it’s a nice gimmick for customers of 23andMe: a calculator that indicates how likely it is that a common child will have green, blue or brown eyes. The company offers genetic testing for the price of 99 U.S. dollars to the analysis of one’s own genetic material. And if two clients to agree to mutually disclose their DNA, then they may use the “Family Traits Inheritance Calculator”.
entirely innocent 23andMe now responds to requests that revolve around a patent that has been filed in 2008 in U.S. Patent Office, the U.S. company the estranged wife of Google founder Sergey Brin, Anne Wojcicki, and – largely unnoticed of the public – the 24th Was issued September 2013.
Scientific language obscures the explosivenessThe scientific title – roughly translates to “germ cell donor selection based on genetic calculations” – obscures the controversy: U.S. Patent No. 8543339 describes a further step on the way to designer baby. All no cause for alarm, mediates the response to a request from 23andMe by SPIEGEL ONLINE: The company pursues the patent no plans related to fertility clinics
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Despite all protestations to the patent arouses the suspicions of critics. In the journal “Genetics in Medicine,” the Bioethikerinnen Sigrid Sterckx from the University of Ghent and Heidi Howard from the French Université de Toulouse with colleagues comment clear: The company has been patented a method that could be selected with the egg donors and sperm donors after which characteristics are desired in a child of the intended parents. The selection would be based on an algorithm that compares the genetic characteristics of the biological parents. Imagine all possible genetic variants, the risk of cancer on the body size to personality types.
“I prefer a child …”concerns calls including an illustration in the patent application out in surfacing a questionnaire: “I prefer a child with …” and then follows a series of response options, from low cancer risk to big opportunities on green eyes
23andMe has been recognized by the University and published a report on the U.S. site of “Wired” the sensitivity of the subject, about the first time in Germany, the technical blog “placebo alert” has been reported in scienceblogs.de.
In a blog entry perform the genetic analysts that the four-year-old patent application should protect only the “Family Traits Inheritance Calculator”. They have formulated the request also going on the assumption that there is a potential for use in fertility clinics. But since then a lot had changed, as well as the strategic direction of their own: “The company has the concepts discussed in the patent never pursued the ‘Family Traits Inheritance Calculator’ out, and we have no plans to do that,” says the declaration. It is in the nature of patent applications, they found that companies often without knowing exactly how they wanted to use it later -., Or whether they would ever need
No child from the catalog
In any case, and also keep the Bioethikerinnen in “Genetics in Medicine” 23andMe benefit is the aggregation of designer babies as desired harder than it sounds. Also with the methods of genetic analysis that the U.S. company has patented, would get parents with children only way to increase the chances of certain desirable characteristics in the offspring.
Outraged are the authors, because the U.S. Patent Office does not seem to get the idea that a patent on how you could most skilfully put together a designer baby, might be morally reprehensible. Although there are, in U.S. patent law no explicit Moralitätsklausel, but in a similarly sensational case was a U.S. patent has not been granted already on moral grounds. This was the case, wanted to get a U.S. research patent on a chimera of humans and animals. The two scientists had wanted to set a precedent so that no one can ever patent for such chimeras would.
Children forecast industrial scaleRegardless of what 23andMe now declared his plans, the granted patent complicated the debate about what should be allowed in child planning. One available on the Internet Questionnaire for selecting desirable and undesirable characteristics would be different than standing in front of preimplantation genetic diagnosis in an attempt to diagnose genetic diseases before implantation of an embryo in the uterus. Add to this the beginning of the freely available Ergbutanalyse to unsatisfactory clarified questions, how to deal with the data of the customers, how safe are these and what is abuse imaginable.
now it’s all about what a few people want to know about their genetic material. If an industrial scale control probabilities for certain properties is possible and the genetic data of more and more people will be stored in company, but worse consequences can be imagined as the seemingly harmless against theft of a few million credit card details.
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