[OrangeHoof]

If you are going to accept that choosing embryos based on genetic qualities is a good thing (and I don't), why would selecting on the basis of hair color or eye color be wrong? I mean, some genes are dominant and others are not. Over centuries, the regressive genes like red hair and blue eyes will become eliminated so if they are desirable, why not encourage them through selective screening?

Could it be that some might see a preference for blonde hair or blue eyes as racist?

[Varda]

The reason it’s wrong is that what’s being attempted is the artificial selection of traits aka breeding humans which is wrong on it’s face. It is playing God. How would you like to be totally at fault for the characteristics, health and disabilities of your children the way animal breeders are with what they produce?

Humans like domestic animals have an array of characteristics that can’t be entirely predicted. Things like hair and eye color are easy, things like health and recessive abnormalities are difficult. Something that looks good on paper can result in abnormalities that can’t be predicted. Sometimes these mistakes are severe.

Animal breeders make these mistakes and the mistake is sterilized or put down. What liability will the human breeders have? They already kill those embryos who don’t meet simple selection criteria, what about infants that don’t. Utilitarian ethics says kill them too.

“Over centuries, the regressive genes like red hair and blue eyes will become eliminated”

This isn’t how genetics works. Outcrossing something with a recessive characteristic doesn’t eliminate it, it disperses it. Recessives will pop up in a later generation when crossed with another individual that also carries that recessive.