Written evidence submitted by Human Genetics Alert (GNH0021)

 

Summary

 

This consultation response will focus on issues raised by the possibility of genome editing in order to create GM babies, i.e., on the fifth bullet point of section 7 of the earlier consultation: ‘the extent to which therapeutic use of genome editing could lead to further non-therapeutic use, noting public concern about ‘eugenics’, ‘designer babies’, and the potential military applications of genome editing.

 

We are sympathetic to the arguments made by disability rights organisations that attempts to prevent the birth of disabled people are a continuation of eugenic attitudes and practices. However, we believe that such attempts are ethical when the genetic conditions involved are very severe. Existing technologies and options such as adoption are sufficient to prevent the birth of such children, and genetic modification adds no new medical benefit. On the other hand, genetic modification has the ability to produce a far more powerful form of eugenics than selection technologies, and this is where the real market for it will be.  Arguments for ‘reproductive freedom’ must not be allowed to interfere with responsible control of extremely socially-dangerous technologies. 

 

The need to prevent the creation of GM babies has been understood for many years, which is why there are already international prohibitions on it and the advent of CRISPR-CAS9 technology does not change that fact. It is safe to assume that such an unprecedented move, of banning a technology before it is even technically feasible, in a social and political climate generally highly in favour of technological innovation, is made for extremely good and overriding reasons.  In fact, we fail to understand why there is even a need for a reopening of an international debate that has been settled a long time ago. The only plausible explanation is that this is an example of the technocratic tendency of scientists and their publicists to assume that ethical rules must naturally and necessarily change to accommodate every change in science and technology.

 

We show that if the creation of GM babies were legalised the progression towards a form of consumer eugenics based upon genetic ‘enhancement’ would be almost inevitable.  All experience with drugs, surgery and digital technologies support this. It would be naive and irresponsible, a deliberate placing of the telescope over the blind eye, to expect that this will not happen with genetic modification, if it is first allowed for the prevention of genetic disease.  The burden of proof is on the advocates of legalisation of genetic modification to explain why it will not happen in this case. We show that the current UK regulatory system tends to facilitate acceptance of each and every new technology (even those that are palpably scientifically useless such as human-animal hybrid embryos) and that it could not be relied upon to prevent a free-market eugenics.  Many current examples show that eugenics is a concrete reality in our existing society, not merely some unpleasant phenomenon of the past.

 

The advocates of legalisation of creation of GM babies like to present the argument in terms of concrete benefits versus hypothetical risks: on the contrary, the reality is that while the benefits are negligible, the risks are enormous and almost unavoidable.   If the UK really wishes to demonstrate that it has a model system of ethical and social controls over biotechnology, it would be better to stick to the internationally-agreed prohibitions on the creation of GM babies. The only responsible course given the tendencies apparent in free-market capitalism is to try to universalise a ban on the creation of GM babies, through a UN Convention, as the German Ethics Council recently advocated, on the grounds of the significance of this issue for the whole of humanity. 

 

In the appendix, we present a summary of the ethical and social reasons why a free-market eugenics would be disaster for society.

 

 

1. Introduction

 

  1. Human Genetics Alert is an independent civil society organisation or watchdog group, focusing on issues of human genetics and reproductive technologies. We are a secular organisation which supports abortion rights.  Dr David King, the author of this submission, completed his PhD in molecular biology at Edinburgh University in 1990.

 

  1. This consultation response will focus on issues raised by the possibility of genome editing in order to create GM babies, i.e., on the fifth bullet point of section 7 of the earlier consultation: ‘the extent to which therapeutic use of genome editing could lead to further non-therapeutic use, noting public concern about ‘eugenics’, ‘designer babies’, and the potential military applications of genome editing.

 

Terminology

 

  1. Throughout this consultation response, we will focus on the specific issue of the use of genome editing to create genetically modified (GM) babies, and we will use that terminology, since it is in common use and accurately describes the issue.  We believe that current efforts to suggest that the changes made with the CRISPR-Cas9 system are somehow not genetic modification are intentional attempts to mislead the public, in order to evade regulation.

