Designer humans?

University of London physicians have announced the world’s first publicized designer baby, one free of the gene linked to breast cancer (David Frost, “If Genetic Selection Can Prevent Certain Diseases, Shouldn't it be Mandatory?” Parr Center blog, Ethics in the News, March 23, 2009).

Undeniably, eliminating breast cancer would represent a wonderful improvement in the quality of life for millions of women and those who love them. However, at what cost is this advance justifiable? The world rightly denounced Nazi efforts at genetic engineering. What is the difference?

Slippery slope arguments about genetic engineering (i.e., any genetic engineering will lead to great evil) will not long prevail. The potential good from eliminating harmful or mutant genes linked to a wide variety of human afflictions (e.g., cancer, birth defects, etc.) holds too much promise of benefit to ignore. As knowledge of the human genome increases, pressure will inevitably build to move forward with genetic engineering.

Now is the time for widespread public discourse about genetic engineering in general and human genetic engineering in general. Critics who denounce all forms of genetic engineering as harmful or immoral, such as those who decry genetically modified foods, represent one extreme. Healthy and full public discourse quickly and rightly will marginalize such views. Humans have a unique opportunity to affect both the future and evolution through genetic engineering. The potential benefits of such changes are staggering, whether in terms of human health or the planet’s capacity to sustain life.

Conversely, genetic engineering proponents who advocate moving full speed ahead with all experiments and minimal or no external controls represent an equally extreme and dangerous view. The truth is that nobody knows the full consequences of genetic engineered changes until multiple generations have lived with those changes. Eliminating the gene linked to breast cancer, for example, may cause unintended, unforeseen, adverse consequences in the second, third, or latter generation. At its worst, genetic engineering in the hands of the unscrupulous and malevolent has the potential to harm humans and the planets in the ways the most strident critics love to fictionalize.

The pressing ethical and political question, then, is how to chart a middle path, to promote genetic engineering that offers the promise of improved life and sustainability while precluding those endeavors that seem likely to result in harm.