People want designer babies, armies want cyborgs.

In Vitro Gametogenesis, or IVG, is a new technique that allows "not only infertile couples but post-menopausal women, gay couples, single people and groups of more than two individuals (whether male, female, or a mix of the two) to have their own children", writes Shruti Sharma. Along with gene editing technology, such as CRISPR, "This will not only help parents select the best set of genes, thus creating their version of a perfect 'child' with 'vanity' traits such as height, enhanced muscular strength, fair skin tone or eye colour and even intelligence." There are dangers because "This leaves the embryo vulnerable to genetic diseases, leaving future generations to suffer from the error." Three-parent babies are already a reality, in which diseased mitochondrial DNA is removed from the mother's egg and replaced with healthy DNA from a donor's egg. Britain has passed a law approving three parent babies. Adults have right to produce as many babies as they want and the UN charter advises governments to assist people to plan the size of their families. That means pedophiles, drug dealers and murderers can have babies if they are out of prison. Babies cannot choose their parents and have no right not to be born. Gender discrimination is a special concern in India. "Instead of having to determine gender once the embryo is conceived, parents could choose to engineer the same prior to conception and evade the law." The cost of the procedure will restrict its availability to very few in a poor country like India and those who have the money can easily go to a specialist abroad. India is planning to ban commercial surrogacy and portable ultrasound machines are banned in several states to prevent gender selection of babies. Any procedure misused for selecting the sex of babies will probably be banned in the future. However, the debate on gender selection has become highly emotional in India, based on wrong interpretation of figures. Sex ratios are calculated as the number of boys to the number of girls at birth, which goes up to 107 boys to 100 girls. According to the World Health Organization the normal ratio is 105 boys for every 100 girls. This is natural because mortality is higher among boys, so that the ratio becomes 1:1 by the time they become adults. In India, on the other hand, the government calculates the number of girls per 1000 boys and naturally the number is lower. This is cited as proof of gender selection. But, that is wrong. According to the normal ratio globally the number of girls should be between 934 to 952 girls per 1000 boys. A census in 2011 showed that the ratio girls to boys is indeed very bad in northern and western states but is good in eastern and southern states, some states having ratios much higher than expected. Designer babies are not the danger, cyborgs are and they are coming. Humans like to play god. We have nuclear weapons, don't we?