 

  1. Throughout this response, we will place the word enhancement in single quotes.  This is done in order to correct the simplistic, individualistic and liberal assumption that widely desired traits are in fact ‘better’.  We wish to highlight the fact that standards of e.g. beauty are highly socially determined, and political. For example, millions of black people use skin lightening creams because whiteness is supposedly better. Most ‘enhancements’ in current use, e.g. in cosmetic surgery are intended to help people conform to standards of beauty created by sexism, racism, etc. Many ‘enhancements’ are only ‘better’ in a society in which people are continually competing with one another, in a way that is highly damaging to society. We believe, and we hope the Committee believes, that such social prejudices and institutionalised competition are bad things, and would prefer a society in which people were accepted as they are and valued equally.  By placing the word enhancement in quotation marks, we wish to point out that in such a society, people would not consider many of the things regarded in our society as enhancements as being enhancements at all, but rather as the expression of sad and outdated social oppressions and competitive urges.

 

  1. The wish list of ‘enhancements’ often expressed by the advocates of HGM, and in public opinion surveys always revolve around enhancing people’s ability to compete, because that is the basic way we operate in our free­market societies. For example, advocates hope for more athletic, taller, cleverer, more beautiful and talented children, never for more caring, kinder, more co­operative children. It is hard to avoid noticing the similarities between the ideals aimed for in the eugenics programmes of the first half of the twentieth century and the characteristics that people hope to enhance through HGM. 

 

  1. We are concerned by the apparent tendency, in public debate and even in academic articles, to assume that if such unhealthy phenomena exist within our existing society, then the only concern is whether the creation of GM babies would create new social problems. An example is the argument sometimes made that since we allow private schooling which undoubtedly gives its beneficiaries social advantages, there can be no complaint about the creation of GM babies and the whole spectrum of problems of social inequality that this would cause. This is bad philosophy and bad ethics. It is bad philosophy in the sense that two wrongs do not make a right. And it is bad ethics in because it tolerates or at least refuses to criticise existing social oppressions or to advocate for their reduction, but rather uses their existence to advocate something even worse.

 

The technical feasibility of ‘enhancement’

 

  1. In what follows, we will assume that it is possible to affect even complex genetic traits that are also environmentally influenced, through genome editing. We believe that the jury is still out about the degree to which this is possible, and we have ourselves made strenuous efforts to counter simplistic genetic determinism. However, it is often suggested that the complexity of genetic determination and the large degree of environmental determination of traits means that ‘we don’t need to worry about designer babies’, since it will be impossible. In our view, this is both complacent and wrong, and is clearly used in a calculated manner in the debate by advocates of legalisation of the creation of GM babies to prevent single gene genetic diseases, in order to dampen concern.  It contrasts sharply with the promises made by those same commentators when they talk about the medical benefits of genetic modification.

 

  1. The truth is that it is likely that it will be possible to manipulate complex traits to some degree, and to whatever degree it is possible, there will be a market for it. Secondly, some cosmetic traits e.g. eye colour and abilities are influenced by only a few genes. One example, where free-market eugenic selection is already operating is red hair, a single gene trait, which seems to be undesired in the UK. As a result, a number of years ago the Danish sperm bank which supplies most of the UK sperm donation market announced that it was ceasing to recruit sperm donors with red hair (Orange, 2011). Other cosmetic characteristics, such as eye colour are influenced by only a few genes, and certain facets of athletic ability are strongly influenced by a small number of genes.

 

  1. Likewise, we will deal with the issue as if genome editing is able to make precise genetic changes, without also making ‘off-target’ changes. Whilst this is not currently the case, and we take the issue of safety extremely seriously, it makes it simpler, from the point of view of ethical and political discussion to make the assumption of precision.  Obviously, the question of off-target modifications will have to be solved before the creation of GM babies could be contemplated.

