OT biotch:
<<you think women will be required to pay some monopolist a license fee for each child?>>
Yes.
My wife's first child had a severe genetic defect. For her 2d, 3d, and 4th child, if there had been a test that would have given us the certainty of a healthy baby, we would have paid any price. Whether the price had been 100$ or 1,000,000$, we would have paid it, and considered it money well spent. There is no price elasticity for these tests.
Doctors are already doing genetic testing, for certain high-risk women, for some devastating single-gene (= easy to test for) inherited defects. Those tests are the intellectual property of the company that developed them, so they can (and do) charge monopoly prices.
The number of tests that can be done, is going to explode exponentially, in coming years. It will become routine, for women in wealthy countries, to do prenatal testing for an ever-growing battery of genetic traits. First, to avoid devastating diseases. Next, and this is just a natural progression, to select for desirable traits. Designer babies are coming. Whoever holds the patents on these processes, will be able to charge whatever they want. And, this will not be a niche market. It will be a mass market. |
