One of the most complex
dilemmas that faces us at the beginning of the 21st century is that of human
genetic engineering (HGE). I am talking here about making changes to the human
genome in an egg or embryo which will be propagated to every cell of the
developing human, and his descendants. I am not here concerned with genetic
therapy which will have an impact on an adult individual, but will not be carried
through to his germ line cells.
I should make it clear that
the technology for these changes does not exist at the present time, however it
is expected that it will not be very long before these techniques start to
become available. I am talking about maybe 10 to 20 years or so.
Some of the expected uses of
these techniques will be to eliminate various inherited diseases. Perhaps this
use is less morally problematic, though I will discuss this later. The sort of
use which has aroused much moral indignation is the selection of
characteristics for your offspring. The usual examples are gender, hair and eye
colour, height, good looks, athletic ability, intelligence, musical ability and
so on. The possibility that this kind of selection will be available and
utilised by the population at large has led to a variety of responses which
often mentioned the emotive words "eugenics", or "clone".
I believe these responses are
exaggerated, and often not clearly thought out, but there are without doubt
deep issues which need exploring, and that is what I propose to do here.
There are several distinct
arguments that are thrown up by those who are worried by the possibility of
tampering with the human genome; let me try to elucidate them.
The Army of Clones. It is suggested that super wealthy megalomaniacs
will propagate thousands of copies of themselves to form 'armies' with which to
conquer the world, or at least part of it.
The Loss of the disabled. If we can eliminate inherited disabilities,
we could end up in a world which would be poorer in some ways.
The Loss of Genius. If we can eliminate madness, would we at the same
time eliminate genius?
Tampering with Nature. Humans have evolved over millions, indeed billions,
of years. If we mess about with human genetics, we could destroy this
inheritance.
Let me deal with these
arguments one at a time. First, though, lets clarify some points. There is
unlikely to be a single gene for good looks, or intelligence, or height; though
some characteristics such as hair and eye colour could be mostly controlled by
one gene. And indeed some inherited illnesses are localised to a single gene.
Mostly though it will be necessary to try and manipulate a whole complex of
genes - a 'super gene' to come up with a child who is especially intelligent or
good looking. But it is clearly not going to be as simple as that. Many super
genes will overlap, so messing with one may change other characteristcs which
you don’t want to change. It may turn out for example that increasing intelligence
reduces some other abilities, or increasing height also increases
susceptibility to some diseases. The point is, we just don’t know much about
these complexities yet, and it will be a long time before we even begin to
unravel them. The impressive decoding of the human genome is merely the
starting point for this next step in understanding human genetics. So the idea
that we will be able to select an offspring's attributes from a tick list of
desired features is almost certainly a non starter. This does not mean that we
will not be able to select some features, or at least give them some higher
priority.
I should also rapidly point
out (before I am struck down by flaming arrows) that programming the required
genome will not on its own ensure very much except some fairly simply achieved
features - blue eyes, maybe. The environment has its important part to play,
and healthy living, education, encouragement, motivation, discipline, love and
affection will all affect the way in which a child develops. Not only that, but
it is not enough to simply ensure, say, intelligence in order to achieve
success (I should know). An IQ of 250 does not guarantee a
Which is not to say that
people wont try it - they will, people will try anything - or at least, some
people will. And we have to remember that evolution didn’t arrive at today's
genome without a few billion years of messing about with DNA, some of which was
probably not very successful. I am not implying that today's human genome is in
any way a 'final result', far from it, I believe it is still just a step on the
way. Where to? - we don’t know, and that’s the point. That’s why I am not
against HGE in principle.
Now let me deal with those
arguments.
The Army of Clones.
I should expand on this idea
a little. It could also be that a clone army could be for personal
aggrandisement, or maybe some mad leader would order millions of cloned babies
who were genetically programmed to be fighting machines.
I really don’t know how
seriously to take this argument - it smacks somewhat of a James Bond film
villain rather than real life. For a start, this is not an activity that could
easily be undertaken in secret. The arrival of thousands of identical clone children
might just register a blip on the surrounding social infrastructure. Maybe in
some parts of the world (
You cannot, I suppose,
totally discount the idea that one of the super rich could order large numbers
of clones of himself. But on closer inspection even this sounds psychologically
doubtful. Even the mega rich limit the size of their families - parental love,
pride and affection can only be spread so far - that goes for parental wealth
too. And just imagine the arguments when they grow up.
So this scenario seems
unlikely in the extreme, and even if a few large clone families arrive, they
are not going to be a major world menace, any more than the large Mormon
families in
The Loss of the disabled.
This is a difficult and
emotionally loaded argument. Firstly because disabled people often interpret
any attempt to eliminate inherited disability as a personal threat. This may be
understandable, but is not a wholly realistic assessment. Of course no one is
attempting to exterminate the disabled who are with us, but it goes deeper than
this. Some disabled, because they naturally view themselves as equal to anyone
else, see it as desirable that there should always be a disabled section of the
community. There has been the recent case of a deaf couple who would like to
have a deaf child, and indeed, would select for one if that choice were
available to them. The wonderful film Children
of a Lesser God explored the viewpoint that deafness was in some ways not a
disabilty, and that sign language was a rich and visually stimulating
alternative to speech, rather than a poor substitute. In an article in the Sunday Times, Brian Appleyard made a
moving appeal on behalf of having disabled people around us, motivated by a
disabled individual who was a shining example of warm and vivid humanity, and
who lit up the lives of the people who knew her.
There are essentially two sub
arguments proposed here - one is that disabled people, by their very existence
in our midst, give an example to others by overcoming their disability, and
reminding us how fortunate we are to have all our faculties. The other is that
we should not view disabilities as undesirable, because they lead to
alternative ways of living which are valid in their own right.
