Feature

It’s life, but not as we know it

If advocates of human genetic engineering are not checked, says David King, ‘enhancement’ of human beings will become a reality, with unknown consequences

The debate around human genetics currently centres on the ethics of genetic testing, and the possibilities of genetic discrimination and selective eugenics. But while ethicists and the media re-hash these issues, a small group of scientists and publicists are working towards a yet more frightening prospect which should disturb us all – the intentional genetic engineering of human beings.

Just as the first clone of an adult mammal, Dolly the sheep, was presented to the public as a fait accompli by scientist Ian Wilmut, so these geneticists aim to set in place the tools for a new techno-eugenics before the public has had a chance to decide whether this is a direction in which it wishes to go.

Publicists, meanwhile, are working to convince us that these developments are inevitable. The Campaign Against Human Genetic Engineering has been set up in response to this threat.

In current practice, genetic engineering is only applied to non-reproductive cells (known as ‘gene therapy’) to treat diseases in a single patient, rather than in all their descendants.

Gene therapy is still very unsuccessful and we are often told that the prospect of reproductive genetic engineering is remote. In fact, the basic technologies for human genetic engineering (HGE) have been available for some time and are being refined and improved in a number of ways. We should not make the same mistake that was made with cloning and assume that this issue is in the distant future.

In the first instance, likely justifications for HGE will be medical. A major step towards reproductive genetic engineering is the proposal by US gene therapy pioneer French Anderson to begin gene therapy on fetuses to treat certain genetic diseases.

Although not directly targeted at reproductive cells, Anderson’s proposed technique poses a relatively high risk that genes will ‘inadvertently’ be altered in the fetus’s reproductive cells, as well as in the blood cells which he wants to repair. If he is allowed to go ahead, the descendants of the fetus will be genetically engineered in every cell of their body.

Another scientist, James Grifo of New York University, is transferring cell nuclei from the eggs of older to younger women, using techniques similar to those used in cloning. Although his aim is to develop treatments for certain fertility problems, the result would be babies with three genetic parents, arguably a form of HGE. In addition to the two normal parents, these babies will have mitochondria (gene-containing subcellular bodies which control energy production in cells) from the younger woman.

Anderson was a speaker at a symposium last year at the University of California at which HGE advocates set out their stall. It was attended by nearly 1,000 people, one of whom was James Watson, of DNA discovery fame.

He advocated the use of HGE not merely for medical purposes, but for ‘enhancement’: ‘No one really has the guts to say it, I mean, if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn’t we do it?’

In his book Re-Making Eden, Princeton biologist Lee Silver envisages the future of human ‘enhancement’, in which the health, appearance, personality, cognitive ability, sensory capacity and life-span of our children will become artefacts of genetic engineering, literally selected from a catalogue.

Silver acknowledges that the costs of these technologies will limit their full use to only a small ‘elite’, so that over time society will segregate into the ‘GenRich’ and the ‘Naturals’.

‘The GenRich – who account for 10 per cent of the American population – all carry synthetic genes that were created in the laboratory… All aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment industry, and the knowledge industry are controlled by members of the GenRich class… Naturals work as low-paid service providers or as labourers, and their children go to public schools… If the accumulation of genetic knowledge and advances in genetic enhancement technology continue… the GenRich class and the Natural class will become… entirely separate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee.’

Silver, another speaker at the symposium, believes these trends should not and cannot be stopped, because to do so would infringe civil liberties.

Most scientists say that what is preventing them from embarking on HGE is the risk that the process will itself generate new mutations, which will then be passed on to future generations. Official scientific and ethical bodies tend to rely on this as the basis for forbidding attempts at HGE, rather than on any principled opposition to the idea of genetic engineering itself.

We should not allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security by this argument. Recent experience with genetically engineered crops, for example, shows that we are unlikely ever to arrive at a situation when we can be sure that the risks are zero.

Instead, when scientists are ready to proceed, we will be told that the risks are ‘acceptable’ compared to the benefits. Meanwhile, there will be people loudly telling us that since they are taking the risks with their own children, we have no right to interfere.

One of the flaws in the argument of those who support HGE for medical purposes is that there seem to be very few good examples of genetic diseases in which this is the only solution to the problems which arise.

The main advantage of HGE is said to be the elimination of disease genes from a family. Yet in nearly all cases, existing technologies of prenatal and pre-implantation genetic testing of embryos allow avoidance of actual disease. There are only a few very rare cases where HGE is the only option.

Couple who are certain to produce a genetically disabled child and cannot, or do not, want to deal with this possibility can choose not to have children, to adopt a child, or to use donor eggs or sperm. Should we develop the technology for HGE in order to satisfy the desire of a very small number of people to have ‘perfect’ children?

Although arguments for the first uses of HGE will be medical, in fact the main market for the technology will be ‘enhancement’. Once it is available, how would it be possible to ensure that HGE was used for purely medical purposes?

The same problem applies to prenatal genetic screening and to somatic gene therapy. Not only are there no accepted criteria for deciding what constitutes a medical condition, but in a free market society there seems to be no convincing mechanism for arriving at such decision. The best answer conventional medical ethics seems able to come up with is ‘leave it up to the parents’ or, in other words, to market forces.

Existing trends leave little doubt about what to expect. Sophisticated medical technology and medical personnel are already employed in cosmetic surgery. Another example is the use of genetically engineered human growth hormone (HGH), developed to remedy the medical condition of growth hormone deficiency. Aggressive marketing by its manufacturers means that HGH is routinely prescribed in the USA to normal short children with no hormone deficiency.

If these commercial pressures already exist within established medical activity, how much stronger will they be for a technology with as great a power to manipulate human life as HGE?

Germ line manipulation opens up, for the first time in human history, the possibility of consciously designing human beings in a myriad of different ways. The concept of ‘playing God’ is hard to avoid in this context.

Advocates of genetic engineering point out that humans constantly ‘play God’ by interfering with nature. But the environmental crisis has forced us to realise that many of the ways in which we play God are not wise and cannot be sustained.

HGE is not just a continuation of existing trends. Once we begin to consciously design ourselves, we will have entered a completely new era of human history, in which human subjects, rather than being accepted as they are, will become another kind of object, shaped according to parental whims and market forces.

In essence, the vision of the HGE advocates is a sanitised version of old eugenics doctrines, updated for the 1990s. Instead of ‘elimination of the unfit’, HGE is presented as a tool to end, once and for all, the suffering associated with genetic diseases. And in place of ‘improving the race’, the 1990s emphasis is on freedom of choice, where ‘reproductive rights’ become consumer rights to choose the characteristics of your child.

No doubt the resulting eugenic society would be a little less brutal than those of earlier this century. But on the other hand, the capabilities of geneticists are much greater now than they were then. Unrestrained, HGE is perfectly capable of producing Lee Silver’s dystopia.

In most cases, the public’s function in respect to science is to consume its products, or to pay to clean up the mess. But with HGE there is still time to prevent it before it becomes reality. We need an international ban on HGE and cloning. There is a good chance this can be achieved, since both are already illegal in many countries.

It may be impossible to prevent a scientist, somewhere, from attempting to clone or genetically engineer human beings. But there is a great difference between a society which would jail such a scientist and one which would permit HGE to become widespread and respectable. If we fail to act now, we will only have ourselves to blame.