Genetic Progress by Voluntarily Conducted Germinal Choice 
growing rapidly. In addition, an increasing number of couples 
are applying for AID in cases where the husband carries or has 
a strong chance of carrying some grave genetic defect, or some 
constitutional trait (of an antigenic nature, for instance) that 
may be incompatible with a trait of his wife’s. Moreover, a few 
of the practitioners of AID are already making it a point to 
utilize, where feasible, germinal material from donors of out- 
standing ability and vigour, persons whose genuine merits 
have been indicated in the trials of life. Studies of the family 
life in AID cases have shown it to be, in general, unusually well 
adjusted. 
When to these developments we add the fact that several 
banks of frozen human semen are even now in operation, in 
widely separated localities, we see that a thin line of stepping 
stones, extending most of the way to germinal choice itself, has 
already been laid down. It is but a short step in motivation 
from the couple who wish to turn their genetic defect to their 
credit by having, instead, an especially promising child, to the 
couple who, even though they are by no means subnormal, are 
idealistic enough to prefer to give their child as favourable a 
genetic prospect as can be obtained for it. There are already 
persons who would gladly utilize such opportunities for their 
families. These are persons who, as my friend Calvin Kline 
has put the matter, take more pride in what they can pur- 
posively create with their brains and hands than in what they 
more or less reflexly produce with their loins, and who regard 
their contribution to the good of their children and of humanity 
in general as more important than the multiplication of their 
own particular genetic idiosyncracies. Once these pioneers have 
been given the opportunity to realize their aspirations, and to 
do so without subterfuge, their living creations of the next 
generation will constitute a sufficient demonstration of the 
worth of the procedure, both for the children themselves, for 
their parents, and for the community at large. 
There are, however, several requirements still to be met before 
germinal choice can be undertaken on even a pilot scale. A 
choice is not a real one unless it is a multiple choice, one carried 
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