Chapter 6: Choosing Our Children's Genes Summary and Analysis

When a man and a woman have a child, the potential number of genetically different offspring is vast. There are approximately 8 million distinct sperm a man can produce and about the same number of eggs from a woman. Multiplying these together, one can understand the enormous possibilities. No matter what, the children a couple will have will probably look like the mother or father and have similar characteristics of their parents. What if parents could help "design" their own children? If parents were able to opt for the sex of their child through chromosome selection, what would be the social ramifications? There would be positives and negatives. Families may become smaller in some societies. Couples that now have four children—three boys and then finally the girl—could stop at two...