What do curing disease, disability, and creating designer babies all have in common? That’s right—the modification of genes to produce “desirable” traits.
Sure, genetic editing can potentially mitigate the effects of disease, but the ethical implications far outweigh the potential benefits.
One of the most blatant ethical concerns involves testing these developing methods to ensure their safety, often through animal testing. Already, multiple experiments have injected painful and sometimes lethal drugs into animals’ bodies.
According to an article by The Collector, in one experiment, “the human growth gene that was introduced into the DNA of mice led to cancer cells’ appearance.”
In another experiment, researchers found that transgenic pigs were “arthritic, partially blind and infertile when a human growth hormone was inserted into their genomes to make them grow faster.”
Evidently, the use of animals for testing remains extremely controversial, with animals exposed to potentially harmful gene-edits which cause immense pain and suffering.
So how do we determine whether or not to use animals for testing?
Maurya Muppalla, a sophomore at Wilton High School, argues that genetic engineers can test technologies on animals, “but only if the treatment on the animal is humane and is meant to be non-lethal.”
Another ethical dilemma is social disparity. What happens when these technologies become available in the market? Due to their high research and manufacturing costs, gene-editing technology for both designer babies and medical reasons will not be available to everyone; in fact, it may widen the social disparity between economic classes.
The majority of Americans support this viewpoint. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 58% of Americans believe “gene editing will very likely lead to increased inequality because it will only be available to the wealthy.”
Ultimately, however, the greatest ethical concern does not involve testing or equal access. Instead, it revolves around the long-term effects and the act of “playing God.”
Heated discussion surrounds the use of human embryos to test genetic technology. Most notably, in 2018, a Chinese scientist revealed that he had “secretly engineered the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies.” This action resulted in widespread outrage and criticism, leading to a consensus for “a coordinated halt from experimentation following the decision by a Chinese lab to gene-edit two healthy human embryos to no clear scientific end.”
The idea of editing the genes of human embryos brings into play the concept of “designer babies.” This term refers to editing the genes of a baby to include desirable traits or remove undesirable ones. However, the idea of increasing the intelligence of a baby by altering their genetic makeup corresponds to eugenics, the selective breeding of the human population to increase the occurrence of characteristics seen as desirable.
Additionally, designer babies raise the question of potentially harming future generations if a gene alteration results in unintended consequences.
Dr. Lea Witkowsky, a project and policy analyst at the Innovative Genomics Institute, states how “most human traits are extremely complex. The characteristics people tend to associate with designer babies – intelligence, height, and athletic ability – are not controlled by one or even a few genes.”
Designer babies can also contribute to the biological wealth gap. If the wealthy can purchase designer babies while the poor cannot, the wealthy may gain immunity to diseases and increased intelligence, creating a genetic class divide.
Much of the American population agrees with the immorality of creating “designer babies,” as “just 19% of Americans say it would be appropriate to use gene editing to make a baby more intelligent [and] eight-in-ten (80%) say this would be taking medical technology too far,”
according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.
Even implementing gene-editing technology to cure serious inheritable diseases faces controversy, since modified traits affect future generations.
Using CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), scientists can correct the gene of an individual living with a disease or make changes to a fertilized egg, passing changes down to generations. Scientists can only use CRISPR to edit conditions influenced by one gene, such as sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
However, although rooted in good intentions, no clear method exists to test gene edits for the potential negative side effects that would harm both the person involved and their descendants.
“Human heritable gene editing is clearly a terrible solution in search of a problem,” said Tim Hunt, chief executive officer at the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. “If you make a mistake, the mistake passes onto all future generations. So that’s a pretty big ethical roll of the dice.”
Parents of children with disabilities face a similar dilemma. Although they would do anything to reduce the pain of their children, they remain tentative when it comes to editing human genetic makeup.
In a New York Times interview, Professor Meghan Halley, who has a son with several gastrointestinal anomalies as well as an unidentified genetic disorder, says that she would “do anything to prevent the pain her son has been through.” However, she hesitates to “do anything that would take away him, take away who he is. And he is who he is partly because of the challenges he has faced.”
Despite the ethical considerations of genetic technologies, there may be ways in which humans can employ these technologies for the good of the population while addressing these concerns. For example, scientists could use genetic therapies to cure serious diseases in people already living with them.
Dr. Alex Marson, director of the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology in San Francisco, says that “there are opportunities to use gene-editing technologies to treat genetic diseases that don’t raise the societal implications of altering permanently patterns of human inheritance.”
This means that engineers can use gene-editing technologies to benefit those living with serious diseases by alleviating their health complications, while reducing the potential harm that comes with altering a heritable gene.
However, this alternative still faces the possible negative consequences from unforeseen genetic mutations, and the marketing of these technologies would only increase the risks involved.
As society develops and genetic technology becomes more advanced, the potential these tools unlock become far greater than previously imagined. The question does not ask whether we can do it, but whether we should do it. And the answer to that depends on how we consider the ethical implications of such a controversial topic, especially when it carries risks for future generations.
The future of humans depends on what we decide to pursue when it comes to editing our genes. Do we need one genetic error that changes the fate of humanity for the worse before we realize our mistake?
As Ellen Grys, in an interview with the New York Times, puts it, “I don’t like messing around with Mother Nature. Because when you start manipulating genes, at what point do you stop?”