 

2. Reproductive freedom’

 

  1. This concept, which began in the defensive and limited ‘negative liberty’ of a woman’s vital right to control over her own body, has been expanded, under the influence of neoliberalism/libertarianism, into a consumerist right to access to all existing technologies for manipulation of reproduction. We have no doubt you will receive submissions arguing that this supposed ‘right’ means that the creation of GM babies must be legalised. We disagree. This is a question of balancing genuine individual rights with the interests of society as a whole.   It is often thought that strong individual rights protect against eugenic interference by the state. However, at present, as many commentators have noted, in Western countries, the greater threat is of a free­market eugenics, driven by commerce and by consumerist desires for the perfect baby. Rather than non­interference, what is needed now is state action to restrain the eugenic trend. Given the lack of medical need for this technology, and the drastic social consequences of legalisation, this is an instance in which the free market and consumerism must be restricted.  No vital interests of women will be hurt if they are not allowed to genetically modify their children.

 

3. Genetic modification for the prevention of single gene disease

 

  1. Much of the current advocacy for legalisation of GM babies argues for its use to prevent the birth of children with single gene disorders.  Although there is not space here to properly deal with the question of whether this is, in itself, a perpetuation of eugenics, we wish to emphasise that for too little public debate on this question has allowed the voices of disabled people to be heard. We have great sympathy with their concerns about existing practices of prenatal selection/termination and PGD, that these practices express and perpetuate a eugenic attitude towards disabled people and tend to act counter to efforts to improve the general status of disabled people and to efforts to improve support for families with disabled children and social accessibility in general.

 

  1. However, we believe that there are circumstances in which the use of such technologies to prevent the birth of children who will be affected with very severe genetic diseases is ethically acceptable. 

 

  1. While we are sympathetic to families who may already have a child affected by certain very severe genetic diseases, their desire to have genetically related children but avoid the birth of another child with that condition can be met by genetic selection techniques, in all but a minuscule number of theoretical cases. The options of adoption and gamete donation are available to in this tiny number of cases. In our view, the desires of a tiny number of families for genetic relatedness to their children, which is a social not a medical benefit, cannot override the vastly more important interests of society at large in avoiding a new consumer eugenics (which, as we discuss below would be the inevitable consequence of legalising the creation of GM babies).

 

  1. We are sure the committee will receive submissions arguing that genetic modification is a ‘better’ way to prevent the birth of such children, because some parents will be opposed to the destruction of embryos.  This is misleading: genetic modification will always have to be done on multiple embryos, some of which will ever be implanted and will be destroyed.

 

  1. With selection techniques, given the multiplicity of genes and traits of interest, selection must either focus on a single gene and disregard all the others, or make an extremely messy compromise, since any embryo will contain thousands of ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ genetic variations, but only one embryo can be implanted. By contrast, in principle, genetic modification could change multiple ‘negative’ variations into ‘positive’ ones at the same time.  It is this that is fuelling fantasies of radical ‘enhancement’ or even ‘perfection’ of human beings, for example amongst some scientists and in transhumanist movements.

 

  1. Moreover, selection techniques cannot aspire to ‘enhancement’ of the genetic characteristics of the couple. Genetic modification, on the other hand, can also potentially introduce entirely novel traits, even from outside of the species, as has been done with plants and animals.  This is where the real market for genetic modification will be and, if not restrained, commercial interests will push rapidly in that direction.

 

  1. Thus, while selection techniques can and do produce eugenic effects, the form of eugenics possible with genetic modification is much more powerful, to the point of being qualitatively different, and as we shall argue below, radically more socially destructive.

 

  1. In summary, there is no significant medical case for the development of genetic modification for the prevention of single gene disease. This needs to be weighed in the balance, when considering the negative impacts. 

 

  1. This has been understood for many years and the advent of CRISPR-CAS9 technology does not change that fact. In fact, we fail to understand why there is even a need for a reopening of an international debate that has been settled a long time ago. The only plausible explanation is that this is an example of the technocratic tendency of scientists and their publicists to assume that ethical rules must naturally and necessarily change to accommodate every change in science and technology.

