The Quest for Designer Children 133

proves too much. Following its logic we would end medical treatment for any afflicted children and adults.

In the Jerusalem Talmud we read Ben Azzai said: The most important verse in the Torah is this(Gen. 5:1):“This is the record of Adam’s line. When God created the human being, the Eternal made the human in the Divine likeness.”* Personal decisions to engage in genetic engineering do not negate our ideal of seeing everyone as created in God ’s image and valuing people on an individual basis for their achievements and their potentials, even if some disorders are being eliminated from the gene pool.

GERMLINE THERAPY WILL NOT GIVE PARENTS’ DEAD HAND CONTROL OVER SUBSEQUENT GENERATIONS

The application of germline therapy in gametes, fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses raises the specter of the“dead hand” of parents exercising dominion over generations to follow. Again, fears about changing and potentially curtailing the autonomy of one’s descendants for all time are overstated.

Given the attendant risks and tradeoffs, parents will face difficult decisions, as they do now, about what is best for their children. Parents may make unwise choices, bringing grief to them and their progeny. These choices, however, often will be remediable; they likely can be undone.

The likelihood is that germline therapies are not irrevocable and unalterable. Subsequent generations could elect to remove an enhancement, for instance, by undergoing some type of genetic procedure, deleting the added genes(or genetic information), replacing one type of genetic information with another piece, introducing new genes to remove any defective or“bad” genes or in some other way compensating for or dealing with their presence.”

Even if some of these changes are irreversible, thereby curtailing the autonomy of and imposing on future generations a