select for sex, hair color, confidence index, whether they are an optimist or pessimist, whether they are an athlete or a bookworm."

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So custom baby design may not be far behind, and experts say the biggest obstacles are ethical, not technological.

"As reproductive technologies push the envelope of possibilities, they . . . will blur the edges of what is now formally forbidden: cloning, fetal research," Harvard economist Debora L. Spar writes in her book "The Baby Business." "In the end, the market will win. We will continue to buy, sell and modify our children, generating substantial profits in the process."