 

4. The risks of consumer eugenics or ‘designer babies’

 

  1. In the appendix below, we will explain what is wrong with a free market in genetics ‘enhancement’ of children. We recently summarised these arguments in The Guardian (King, 2017).  However, for the moment it is sufficient to note that, except in some of the wilder reaches of bioethics and trans-humanism, there has been and remains a strong international consensus that a free-market eugenics would be a highly undesirable outcome for society, one worth making considerable effort to prevent.

 

  1. It is for these reasons that governments around the world have passed legislation and created international treaties prohibiting the intentional creation of GM babies. It is almost unprecedented that a new technology should be prohibited decades before it is even possible: the only other examples we can think of involve weapons of mass destruction. We would regard the creation of GM babies as a weapon of mass social destruction. It is safe to assume that such an unprecedented move, in a social and political climate generally highly in favour of technological innovation, is made for extremely good and overriding reasons.

 

  1. The possibility that if the creation of GM babies was legalised for the purposes of preventing genetic disease there would, over time, be a trend towards genetic modification for ‘enhancement’ is widely referred to as the ‘slippery slope hypothesis’.  Some bioethicists and advocates of creation of GM babies seem to have developed the belief that this hypothesis has been ‘refuted’ by philosophers. However, any historical survey of how the real world works will show that such a development is completely realistic. We refer to one example below in our discussion of the HFEA. Indeed, the term ‘slippery slope’ is inadequate, because it seems to suggest a passive process: on the contrary large numbers of people are paid well to actively encourage this process, which in our society is normally termed ‘progress’.  The proponents of legalisation argue that the further steps would not necessarily take place because there are regulations that require further consultation at each stage, and we can therefore decide to stop. However, when we come to the second step such proponents invariably argue that since we have already taken the first step, it would be illogical and unfair, even discriminatory, not to continue. There are already examples of this in relation to the transition between ‘mitochondrial replacement’ methods and genetic modification (Smajdor, 2015).

 

  1. We believe that it is critical to prevent the scenario of consumer eugenics through legal prohibitions, and that it will be impossible to do so if genetic modification is legalised for purposes of preventing disease.  Therefore, we argue that there should be a general prohibition on the creation of GM babies for whatever purpose. Firstly, the precise line between ‘therapy’ and ‘enhancement’ is notoriously hard to draw, and in addition to the broad historical tendency to medicalise and pathologise normal variation, the pharmaceutical and other medical industries have great financial incentives to blur this line. As we have seen with drugs and surgery, major industries and markets are now based upon ‘enhancement’.  A similar trend is obvious in respect to digital technologies/prosthetics (and is often celebrated, e.g. Channel 4’s ‘Superhumans’ series). 

 

  1. It would be naive and irresponsible, a deliberate placing of the telescope over the blind eye, to expect that this will not happen with genetic modification if it is first allowed for the prevention of disease.  The burden of proof is on the advocates of legalisation of genetic modification to explain why it will not happen in this case.

 

  1. Although it can be argued that we cannot refrain from using technologies just because they might be ‘abused’, in this case the argument is weakened by the lack of need for the technology for preventing genetic disease.  Moreover, in the particular case of genetics/eugenics, we already have experience of the disastrous social consequences.

 

  1. We draw the Committee’s attention to the report of the US National Academies of Sciences and Medicine on this point. Although that report has been widely portrayed as opening the door to legalisation of genetic modification for purposes of preventing genetic disease, and as the most permissive report by a major body so far, it contains an important caveat, which has been ignored in media coverage and by the advocates of legalisation.  In section 5.1 of the report (p190) the committee notes that clinical trials could only begin if there were ‘reliable oversight mechanisms to prevent extension to uses other than preventing a serious disease or condition’. The committee goes on to note that:

 

  1. ‘There are also those who think the final criterion of Recommendation 5-1 cannot be met, and that once germline modification had begun, the regulatory mechanisms instituted could not limit the technology to the uses identified in the recommendation. If, indeed, it is not possible to satisfy the criteria in the recommendation, the committee’s view is that heritable genome editing would not be permissible’ (emphasis added).