These are deep waters indeed,
and raise questions as to the purpose of life, measuring quality of life, and
the desirabilty of maintaining a rich gene pool.
I do not pretend to have the
answer to all these questions (just now), but ultimately I have to ask myself
this hypothetical question: if we lived in a world in which there were no
disabled people, would we consider it necessary or desirable to take steps to
create them? Somehow I think not. Even
if we believed that they would prove an enlightening example, and show us ways
of living that sometimes improved on our own, I cannot think that we would
consider these valid reasons for depriving any people of the senses that the
rest of us enjoy and utilise.
And again I would call upon
evolution as my friend here, it is no accident that humanity has evolved with
the senses that we normally enjoy, they have proved their value over a long
period of time. Genetic inheritance will always throw up some mutations that
are not especially useful - there is no reason to suppose that they should all
be preserved.
I should emphasise that HGE
will never eliminate disabilities in any case, even if we learn how to remove
them from the genome. There will always be accidents and diseases which will
result in disablement, and the care and acceptance of the disabled will always
be a part of a decent humane society.
The Loss of Genius.
This is also a difficult
argument. Essentially, it is suggested that there may be some inherent reason
why some disabilities are compensated for by extraordinary gifts in other ways.
For example, a super gene for genius may contain within it the seeds of
madness. I am particularly sensitive to this argument, since my family has far
more than its share of intelligence, and even genius, but also alas mental
illness. It is hard for me to believe that these two aspects are entirely
unconnected, and not just because they coincide in my family. It seems to me
not unlikely that the ability to think very quickly, and to make rapid and
unusual connections between different topics, may depend on a neural
architecture and neurotransmitter populations that could also be prone to some
forms of instability. It is a general rule that systems which have a fast response
rate are more likely to show forms of instability - this tendency manifests
itself in examples as disparate as control engineering, and socio-economics.
And it may well be that there are other gene complexes which confer both
exceptional abilities and significant disadvantages simultaneously. Examples of
'idiot -savants' come to mind - the autistic boy with incredible artistic
ability and the cases in Olivers Sach's The
man who mistook his wife for a hat including the twins who could compute
prime huge numbers but were unable to tackle other simple tasks. And is it just
a reflection of the relative frequency of blindness that many blind jazz
musicians come to mind? - Ray Charles, Art Tatum, Lemon
But suppose that it is indeed
the case that genius and madness are common genetic bedfellows? - what then? Do
we suppose that genius will disappear from the earth because all parents will
chose not to risk any degree of mental instability? Unlikely.
For a start, the cost of
engineering such choices will remain the privilege of the relatively affluent
for the foreseeable future. And then we have to remember that humanity is split
between the risk takers and the risk avoiders (the radical and the conservative
if you will). Not everyone is going to forsake the chance of a genius child
even if it involves some risk.
Tampering with Nature.
I have to say straight away
that I have no sympathy with the 'we should not play God' argument. Human kind
has been 'playing God' ever since it started farming instead of hunting, to say
nothing of medicine, surgery, communications, and modern industry.
We already practice a form of
genetic engineering in plant and animal breeding. Of course direct manipulation
of the genes has some differences, but in a sense these are technical rather
than fundamental (hold on for the screams!). I do not want to become embroiled
with the general GM argument as usually applied to farming, but I can't resist
throwing in a small figure which I have just come across in an article (in the
Churchill College magazine). Apparently, the chances of horizontal 'resistance
gene' transfer from a plant to a bacterium is 10,000 times less likely than the
appearance of resistance by a mutation in the bacterium.
In the case of inherited
diseases which are simply determined by a single gene, one would think that
there could be little opposition to the elimination of such diseases by HGE.
There is though another argument here, similar to the genius/madness one. The
gene for Sickle Cell Anemia for instance, confers an increased resistance to
malaria. So although eliminating the gene could be an advantage in some parts
of the world, in others it may be harmful to the population as a whole, even if
partly beneficial to individuals. But at least we know the problem, and can
make informed choices. There may be other hidden similar problems which will
only surface when we start to make global changes to the human genome. Nobody
pretends that genetic engineering is totally without risk – any form of change
always involves some risk. But we can respond to risks and modify our behaviour
accordingly, that has been the way that human society has evolved. Even the
emergence of nuclear weapons, which many predicted would have resulted in
armageddon by now, has resulted in a change in global politics to reduce the
risk.
We cannot eliminate risk, we
can try and predict it and avoid it. Sometimes we will come unstuck, but the
broad sweep of human history is a story of risk taking coupled with
consolidation and protection. That is the way we will evolve in future.
There is another possible
risk – that people will always try and chose a ‘perfect’ child, so that genetic
variation may be reduced and weaken the richness and strength of the human
genome. I have already pointed out that it will never be as simple as choosing
a perfect model, there are simply far too many interwoven variables, too many
genes in fact.
Remember too that the way
people will chose to use these techniques in future will be influenced by the
way in which they have been used to date. If everyone chose blue eyed children,
then brown eyes would start to have a hugely attractive rarity appeal. In the
valley of the blind, the one eyed man is King.
And suppose that we could ensure that a child would develop into someone
who could run 100 metres in 8.5 seconds – what would be the point? If 10,000
people could all do this, it would cease to have any rarity or financial value.
We would simply be moving the goalposts. And of course, there is always the
little matter of training.
Although such choices will
undoubtedly be influenced by fashion as well as socio-economic needs, the
existing variety in the human gene pool should ensure a sufficient range of
choice that this variety will be largely maintained. Any remote danger that the human race could
converge on some 'standard' fashion model is made even more remote by the
vagaries of genetic inheritance and mutation. It would just be too difficult to
achieve, even if we tried. As long as people have freedom of choice, the normal
market forces of growth, recession and fragmentation will act against any
uniformity.
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