Genie in the bottle

Progress in eugenics poses ethical questions

The early 20th-century debate on is best exemplified by an apocryphal story. George Bernard Shaw was propositioned by Isadora Duncan. Ms Duncan suggested that they could do humanity a favour by having a baby which would inherit her looks and Mr Shaw’s brains. Mr Shaw demurred, “Ah, but what if the child inherits my looks and your brain?” Imagine that you could create a baby with the exact attributes you desired, picking genes from two, three, or more individuals. This super-baby might have high intelligence, disease resistance, athletic prowess, etc. Further, imagine that such a super-baby could be cloned. Now, this eugenic fantasy is close to hard reality.

The world has taken giant strides in tweaking how we look at birth. Cloning already existed in nature since identical twins are clones, but, in 1996, The Roslin Institute in Scotland cloned Dolly the sheep. At least 20 mammalian species have been cloned since. In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) — the mixing of genetic material from two individuals to create a baby — was first demonstrated in 1978. At least 5 million IVF babies have since been born and now even “three-parent” babies are possible.

In this regard, the last five years have witnessed the development of precise genetic editing technologies. The CRISPR CAS-9 technique can cut and paste specific genes into (and out of) a genome. Another