A Grave New World
We need a gene-editing debate
SHOULD scientists be using gene-editing technology on human embryos, rewriting the basic makeup of the human person in the race to prevent disease? The potential benefits are tempting. The bioethical concerns are grave: from human-embryo destruction to the creation of “designer babies” to the blurring of boundaries between therapy and “enhancement.”
Some scientists are ready to close the debate — though the ethical issues are unresolved — and press full-steam ahead with their experiments.
In a speech in Hong Kong last month, George Daley, dean of Harvard’s medical school, said it’s “time to move forward from” debates about “ethical permissibility to outline the path to clinical translation.”
Trust us, the scientists, in other words.
Daley’s remarks coincided with a Chinese doctor’s claim to have created two genetically modified human embryos, who were successfully nurtured to birth. The doctor, He Jiankui, carried out the experiment using a technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 that allows scientists to genetically edit cells.
The technique holds potential to treat a variety of genetic disorders, such as cystic fibrosis and sickle- cell disease, as well as even more complex conditions such as cancers and heart disease. Indeed, Dr. He says he genetically modified the two children in question, back in their embryonic stage, to make them resistant to HIV.
Thankfully, the worldwide scientific community recoiled at the ethics violation. The Chinese government called for an immediate investigation. Let’s hope Beijing holds the line, because Daley’s assurances notwithstanding, genetically modified human embryos raise new versions of old bioethical problems, as well as some altogether novel ones. For starters, countless embryos were destroyed in the process that led to the live birth of these two genetically modified children. In all such assisted-reproductive technologies, many more embryos are created than are implanted and delivered. The remaining ones — human beings at the embryonic stage — are frozen or destroyed.
Regardless of where you stand on abortion, the intentional creation and destruction of human beings should be cause for worry. Such callous disregard for human dignity doesn’t bode well for the future of scientific integrity.
So, too, there is a great danger in creating children in the laboratory, a process that treats human subjects as if objects of technological mastery. That will have profound moral and cultural implications as the science progresses: Societies can come to view human life — all life, modified or not — as something that can easily be toyed with and discarded.
The CRISPR-Cas9 procedure, and others like it, take us further toward creating “designer babies.” This would allow parents or government authorities to dictate the characteristics of future people.
It isn’t hard to fathom how these new technologies could be deployed in the hands of racist, eu- genicist or genocidal governments of the future. Despite its face-saving condemnation of the CRISPR babies, Beijing is already suspected of using CRISPR and other technologies to explore the possibility of producing “super-soldiers” with increased muscle mass, expanded cardiovascular capacity and even improved night vision.
In addition to a literal arms race, there’s also the specter of a kind of Brave New World genetic caste system. Imagine John Edwards’ “Two Americas” but between the genetic haves and have-nots. An America where the wealthy and morally unscrupulous design super-babies, while everyone else remains “unenhanced.”
Even barring these more dystopian possibilities, there are other hazards. Scientists simply don’t know, for example, whether knocking out any particular gene will have other, unintended health consequences later. The genetic code is complicated and interconnected, and even a small, well-intentioned modification could have large ramifications.
Furthermore, genetically modifying human embryos will modify their germ line (sperm and ova), entailing the transfer of those modifications to future generations. The use of CRISPR up until now has mainly been on people already born. Because these Chinese babies were genetically modified as embryos, not only has their genome been modified, but their entire lineage could be affected.
Right now, it all amounts to an experiment. But just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. To avoid technocracy, humans must govern technology, not the reverse.
Of course, we must avoid the trap of becoming Luddites. New biotechnologies hold the potential to cure and prevent disease, to promote human flourishing — but only if the deployment of technology is governed by morality. The experiments in China with genetically modified babies are just the beginning of what could go wrong.