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Slippery slope, indeed. Chloe did not harbor the colon cancer gene, so she is allowed to be born. When Chloe reaches puberty, she may very well develop AIDS or leukemia or breast cancer .. or ... she may end up like the 20 year old son of a friend, dead, from a head on collision.

Chloe's eventual outcome is irrelevant to the discussion about whether her parents have the moral authority to decide whether she should be allowed to be born free of this particular genetic defect.

Yes, the new age process of selective breeding resolves one problem. Who knows what magnificent contributions to medicine her 'siblings' might have contributed, had they been allowed the same lease on life.

Humans have been practicing selective breeding ever since there were humans. It is not a new age process at all. Again you raise an irrelevant point. It is not relevant what contributions any unimplanted blastosphere's might have made to society if they had been born. Chloe's parents were only going to have ONE child. You might just as well lament the fact that the several million of Chloe's father's sperm all swam to no end and died. Think of the millions of souls that could have been great musicians or dancers or mathematicians!

Can you just imagine the parents telling Chloe how special she is! It's no longer the stork story but "we chose you" over the other fertilized embryos because you didn't carry the colon cancer gene.

Generally people don't discuss these decisions with their children any more than a mother would tell her child how lucky a she is that the the egg that was fertilized by the father wasn't fertilized by another man.

And I suspect this child will be very thankful to her parents that she will not have to spend the first few decades of her life knowing that she will eventually die of cancer at a young age.

jas3

Humans have been practicing selective breeding ever since there were humans.

Really? How so? Drowning the unwanted, like they do with kittens or puppies?

You might just as well lament the fact that the several million of Chloe's father's sperm all swam to no end and died.

Only one sperm can impregnate an ovum! It takes millions of sperm for the one to reach its destiny. Your argument makes absolutely no sense.

And I suspect this child will be very thankful to her parents that she will not have to spend the first few decades of her life knowing that she will eventually die of cancer at a young age.

And how will she know this if the parents have not pointed this out to her, which you attest will never happen.

eggs and sperm are NOT human life, they are cells from humans with 1/2 the DNA (23 chromosomes) than the rest of the cells in the human body which have 46 chromosomes.

However, when the egg cell joins with the sperm cell a new Human Being with his own DNA is formed.

THE CODE FOR HUMAN LIFE
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1059933/posts

In order for Chloe's parents to have chosen Chloe, they had to have created many embryos/children to have picked the healthiest. The rest of Chole's siblings are on ice. That's the IVF procedure for you.