Genetic testing can be a blessing.  Some years ago a family member had a health scare.  Genetic tests revealed that a mutant gene, inherited from a parent, was to blame.  That information, sadly, came too late for some family members to take precautions.  My children were all tested and found to be free of the mutant gene.  By anyone’s standard such genetic testing can be thankfully embraced.  Another positive example of genetic testing is in criminology where genetic tests now often play a role in either putting someone behind bars or exonerating them from criminal charges.

One area where – from a Christian perspective– genetic testing has a less celebratory role is with respect to the pre-born.  For quite some time it has been possible to determine whether a foetus (or even an embryo) is male or female.  Concerns are that this is leading to sex-selection of babies.  A couple wanting a particular gender are able to dispose of ‘wrong gender’ embryos or abort a ‘wrong gender’ foetus.

Of late the options for genetically selecting certain features of your future child have exploded right off the Richter Scale.  A company in the U.S. (Orchid) screens for far more than the usual markers for things like Down’s syndrome.  It claims to be able do “a full-scale analysis of each embryo’s predisposition to all 1200-plus diseases and conditions about which we currently have genetic information.”  It claims to cover everything from a wide range of cancers to a susceptibility to coronary artery disease and from diabetes to Alzheimer’s.

Recently the ‘Weekend Australian Magazine’ related the story of the founder of Orchid – a woman who had undergone an IVF treatment program resulting in 16 frozen embryos.  Each embryo was tested and provided with a genetic profile that charted the percentile possibilities of all the known diseases that Orchid tests for.  She plans to choose two male embryos and two female embryos with minimal disease possibilities to be consecutively implanted over a period of several years.  The goal of her company, according to the report, is the wellbeing of future children and to reduce the burden of disease on the family and on society.

Before we say, “How noble!” let’s think through the implications.  For starters we’re turning babies into commodities.  “I’ll have a hazel eyed, redheaded female with an athletic predisposition and I’ll also have a blond male with the intellectual ability to be a top scientist.”  Good grief!  What makes Orchid think that genetic testing will be limited to filtering out horrible life-threatening diseases?

Even worse... this seems to me a blatant attempt to thumb one’s nose at God.  We’ve come a long from the words of Psalm 139 in which the song-writer praises God in gratitude: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Having discovered that we can fertilise human eggs in a test tube and can now analyse the genetic makeup of an embryo we’ve just about reached the place of designer babies.  Here is our modern Tower of Babel where we exalt ourselves above the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.  All hail to thee modern science!

A more obvious question that troubles is: what is done with the leftover embryos?  The founder of Orchid was reported as being ready for a second round of IVF to provide a greater field from which to select her four children - only two of her present 16 embryos are boys and of course not all implanted embryos result in a full term pregnancy.    But that will also mean that yet more embryos will be discarded.  So does concern for healthy offspring trump the cheapened view of human life that can blithely discard a couple of dozen embryos?

Of course there is one thing overlooked in all this.  Even if we could guarantee a perfect embryo, one without a single risk factor in all 1200-plus diseases, that would not yet guarantee a healthy child.  We may look to science to provide us with near perfect children only to find that at birth things go horribly wrong and the baby suffers brain damage.  Or there’s the childhood illness that still have to be navigated... and even if all of that is evaded that child – with an impeccable genetic profile – could end up a quadriplegic after a sporting accident.

Reality is that we live in a fallen world where not science but Jesus Christ is King.

John Westendorp