Fear of eugenics shouldn’t put a stop to gene editing
Ethical concerns about a brave new world of designer babies are legitimate, but we can’t slam the door on the future, writes David Aaronovitch.
If you walk southwest from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, you will pass a long wall made of blue glass. It marks the spot at No 4 Tiergartenstrasse (the house no longer exists) that acted as the headquarters of Aktion T4, the operation to murder people deemed genetically undesirable. As many as 275,000 people – mentally ill, physically disabled or ‘‘criminal’’ – were killed, usually by gassing.
To many people, the Nazi programmes to ‘‘cleanse’’ the Aryan race of undesirable qualities represent the logical conclusion of the science of eugenics. The appalling history of eugenics is always there in the background whenever the genetic manipulation of human beings is discussed, and this week was no exception.
On Tuesday the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an expert body set up in Britain in 1991 to help chart the choppy ethical waters of the new biosciences, issued a report entitled
In essence, it recommended that developments in gene-editing technology required a debate on the ethics of genetic manipulation. ‘‘We find ourselves in a new situation,’’ committee chairwoman Karen Yeung said. ‘‘The ground is shifting and this generates new responsibilities.’’
Under what circumstances, it asked, might it be permissible to create genetically altered children? Immediately a number of people said: ‘‘None.’’
So what are we talking about? Essentially, the ability to modify sperm, eggs or early-stage embryos to remove or insert certain genetic material. This could mean snipping out a gene mutation that causes a life-shortening and often horrible heritable disease such as Huntington’s or cystic fibrosis, and in the process of modification possibly removing the disease from the gene pool.
Ko te whae a te iwi katoa he tangata, he tangata hei arahi, hei whakatakoto kupu, hei whaakahua mo tatou katoa. The desire of our people is a man, a particular man to lead, to transmit thoughts, to be representative of our people.
So wrote 30-year-old National candidate Winston R. Peters, of Nga¯ tiwai descent, in his campaign brochure when he first stood (unsuccessfully) for Parliament in the Northern Ma¯ ori seat in the 1975 election. In the brochure Peters added: ‘‘A vote for me will be a vote of confidence in yourself for I seek only to be a Voice for the Ma¯ ori People. One chance is all we need to prove to the nation we can be victorious.’’
Even then, in the reference to victory, there was a nod to his namesake Winston Churchill, a politician he’s always admired.
It’s 43 years since Winston Peters first stood for Parliament, 25 years this week since he formed the NZ First party. With Peters as acting prime minister it’s a timely opportunity to revisit his role in politics and how he and his party have influenced New Zealand’s political landscape.
Although his political purpose has moved a long way from being a voice of the Ma¯ ori people only, his party owes its position as a serious political force to Ma¯ ori voters. Hopeful that NZ First would actually be the voice for the Ma¯ ori people, the party won 13 per cent of the vote and 17 seats, including all five Ma¯ ori seats, in New Zealand’s first MMP election in 1996, after which NZ First held the balance of power and propped up the 1996 Nationalled government.
The 1996 election cemented NZ First’s position as the third party to take most notice of in
Or a whole lot of other things; it was reported recently that Chinese researchers had modified beagle embryos to give dogs bigger leg muscles. None of this is imminently applicable to humans, Nuffield says, but the capability is on its way.
So while Nuffield wasn’t recommending any change in the law now, it was suggesting that we consider the circumstances under which we would permit genome editing. This suggestion alone was enough to alarm many ethicists. But where once the fear was about what governments might do in the hunt for the perfect citizen, now it’s all about how we as individuals and consumers might subsequent elections.
Since then a vote for NZ First has been a protest vote against Labour and National rather than a vote for Ma¯ ori.
NZ First took over the third-party protest role from the Social Credit party, which had occupied this slot over 12 elections from 1954 to 1984. Since 1993 NZ First has contested nine elections and its nationwide vote has ranged between 4.07 and 13.35 per cent.
Protest party popularity tends to rise when voters think the outcome of an election is not much in doubt and a major party or candidate is able to win without their vote. It falls when elections are competitive and voters return to the main parties because they feel their votes are pivotal to the outcome of the election.
Social Credit and NZ First’s highest votes have come in elections when the opposition has been at its weakest and a change of government hasn’t been on the cards. Regardless, progressives don’t like Peters because of his populist rhetoric and nativist policies. Conservatives don’t like him demand or be seduced into demanding perfect children.
Thus, says Marcy Darnovsky, of the US-based Centre for Genetics and Society, what is happening is the opening of a door ‘‘to a world of genetic haves and have-nots’’ in which ‘‘parents pursued projects to improve their children at the one-cell stage’’. Those with money would do as private-school parents do: seek to buy comparative advantage for their offspring, but at the zygotic stage.
Well, says Nuffield, in pre-emptive response, some of that is only what we do already. The report cites the fact that the average height of Dutch males has increased by 20cm over two centuries, taking Netherlanders from being some of the smallest to some of the most extended folk in Europe. Why? Because of the ‘‘relative reproductive success of taller Dutch men’’.
A BBC programme this week featured a Huntington’s sufferer whose father died of the disease and who, for the sake of his children, envisaged a future in which the condition could be taken out of circulation through editing.
Nuffield’s view is that future permission for such editing should be based on two overarching principles. First, it should happen only when ‘‘it is intended to secure the welfare of, and is consistent with the welfare of, a person who may be born as a consequence of using these cells’’.
Second, editing ‘‘should be permitted only in circumstances in which it cannot reasonably be expected to produce or exacerbate social division or the unmitigated marginalisation or disadvantage of groups within society’’. So no designer babies for rich folk, no ‘‘consumer eugenics’’.
At this point, Nuffield demands one of only two responses. The first is to slam the door shut on a future ability to edit the genome. The other is to allow an early peek through the window. In the end I go with Nuffield. Not out of a sense of scientific inevitability but because allowing people to do what I would want to do for my children, and to avoid what I would want to avoid, seems the best principle. Let’s not allow the fear of the worst to drive out any reasonable hope of the good.
But this is a debate. We’re only just beginning it. We could all change our minds. –
because he highlights the plight of New Zealanders who haven’t benefited from globalisation. Peters understands that both major parties, in their rapacious desire to globalise, modernise, and liberalise, have left many New Zealanders behind.
For this reason I think it’s a pity Winston Peters never fulfilled the destiny he saw for himself as that ‘‘particular man to lead’’ New Zealand as prime minister for a full term or more.
Both major parties, representing the dominant political culture in whose interests the electoral system works, have thrown everything they can at denying them that chance.
If people think Peters’ decision to have an invisible board of unelected party members choose which party to go into coalition with after the 2017 election was undemocratic, the way the big parties rig the electoral funding rules in their favour is an even more serious affront to democracy.
They have made it increasingly hard for third, minor, protest parties to access the funds they need to be able to promote alternative policies and candidates, and stand up for those without a political voice.
In the first MMP election in 1996 the minor party proportion of the party vote was 34 per cent. In 2017 the minor party share was 18 per cent. Of New Zealand’s minor parties, only NZ First has survived the entire 21 years since the introduction of MMP. It will be a very quiet place indeed when Winston R. Peters decides to retire from politics.
Professor Claire Robinson is a political commentator and Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Creative Arts based at Massey University’s Wellington campus.