Designer babies: genetic engineering and ethical implications

Designer Babies

Oh look at her! She's just perfect!" We hear people say this all the time about newborn babies. However, the truth is that few babies are "perfect." They may carry genes that will predispose them to serious illness later on, or in some cases, guarantee that illness's development. Some little girls are born with the predisposition to develop a genetic form of breast cancer, while other children inherit, with certainty, the genes that will cause cystic fibrosis or Huntington's Chorea, a devastating and always fatal neurological disease. If you can control for those things, though, why stop there? Why not make sure your child has a high IQ, a pleasant personality? While we're making choices, how about the family that has four daughters and wants a son? Would it be all right to make their last child a boy? Their first? What if they want a child with blonde hair and blue eyes? Where will the line be drawn that separates acceptable use of this technology from unacceptable?

In the movie "Jurassic Park," a man with superficial knowledge about cloning hires a staff of researchers to bring dinosaurs back to life, so he can build a fantastic theme park. The researchers manipulate the genes to get complete strands of DNA, only to find that they could not control the science as well as they had thought: although the dinosaurs are all supposed to be female, somehow, the dinosaurs are breeding. As one critic of the park says, "Life will find a way."

In 1993, when that movie came out, it was science fiction. Today, however, we have the ability to selectively choose which babies will be born based on their genetic characteristics. While some people make convincing arguments for this, others wonder about unintended consequences. it's time for people to decide whether we should be able to select our future children based on genetic traits, however, because the technology to do so may be just around the corner (Jonietz, PAGE). Researchers have already nearly doubled the lives of both roundworms and fruit flies by changing only one gene (Jonietz, PAGE).

Some parents already have some control over the type of children they have. For those parents who need donor egg or sperm, they preview the characteristics of the person supplying the eggs or sperm. However, that is not terribly different than choosing one's mate, which could at least partly be choosing the genetic pool for one's children. However, science is on the brink of going much further.

The first applications of genetic manipulation will likely be medical. Embryos will either be manipulated to treat some genetic illness, such as Huntington's Chorea, or selectively chosen to develop to term based on the absence of the Huntington's gene. Huntington's Chorea is a devastating illness, and it would be hard to argue that children should be born who are destined for the terrible fate of that illness if it could be avoided. So, having such options can look attractive to families with such troubling medical histories.

The problem is that genetics is rarely that simple. Most of the time, genes only show a tendency, and experts cannot say whether the developing child will develop a specific illness or not. Even in identical twins, sometimes one develops a disease influenced by genetics, such as schizophrenia, while the other does not. Nevertheless, genetic researchers believe that eventually we will be able to screen embryos for combinations of genes that predispose people not only to life-threatening illnesses but for personality traits as well (Jonietz, PAGE). However, people's personalities aren't as simple as a cluster of traits. Suppose, for instance, we could identify a cluster of genes associated with Attention Deficit Disorder AD/HD. Would it actually be good if no more children were born with AD/HD? Is AD/HD so bad that we never want another child born with it? Maybe, accompanying the impulsivity and hyperactivity of those children, we also get a different way of viewing the world. We conceivably create children who are perfect genetically -- but never have another Einstein, a man who had weaknesses as well as strengths.

Hidden in such notions is the idea that people with any kind of difference or disability are somehow defective. In the United States we have put a lot of time and effort into creating a country that gives people with disabilities access to a normal or near-normal life. Buses have mini-elevators so people using wheelchairs can board the bus. Stores, hotels and places of entertainment are all required to be accessible for all. If the time comes that no children are born with physical limitations, will we give this policy up? If so, those who become disabled later in life, for instance, from an accident, have to lead more restricted lives because of less pressure to provide public access for the reduced number of people needing those accommodations? In a world where most handicaps could be eliminated, would those few who remain be looked down on because of their presumably inferior genes?

While science cannot alter genes in human embryos -- yet -- we can selectively terminate an embryo, or allow it to continue to develop -- based on its genetic makeup. In fact, in 2002, a hospital in Scotland was issued a license by the British government to do exactly that (STAFF, 2002). They say they will not be creating "designer babies," but only allowing parents to avoid bringing babies into the world who are doomed to have some serious genetic disorder. Critics say that such an approach devalues the lives of all people with disabilities (STAFF, 2002). In countries where health care is strongly controlled by health insurance, such as the United States, such choices will likely only be available to wealthier parents, introducing an economic factor, with less financially well-off families not able to make this choice. Being born with a genetic illness will be a matter of class as well as of finances. In the worst-case scenarios, eventually those who can afford the genetic manipulations will have children with enhanced abilities and diminished flaws, while the rest of the population will have to let nature take its course.