 

  1. We would argue that all experience suggests that any attempt to restrict that technology to preventing single gene conditions is bound to fail.

 

The current reality of eugenics

 

  1. As part of the attempt to minimise the significance of consumer eugenics, eugenics is often portrayed as having ended in 1945, and a consumer eugenics based on genetic modification as merely a hypothetical future scenario. We would argue that, on the contrary, many manifestations of eugenics are observable throughout the 20th century and in our current society, and that the social consequences of genetic ‘enhancement’ are entirely predictable from current trends.

 

  1. Just a few current examples of eugenics include:

 

 

  1. All of these would have delighted the eugenicists of the first half of the 20th century.  It is apparent that the persistence of eugenics can take state-sponsored forms but does not rely upon that, nor upon direct coercion or an intention to change the overall gene pool. The experience of the use of prenatal sex selection and infanticide in India and other Asian countries shows how individual choices can create massive population-level effects. These examples show that a free-market eugenics is not some hypothetical scenario dreamt up to frighten people, but a real and concrete reality. Moreover, we should not be complacent, given the current trends towards authoritarian populism in politics, that state-sponsored forms of eugenics, such as that still existing in China, covering 1.3 billion people, are purely a thing of the past.

 

5. Why a legal ban on creation of GM babies is necessary

 

  1. The likely progression from preventing genetic diseases to ‘enhancement’ is the reason why more than 40 countries (including, but not limited to those signatories of the 1997 Council of Europe Convention on Biomedicine and Human Rights) have taken the approach of banning the creation of any GM babies. We believe that this is the only feasible and robust way to prevent the emergence of a free-market eugenics, through drawing a clearly defined and defensible ‘bright line’.

 

  1. If the UK were to buck the international consensus, and legalise the creation of GM babies, this would be a disastrous precedent. The recent development of the ‘mitochondrial replacement’ technology exemplifies what can happen: a technology with benefit for a very small population has been co-opted for the purposes of ‘improving’ general purpose IVF, and this development has happened for transparently commercial reasons in countries lacking adequate regulation (Center for Genetics and Society, 2017). 

 

  1. It would also be highly irresponsible: given the way in which science develops, whereby a difficult scientific technique, perfected in one laboratory can be quickly replicated around the world, and may result in the creation of GM babies in countries lacking legislation, it is incumbent upon governments to prohibit research which is expressly designed to develop and perfect the techniques for creating GM babies, such as the recent paper published by the Mitalipov group.  Corporations have the same responsibility.  It cannot be ignored that Shoukrat Mitalipov has openly expressed his intention to create GM babies. 

 

  1. It is sometimes argued by its advocates that that since the creation of GM babies is supposedly ‘inevitable’, the responsible approach is to legalise and regulate it. This is special pleading, a perversion of ethics and the height of irresponsibility. If ethics means anything, it means acting according to one’s judgement of what is right, no matter what everyone else may do, and also attempting to persuade the rest of the world to do the right thing, not tailoring one’s own attitudes according to the bad practices of others. The only responsible course given the tendencies apparent in free-market capitalism is to try to universalise a ban on the creation of GM babies, through a UN Convention, as the German Ethics Council recently advocated, on the grounds of the significance of this issue for the whole of humanity (German Ethics Council, 2017).  A world governed by such a convention in which those who occasionally tried to create GM babies were pursued by the authorities and punished is infinitely preferable to one in which consumer eugenics resulted from legalisation and the failure of regulation.

 

  1. One would hope that scientists would understand that international treaties designed to restrain the most dangerous applications of science and technology would have a positive effect upon research in other areas.  The best guarantee of public support for science would be a global ban on the creation of GM babies.  Conversely, efforts towards legalisation are likely to met with the same kind of public outrage that was manifest in the anti-GM food campaign.

 

The HFEA

 

  1. It is sometimes argued that, in the UK the existence of a statutory regulator ensures that technologies will be used in the interest of the common good, and that harmful social consequences will not occur. We wish to radically dissent from this position.

