Baby X by Kira Peikoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The book is set in the future, perhaps 50 years or so, where genetic engineering and designer babies is the way most people have children. The story is told from the viewpoint of three different women: a professional surrogate (a woman who carries babies for others), a scientist who works for a rock star, and an aspiring writer tracking down a story about “Selected” children (ones chosen for their genetic attributes) and the class discrimination against the “Unforeseen” (all others). The author has devised a clever suspense-filled plot centered around celebrity genes and how that could be used for extortion and other forms of misuse. The author knows her stuff with regard to the bioethics and the process of surrogacy and making embryos in the lab. I was impressed with that and how she used that not only to build a good plot, but also to highlight both the positive and negative aspects of genetic engineering, i.e. the utopian as well as dystopian aspects. I know something about this and see the recent scientific breakthroughs as a positive.
My own extended family is good example of why you should not fear the technology. I have a female relative who donated her eggs to a gay male couple. She was a penniless grad student who had just broken up with her latest boyfriend and was despairing of ever being married and having children, although she wanted them. She was in no position to raise one on her own, but her donation was successful and two beautiful baby girls were born to the gay couple. My relative did not carry the babies, that was done by surrogates, but the girls, years later, met their biological mom and hugged her, calling her mom. She is FB friends with the parents. Fortunately my relative did later marry and have a daughter of her own, although it turned out she was only able to have one. So the process allowed her to have three healthy beautiful children. Of course the clinic did DNA testing on the embryos to make sure they were free of horrible diseases, but they were not screened or selected for traits. Rather, the gay men chose my relative to donate the eggs based on her traits, not the embryos’. She was a beautiful blond, an excellent athlete, and a Phi Beta Kappa grad student in a technical field, i.e. brilliant. The men became fathers of two great kids they couldn’t have any other way. It was a win-win.
Another family member with his wife had a baby boy, but he died soon after birth. Sadly, the mother underwent an emergency C-section that rendered her unable to carry another baby. Although that was heartbreaking, they later used an IVF clinic and a surrogate to have another son, a beautiful, healthy little guy. The surrogate, although geographically somewhat distant, is part of their family now, and even expressed a desire to have another child of theirs. As a lawyer, I followed the process of both surrogate and couple selecting each other and writing a contract that protects them both. A bio-escrow agent is used to make sure everyone’s rights are protected. The couple chose the sex, but that’s the only “selection” they did of the embryo. The doctors screened out the embryos that had undesirable mutations but that’s all. The boy is not a “designer baby.” So here again, happiness for all and healthy babies are the only products of the IVF process.
Despite my approval of the clever plot and the attention it brings to the IVF issue, I was disappointed in the too-frequent clunky writing (e.g. “The lock unclicked.” unclicked?) The technological timeline is murky and contradictory. The biology described is on our doorstep and technically available now, yet she has it set decades in the future. Her understanding of tech outside of the bioethics realm is poor; or at least the tech in the story is often ludicrous. People don’t carry devices. They access the internet through their contact lenses. Somehow, despite these incredible electronics packed in wafer thin lenses, they are transparent. They blink the website they want and blink messages to each other. They can be tracked through their retinas by ubiquitous camera drones. What happened to sunglasses and hats? Although I can’t give it five stars, I can recommend this book. I did NOT foresee the ending.