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Biotechnology and Human Improvement?

Many of the world’s most important crop varieties were developed over centuries of genetic selection by farmers who simply planted seeds from the healthiest or most productive individuals they could find.  Modern biotechnology makes it possible to speed this process up, since we can sometimes insert genes responsible for the presence of desirable characteristics.  The human species itself is also the result of selection, since people choose the person with whom they will have a child.  Just as modern technology gives us the ability to speed up the selection process for crops, biotechnology can also be used to speed up the selection process for people.  There are a variety of different ways in which this might be done.

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a procedure that enables parents to select genetic characteristics of their children.  Couples who use PGD produce a number of embryos in vitro.  These embryos are permitted to grow to the eight-cell stage, at which point one cell is removed from the embryo for genetic analysis.  The remaining seven-cell embryo is unharmed, and can continue to develop normally.

PGD can be used to select for any characteristic for which scientists have identified a genetic marker.  In the most common and least controversial case, PGD is used by parents who know that they carry a gene for serious genetic disadvantage or disability.  Parents who are carriers of a gene may not exhibit the characteristic in question.  For instance, recessive traits usually do not express themselves, though they may be passed on to children.  However, if both parents carry the gene for a recessive trait, there is significant risk that their offspring will be born disabled or disadvantaged.  Where the trait in question is a serious genetic disorder, PGD is now widely accepted as a a tool for prospective parents who know that they carry such a recessive trait, to insure that their child will not be born disabled or with a significant genetic disease.

In this context, it is common to distinguish between “positive” and “negative” genetic selection.  “Negative” genetic selection involves the use of PGD or similar technologies to insure that the child will not be born with genetic disease or disability.  “Positive” genetic selection, on the other hand, involves selection for desired traits.  Over time, our understanding of the human genome has progressed immensely.  Researchers have found genetic markers indicating a wide variety of different traits and characteristics, not just serious disease and disadvantage.  For any such characteristic, if we have identified a marker, PGD could be used to select either for or against the trait in question. 

Most of my own students find it morally unproblematic to use PGD for negative genetic selection, especially in the case of severe genetic disease.  But they are much less comfortable with positive selection, especially when the selected traits seem trivial or frivolous.  Consider some examples:  Should PGD be used to serve parents who want to insure that their child will have brown eyes?  What if parents are willing to pay for PGD in order to insure that their child will have red hair to match their new couch? 

Also for your consideration, cases in which parents would like to choose characteristics that most of us regard as a disadvantage or even a disability.  One famous case arose in 2002 when a deaf couple chose to use sperm from a deaf donor in the hope that their child would be born deaf.  During her pregnancy, the mother said “It would be nice to have a deaf child who is the same as us… a hearing baby would be a blessing.  A deaf baby would be a special blessing.”  (Glover 2006, p. 5)  While the couple in question did not use PGD or other new technologies to insure that their child would be born deaf, one could easily imagine cases in which parents might wish to do just that.

Such problems raise a host of difficult questions.  Some, like John Harris (2007) argue that there is a right to use PGD or other reproductive technologies.  As Harris urges, we all have a general right of reproductive liberty which not only protects us against other people’s interference with our private reproductive decisions, but also supports a presumptive claim to use reproductive technologies in any way we might wish.  Harris does urge that the interests of the child must be protected, and that the use of reproductive technologies must not abuse those interests.  But if parents wish to use reproductive technologies to select for characteristics that they regard as desirable, their right of reproductive liberty gives them a claim to do so.

Others, like Michael Sandel (2007) are wary of the possibility that such practices might change parent’s attitudes toward their children.  If parents use positive genetic selection to choose the characteristics they would like their child to possess, but later find that the child has been born without the selected characteristic, will they feel disappointed or cheated?  Will the child be made to feel a failure in some way? 
           
When we consider the issue from the perspective of those who work in fertility clinics or set hospital policies, the issue raises still more concerns.  If parents are construed to have a right to use genetic technologies, does this imply that hospitals have an obligation to provide the services?  Or does it simply mean that parents are free to look for a clinic that is willing to provide them?  
           
Reproductive technologies are developing and changing rapidly, and some, like Harris, urge that we should consider “speeding up” the selection process for desirable human traits, just as we have speeded up the process for plants and agricultural species.  He urges that our right to reproductive liberty includes and supports a right to use genetic engineering not only to select embryos with desired traits in the process of PGD, but also a presumptive claim to use other technologies to promote such traits.  If parents want their child to be born with green, photosynthetic skin, for example, Harris implies that this is their own business, and society has no right to interfere.
           
The example may seem too fanciful to take seriously, but technological advance brings such possibilities close enough that we must seriously consider them.  Harris is right to emphasize the importance of liberty.   But we are justified in interfering with individual liberty when others’ interests and rights are at stake.  We should think carefully about how we use our liberties, and critically consider the values that inform our choices.  Parents do not have the right to put their child’s welfare at risk.  We should consider that the decisions not to use technology to select for the characteristics our children inherit is also a legitimate exercise of liberty.
 
Sources

Glover, Jonathan.  2006. Choosing Children: The Ethical Dilemmas of Genetic Intervention. New York: Oxford University Press.
 
Harris, John. 2007.  Enhancing Evolution: The Case for making Better People.  New York: Princeton University Press.
 
Sandel, Michael.  2007.  The Case Against Perfection.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Bioethics in Brief