 

  1. In our experience of following the workings of the HFEA over more than 20 years, we have found that it acts more as a cheerleader for new technologies than as a critical regulator. The HFEA is a regulator which has never been known to simply reject either new technological developments or particular applications; we could produce endless examples, the following will have to suffice here, given the lack of space:

 

 

  1. In short, the HFEA is part of the technocratic public acceptance machinery for new technologies; its worldview is dominated by scientists and the industries which it regulates. Since it was first created there have been assiduous efforts to portray it as the ideal regulator and ‘the envy of the world’, in order to reassure the public that its concerns about genetic and reproductive technologies were being responsibly dealt with. This has functioned as an extremely effective mechanism for ensuring the acceptance of each and every new technology and application brought forward by the IVF industry, whatever the ethical or social principle that the technology consigns to history. This process of continual slippage is, of course, consistent with the ongoing development of libertarianism in bioethics, which is part of the cultural change created by neoliberalism.

 

  1. If the UK really wishes to demonstrate that it has a model system of ethical and social controls over biotechnology it would be better to stick to the internationally-agreed prohibitions. Conversely, if the UK were to legalise the creation of GM babies, this would create a disastrous international precedent.

 

6. Public debate

 

  1. Given the massive potential social impacts of crossing the GM babies line, policy-making in this area must be democratic rather than technocratic. This was acknowledged in the statement arising from the international conference organised by British, American and Chinese science academies in 2015, which stated that no moves towards legalisation should be made until there was ‘broad societal consensus’, not merely a majority. It is distressing but perhaps unsurprising that technocracy has already reasserted itself in the recent US National Academy of Sciences report on the issue.

 

  1. Within a broad democratic debate, which must focus on the question of eugenics, the debate should be led by those people targeted by eugenics, i.e. disabled people and people from minority ethnic groups (including Jews) etc. 

 

7. Conclusion

 

  1. Any decision about legalisation of GM babies should be judged on the basis of the risks and benefits of such a step. We have argued that the medical benefits are non-existent, since the prevention of the birth of children with very severe genetic diseases can be accomplished through genetic selection techniques, and that in the very tiny number of cases where this is not possible, the options of adoption and gamete donation are available: in such cases, the only benefit of genetic modification would be the social (rather than medical) benefit of genetic parenthood.

 

  1. By contrast, as we have demonstrated, the social consequences of the creation of GM babies would be an inevitable progression towards free-market eugenics. This is the reason why governments of nearly all industrialised nations have taken the almost unprecedented step of outright prohibition of the use of technology in this way. 

 

  1. The advocates of legalisation of creation of GM babies like to present the argument in terms of concrete benefits versus hypothetical risks. On the contrary, the reality is that while the benefits are negligible, the risks are enormous and almost unavoidable. This is why the committee should support the existing prohibitions on the creation of GM babies.

 

 

October 2017

 

 

References

 

Center for Genetics and Society, 2017 https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/fertility-doctor-trying-commercialize-three-parent-babies

German Ethics Council, 2017 http://www.ethikrat.org/files/recommendation-germline-intervention-in-the-human-embryo.pdf.

Human Genetics Alert, 2015 How the HFEA misled the public about ‘mitochondrial replacement’ techniques, available from HGA.

King D., 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/04/editing-human-genome-consumer-eugenics-designer-babies

T Marteau, H Drake, M Bobrow, 1994 Medical Genetics 31:864-867.

Orange, 2011 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/8768598/Sperm-bank-turns-down-redheads.html.

Smajdor, 2015 http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-the-application-of-genome-editing-techniques-to-human-embryos/

Wertz, D. 1997 Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy 13, 299-346; Wertz, D., 1998 eugenics is alive and well: a survey of genetic professionals around the world Science in Context 11, p493-510.


