The Nuffield Council on
Bioethics has taken what it clearly regards as a brave new step: it has openly
endorsed the use of genome editing to engineer the traits of future children and generations. The council’s report, Genome editing and human reproduction: social and ethical issues, asserts that such a move could be
“morally permissible” under certain circumstances.
In effect, it argues that
the creation of genetically modified human beings should proceed after a few
bioethics-lite boxes are checked off. The report’s conclusion flies in the
face of a widespread global agreement that heritable genetic modification
should remain off-limits, a commitment reflected in the laws of many nations, a
binding European treaty, several international declarations, and numerous
public opinion surveys.
Unfortunately,
a number of scientists and bioethicists, especially in the United States, have
recently reached conclusions similar to the Nuffield council’s. But their
reasoning has been quite different. Until now, proponents of heritable genetic
modification have typically argued that if it is shown to be safe, it should be
allowed only as a medical matter, only to prevent the births of children with
serious genetic diseases, only if no alternatives are available, and certainly
not for enhancement or cosmetic purposes.
The
council’s report has now dispensed with those fig leaves. Its clarity about why
it supports heritable genetic modification, and what’s at stake, may be its
most important – though unintended – contribution to the controversy.The
report recognises that heritable genetic modification cannot be understood as
medicine: there is no sick person in need of treatment or cure. It doesn’t try
to justify heritable genetic modification as a way of preventing the
transmission of serious genetic disease, it acknowledges that this can be
accomplished with existing reproductive procedures such as the embryo screening
technique known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.
These
points are usually raised as part of the case that existing prohibitions on
heritable genetic modification should be maintained and strengthened. After
all, if the medical justification is tenuous at best, and if the technology
isn’t needed to allow carriers of seriously deleterious genetic variants to
have genetically related and unaffected children, why would anyone consider an
irreversible experiment in manipulating embryonic genes?
Then
there is the societal perspective typically emphasised by opponents of
heritable genetic modification: the deep concern that trying to define and
enforce limits wouldn’t work; that the line between “therapy” and “enhancement”
is too blurry and subjective to enact as policy; that we would soon find
ourselves in a world in which parents pursued projects to improve their
children at the one-cell stage. The Nuffield report admits that the classic
distinction between “therapeutic” and “enhancement” uses of heritable genetic
modification cannot be expected to hold, and it foresees that the technology
could be harnessed to create “supersenses or superabilities” for genetically
engineered offspring, and to satisfy parents’ “preferences” for children with “certain
characteristics”.
Again,
it seems strange for supporters of heritable genetic modification to raise the
prospect of a world in which the affluent purchase genetic upgrades for their
children, and to acknowledge that if widely adopted, this powerful technology
could “produce or exacerbate social division, or marginalise or disadvantage
groups in society”. In fact, avoiding that eventuality is one of two principles
offered as a guide to the ethical use of heritable genome editing
interventions.
This
makes it all the more striking that the report, several years in the making and
almost 200 pages long, barely considers the social, commercial and competitive
dynamics that would powerfully promote such an outcome, or how they could be
mitigated. Though it substantively addresses discrimination against people with
disabilities, it has almost nothing to say about vulnerabilities to injustice
due to racism, sexism, socioeconomic status and other forms of inequality.
Instead, it pleads that it is “beyond the scope of this report to reflect the
range of futures that contain the various possible genomic technologies (or
none)”.
The
bottom line is all too clear. Sadly, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has
given its blessing to an unneeded and societally dangerous biotechnology, one
that could be leveraged by privileged elites seeking purported genetic
improvements to ensure that their children are treated as superior to the rest
of us. Haven’t we been down the path of biologically defined hierarchies
before? In a world plagued with obscene inequalities, in a time of resurgent
racism, is this the road we want to travel?
There
is still time to turn back. We can refuse to allow inequalities to be inscribed
in our genomes. We can forgo a future in which class divisions harden into
genetic castes. We can instead affirm the widespread rejection of heritable
genetic modification, and reclaim biotechnology as an instrument for fostering
solidarity and serving the common good.
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