The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction

by Henry T. Greely,
Psychology Today, June 7, 2016

By the middle of the twenty-first century, according to Henry T. Greely, a professor of law at Stanford University, improvements in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) will mean that 50-70 percent of pregnancies in the United States will start in laboratories rather than in the bedroom or the back seat of a car. Parents will be able to minimize the likelihood of transmitting diseases that run in the family and select the genetically influenced traits of their children (including gender, height, hair color, and perhaps intelligence, athletic and musical ability) from several embryonic options. This future “is coming,” Greely writes. “The question is whether and how to try to shape it.”