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Almost three years ago the decision by the United Kingdom's fertility treatment and embryo research regulator the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) allowing prospective parents to test embryos created outside the body for serious genetic disorders such as aggressive breast, ovarian and bowel cancers before deciding whether to implant them sparked a firestorm of debate, which still burns today.

The decision was viewed in many camps as a radical and dangerous one as prior to this statement the HFEA had only allowed pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for conditions that would result in certain death or severe disability early in life, such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease. In announcing the change, Suzi Leather, chair of the HFEA, said: "We would not consider mild conditions, like asthma and eczema, which can be well managed in medical practice." Critics of genetic screening fear that eventually one the trend continues PGD will be used to select for cosmetic traits that are deemed desirable by the parents, in effect parents will have the ability to use PGD to design their babies.

Currently, it is only legally possible to carry out two types of advanced reproductive technologies on humans. The first involves choosing the type of sperm that will fertilize an egg: this is used to determine the sex and the genes of the baby. The second technique screens embryos for certain genetic disease where only selected disease free embryos are implanted back into the mother's womb. Some would argue that the ability to choose the sex of one's is already a huge step in the direction of manufactured babies. There is a scientific rationale as determining the sex of an embryo can be useful because some genetic diseases, like hemophilia and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, only show themselves in male babies. If the parents have a history of male-related disease, then techniques such as PGD, can be used where doctors then choose a healthy female embryo without the faulty gene and implant this into the mother's womb to grow into a healthy baby. In most countries sex selection is only permitted to avoid diseases that are linked to a certain gender, and in Britain it is illegal to select the sex of a child merely because the parents desire a boy or a girl.

This science of reproductive genetics has also spawned another concern and it is the genetic selection for embryos to serve as donors for chronically ill siblings. In 2004 NewScientist.com reported that

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