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Connor, a healthy baby boy, has made history. He is the first child to be born after his parents had the entire genomes of a batch of their IVF embryos screened for abnormalities, with the intention of picking the healthiest for implantation.
The technique could increase the number of successful pregnancies from IVF. And although the researchers stopped short of actually sequencing the boy's genome, the advance is proof that this could be done – potentially ushering in an era of designer babies.
IVF accounts for between 1 and 5 per cent of all births in developed countries, but it is very inefficient. An estimated 80 per cent of embryos either don't implant or miscarry, while only a third of IVF cycles result in a successful pregnancy, largely due to abnormalities in the number of chromosomes an embryo possesses.
"If you take a woman in her early 30s, around a quarter of her embryos will be abnormal. For a woman in her early 40s, it's around three-quarters," says Dagan Wells at the University of Oxford, who pioneered the new technique...
The technique could increase the number of successful pregnancies from IVF. And although the researchers stopped short of actually sequencing the boy's genome, the advance is proof that this could be done – potentially ushering in an era of designer babies.
IVF accounts for between 1 and 5 per cent of all births in developed countries, but it is very inefficient. An estimated 80 per cent of embryos either don't implant or miscarry, while only a third of IVF cycles result in a successful pregnancy, largely due to abnormalities in the number of chromosomes an embryo possesses.
"If you take a woman in her early 30s, around a quarter of her embryos will be abnormal. For a woman in her early 40s, it's around three-quarters," says Dagan Wells at the University of Oxford, who pioneered the new technique...
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