But those who fear the risks of gene editing don’t take into account the inherent dangers in the “natural” way we reproduce. However, their decision-making simply cannot include the consent of the future children.įinally, there’s the argument that modifying genomes is inherently dangerous because we can’t know all the ways it will affect the individual. Needless to say, parents and scientists should think responsibly, based on the best available combination of evidence and argument, about how their decisions will affect future generations. Rightly, neither Shaw nor his possible partner thought their decision needed to wait for the consent of the resulting child.ĭNA Hacking Tool Enables Shortcut to Evolution Shaw’s more sober response-“Yes but what if it has my looks and your brains!”-identifies a different possible, but from the child’s perspective equally non-consensual, outcome. When, allegedly, she said to him “why don’t we make a baby together … with my looks and your brains it cannot fail” she was proposing a deliberate germline determining decision in the hope of affecting their future child. George Bernard Shaw and Isadora Duncan knew this. All parents do this all the time, either because the children are too young to consent, or because they do not yet exist. We have literally no choice but to make decisions for future people without considering their consent. “Ethical issues presented by altering the germline in a way that affects the next generation without their consent,” he has said, constitute “strong arguments against engaging in” gene editing. The matter of consent has been raised by Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. Natural substances or natural therapies are only better that unnatural ones if the evidence supports such a conclusion. The health care systems maintained by every developed nation can aptly be characterized as a part of what I have previously called “a comprehensive attempt to frustrate the course of nature.” What’s natural is neither good nor bad. If we protected natural creatures and natural phenomena simply because they are natural, we would not be able to use antibiotics to kill bacteria or otherwise practice medicine, or combat drought, famine, or pestilence. But diseases are natural, and humans by the millions fall ill and die prematurely-all perfectly naturally. This argument rests on the premise that natural is inherently good.
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Let’s start with the objection that embryo modification is unnatural, or amounts to playing God. Opponents say that modifying human embryos is dangerous and unnatural, and does not take into account the consent of future generations. Proponents of such “human germline editing” argue that it could potentially decrease, or even eliminate, the incidence of many serious genetic diseases, reducing human suffering worldwide.
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But in theory-and eventually in practice-CRISPR could be used to modify disease-causing genes in embryos brought to term, removing the faulty script from the genetic code of that person’s future descendants as well. The embryos, provided by patients undergoing in vitro fertilization, will not be allowed to develop beyond seven days. The scientists at the Institute hope to cast light on early embryo development-work which may eventually lead to safer and more successful fertility treatments. This is the second time human embryos have been employed in such research, and the first time their use has been sanctioned by a national regulatory authority. In February of this year, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority in the United Kingdom approved a request by the Francis Crick Institute in London to modify human embryos using the new gene editing technique CRISPR-Cas9.
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John Harris is professor emeritus in science ethics at University of Manchester, U.K., and the author of How to be Good, Oxford University Press 2016.