Designer Babies-Ethics
AP US & World
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By MATT CRENSON
AP National Writer
Science is on the brink of handing us the key to our own
creation, of giving us the power to redesign ourselves.
There is enormous potential for good. Diseases could be
eradicated, death forestalled, human potential extended. But behind
that promise lurks a long, cold shadow of doubt.
What becomes of parenthood, of individuality, of the notion of
fate in a world in which human beings are not just born but
engineered? What will life be like in a world in which we have the
power, as developmental biologist Stuart Newman puts it, to turn
"human beings into manufactured objects"?
The new science that is raising these questions is called
"germline engineering." What it means is designing our babies to
our own specifications. We would choose the genes that determine
human potential -- height, hair color, intelligence, longevity, even
many personality traits -- instead of leaving it up to the messy,
unpredictable process of natural procreation.
Experts disagree on when this will be possible. Perhaps in 10
years. Perhaps not for many decades. But they do agree it is
coming.
"We live in a huge supermarket," says Leslie Fiedler, an
essayist and cultural critic at the University of Buffalo. "And
one of the things that's going to be offered for sale in the future
is making yourself a better human being. Living longer, growing
taller, jumping higher."
Some applications, such as eradicating fatal defects including
cystic fibrosis and Tay-Sachs disease, unquestionably would be a
boon to humankind.
But would a germline intervention that prevented obesity be the
greatest public health advance of the 21st century or the
pathological vice of a vain society obsessed with thinness?
People endowed with the power to shape their genetic legacy
would have to decide what is normal. Are people who are mentally
retarded, blind or manic depressive defective or mere variations
from the norm?
Where is the line of acceptability between preventing severe
birth defects, on the one hand, and genetically engineering a
homogeneous race of "perfect" humans, on the other?
"The knee-jerk reaction is that I don't want a child that has
something wrong with it," says Anne Boyle Cross, a Ph.D. candidate
at Yale University who is expecting her first child later this
year. "But there are worse things than having a blind child or a
mentally retarded child."
Some parents would almost certainly demand enhancements to give
their offspring advantages they themselves never had.
Ambitious parents might want to give their children genes for
memory and intelligence.
Music lovers might want children with perfect pitch.
Frustrated high school heroes might want genes that would
improve their kids' chances of becoming world-class athletes.
"The question is, 'So what?'" says Erik Parens, a fellow at
the Hastings Center for Bioethics in Garrison, N.Y. "Don't parents
seek all the advantages they can for their children? Piano lessons,
ballet lessons, and the like?"
But what do you do with a kid who is genetically engineered to
play football but would rather play violin?
With natural procreation, no one is to blame for our genetic
makeups. They are simply the luck of the draw. But in a world where
parents select their childrens' genes, they would bear
responsibility for every choice.
What if your parents decided against a particular genetic
improvement and you felt you should have had it? Conversely, what
if your parents chose a trait for you that you wish you didn't
have?
Would you be resentful? Could you sue?
This sort of thing could create incomparable anguish, especially
since recent research suggests that some of the same genes that
confer desirable characteristics also contribute to undesirable
ones. For example, the same genes that contribute to manic
depressive illness also seem to confer artistic creativity.
Disable the mental illness genes, the argument goes, and you
could deprive the world of future van Goghs, Hemingways and Poes.
Yet "Starry Night," "The Sun also Rises" and "The Telltale
Heart" were paid for with turbulent lives and violent, early
deaths. Vincent van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway both committed
suicide. Edgar Allan Poe drank himself to death in a Baltimore
tavern.
Furthermore, genetic tinkering that would unquestionably be good
for the individual could be a mixed blessing for society.
Why not bless our babies with the genes that contribute to the
remarkably long lives of a small percentage of the population? But
what if everyone lived to be 100? Or 120? The world would become an
increasingly crowded place. How would we find room for the next
generation?
Another complication: Germline engineering will not be free; not
everyone will be able to afford it. Will this create a new, genetic
gap between rich and poor? Will it lead to a world in which babies
of the rich will be guaranteed genes for intelligence, longevity
and other desirable traits while the babies of the poor will have
to take their chances?
And what of the nature of parenthood itself?
Today, babies born to us are truly ours. Half of their inherited
traits come from the father and half from the mother. Genetically
designed babies would have genes that would come from neither side
of the family. They would be the product not of blessed union but
of a biotechnological revolution.
Will parents and children sense that genetic disconnection?
"I want half of those genes to be mine," says Cross, the
expectant mother. "I don't want even one percent to be an outside
party's."
On the verge of his 83rd birthday, essayist Fiedler has
witnessed an era of great strides in medicine: the extension of
life expectancy by decades, the conquest of infectious disease, the
eradication of smallpox. But to what end?
"Certain diseases have disappeared from the world. And people
do live longer and run faster and jump higher. But they don't seem
to be any happier," Fiedler says. "I grew up thinking when I got
old enough I would be finding some answers. And all I find is more
questions."
No one knows where germline engineering will lead, but history
makes one thing clear. From the harnessing of fire to the splitting
of the atom, mankind has never made a scientific discovery and then
failed to use it.
End Advance for March 5