How much does it cost to pick your childs genes?

Question

I have heard of the term designer or gm babies. You can pick your childs eye hair color. scientist study the embryo's dna make up. Just wanted to know how much does something like that cost is it covered by insuranse. Also can you pick the childs height?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this practice is not in effect.

You cannot choose what genes go into your child, and it is under heavy debate as to whether, for ethical reasons, this will ever happen. Movies such as GATTACA address this topic.

What you can do, however, is go to see a genetics counsellor, although generally speaking, they only address the likelihood of certain hereditary diseases for the offspring of two given parents. They also can test an unborn baby for certain genetic traits like height and eye colour and such, but you cannot choose what traits to give your child.

You would have to check with your health care provider as to whether they cover genetics counselling services, as it is a fairly new branch of the health sciences.