Christian doctor and research scientist John Wyatt says that a company offering the opportunity to “pick your baby” exposes a drive to control and objectify our children.
The US-based company Nucleus Genomics is offering prospective parents the chance to “have your best baby” via its website mynucleus.com.
These four words are the ones that have reportedly been plastered on posters throughout New York subways, advertising Nucleus’ “IVF+” and “Preview” programmes.
“It’s simple,” the website reads, before explaining how “picking your baby” works: each partner provides a cheek swab; Nucleus combines the genes together, with an emphasis on its ability to combine “all” the genes. You’re then taken to a screen outlining its “Preview” programme – the offer to “Preview your future baby.” You’re given an example, in which you glimpse a list of traits: next to “Eye colour” you see a circle, coloured green, and sitting by “Autism” you see the figure “-2.”
John Wyatt. Photo: The Christian Institute / christian.org.uk
John Wyatt – Christian, doctor, author, speaker, and research scientist – told en that mynucleus.com represents the “logical” outcome of changes in attitudes towards children which, he says, have been in place in Western societies for more than 50 years.
According to Wyatt, this can be described as an “instrumentalising” attitude. “Children are seen as commodities, as a means of achieving the perfect lifestyle and the perfect family,” Wyatt explained.
“Reproductive technology becomes the means by which prospective parents can choose the perfect child that will match with their needs. In reality the technology is far less accurate than is claimed, but the underlying drive to control and objectify our children is unmistakeable.”
Wyatt continued, explaining that in affluent Western societies, this view of seeing children as “commodities” is increasing; children are “chosen in order to reflect their parents’ autonomous desires and wishes.”
“Parents are seen as free to impose their own will and choices on children,” the Right to Die? author continued. “The child is seen as a passive product that can be moulded to suit the parents’ desires.”
“As the number of children in any family decreases – and there is a striking increase of single child families across the planet – there is increasing pressure on the remaining child to meet their parents’ desires,” Wyatt explained. “The danger is that reproductive technology like mynucleus.com taps into and accentuates the controlling spirit of the age.”
Wyatt went on to explain that, in Biblical thinking, children are a gift from God. “That which we give birth to, our children … are fundamentally the same as us and equal in dignity and respect. We cannot define what our children are or what they must do.”
Wyatt argues that, instead, we are called to educate and form our children, while respecting their God-given uniqueness as persons made in God’s image.
Explaining further, Wyatt said: “There should be a balance between accepting our children as the unique beings they are and forming our children, helping them to become the persons that God created them to be.”
Nucleus was approached for comment.
