George Clooney and his wife Amal have become parents to twins, Ella and Alexander, suggesting the couple opted to go the route of other celebrities and engineer designer babies. The practice is frowned on by medical ethicists.
Amal gave birth this morning (June 6), publicist Stan Rosenfield confirmed.
“This morning Amal and George welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into their lives. Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine.”
Rosenfield joked that George, who once vowed never to get married and have children, is “sedated and should recover in a few days”.
The couple appear to be the latest to opt for in vitro fertilization (IVF) to create designer babies, in this case a boy and a girl.
Celebrities have been known to use IVF to work in pregnancies around their busy schedules, although very few admit it. In some cases, celebrities have also used the process to pick the sex of their children or in many cases to have twins.
Beyoncé , for example, also happens to be pregnant with twins.
Last year, Chrissy Teigen shockingly revealed in an interview that she was having a designer baby with singer John Legend, even though the American Medical Association (AMA) says choosing a baby simply based on sex is “unethical.”
The Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, an arm of the AMA, issued an opinion on the subject in the mid-1990s. It said using genetic selection for anything other preventing or curing specific diseases should not be practiced by doctors.
But celebrities seem to have no trouble finding Hollywood doctors willing to inseminate them with a designer embryo of their choice, whether it’s a boy, girl or twins.
Teigen may be the first celebrity to openly admit she chose the sex of her baby through in vitro fertilization.
“Not only am I having a girl, but I picked the girl from her little embryo. I picked her and was like, ‘Let’s put in the girl,’” she told People,.
Teigen also revealed that she plans to genetically engineer a boy next. “We’ll get there too, so it’s not like we really have to pick,” she said.
Two years ago, Kim Kardashian likely underwent the procedure to ensure her second child would be a boy. The tip off was her own announcement of the baby’s sex. She made it weeks before she could have known through natural means.
Kardashian quickly denied she was impregnated with only male embryos. Kim gave birth to a boy, Saint West, on Dec 5, 2015. The timing did nothing to undermine evidence that she used the controversial medical procedure.
Many medical ethicists are appalled by genetic selection because Nazi Germany engaged in early research into genetic engineering to create a so-called “master race.”
The process also costs tens of thousands of dollars.
A doctor must extract several embryos from the womb, usually created by taking fertility drugs. The embryos are fertilized in a petri dish to determine which will produce the desired sex.
That embryo is implanted in the womb. The rest of the viable eggs are discarded in what amounts to multiple abortions.
Given that Amal is a human rights lawyer and George is socially active, their decision, if true, to go with designer babies is even more shocking.
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