 

Appendix: Why free-market eugenics is an ethical and social disaster

 

  1. The creation of ‘enhanced’ GM babies challenges the principles of:

 

  1. Social solidarity/equality: this is a principle which is an important counterweight to individualistic competitive tendencies in society. Whilst some competition amongst individuals may produce positive social effects, it is clearly highly damaging to allow competition to actually determine the characteristics of the people who are permitted to be born. Although it is clearly not the case that everyone has equal abilities, healthy competition and social equality must be based on the fact that differences in abilities are unknown at the start, so everyone must be treated equally. All children should be allowed to find out whether they are eg. musically talented, and to succeed if they have only minor talents but work hard. If, however, it is already known that certain children have been genetically ‘enhanced’, the tendency to formation of elites and the damage to notions of solidarity based on human commonality will be very hard to resist. It will be argued, for example, that such children should be spent to special schools where they will receive a kind of education that only they can take advantage of and from which other children should be excluded.

 

  1. Worse, because the creation of a GM baby would undoubtedly be an expensive matter, existing wealthy groups would be able to add to their childrens’ existing financial and social advantages with biological advantages over other people’s children, who would likely be left behind even more quickly in school, the job market etc..

 

  1. In some perfectly credible scenarios, such elitism could progress to the degree that members of elites would regard non-‘enhanced’ individuals as little better than slaves or animals, with no right to be treated as equal members of society on the basis of their simple humanity.

 

  1. In general, a free-market eugenics would probably be a death blow to any political philosophies based on the idea of fundamental human equality and equal opportunity, and therefore to efforts towards social solidarity and equality.

 

  1. Social justice: it is in principle wrong to allow existing social prejudices/oppressions to determine which people should be allowed to be born, since this perpetuates and institutionalises oppression. There can be little question that this is precisely what would happen if a ‘laissez-faire eugenics’ were allowed to happen. The ‘gendercide’ in India and other Asian countries are an example of what happens when prejudices are empowered by technology and allowed to determine which kinds of people can be born. Another contemporary example is the US egg donor market in which there is a high financial premium on eggs from e.g. Ivy League students, who are tall, athletic, beautiful etc. The logics of the free market and of eugenics are identical: a higher price is of course expected to be paid for a eugenically ‘superior’ product. And it cannot be ignored that the physical characteristics targeted in current manifestations of eugenics are the same as those that were targeted in the eugenics of the first half of the 20th century.

 

  1. These examples and others cited above (skin lightening creams, the operation of sexism in cosmetic surgery) show that the harmful consequences of a consumerist eugenics for social justice are not a matter of conjecture or ‘scaremongering’. In essence, by designing our children’s genes, we will create a society in which people are judged on the basis of their genes, and valued or discriminated against accordingly. The burden of proof on this issue should lie on those who claim that free-market eugenics will be socially benign and that these highly predictable consequences will not happen.

 

  1. In particular, it can hardly be doubted that in a free-market eugenic society, having physical impairments would be even less acceptable than it is in existing society. Many previous and currently existing tendencies, such as regarding disabled people as a financial burden on society would undoubtedly be exacerbated.

 

  1. Objectification/commodification: a crucial moral principle that is challenged by the creation of GM babies is the non-objectification/commodification of human beings. In other words, human beings are to be treated with respect and as equals and not as objects or commodities, or purely as a means to an end.

 

  1. It can be argued, in our view, persuasively, that a fundamental basis of this principle is non-interference with the ‘genetic lottery’ occurring in sexual reproduction. The genetic lottery randomly creates genetically unique individuals who must be accepted as they come, with all their strengths and weaknesses, and should be loved unconditionally by their parents.  Ultimately, regarding children as gifts, from God or nature is the underpinning of humanism and human rights.  Until now, religious cultures and secular humanism have dictated that humans are a separate category from designed consumer commodities.  I must regard humans as my equal: they are to be accepted and respected as they come, not moulded and selected at the most basic biological level in order to become useful tools for me, according to my whims. Humans, including my future children, are not consumer goods, or ‘factors of production’.  We must not do this even if such ‘enhancements’ can be argued to be in their interests. 

 

  1. By contrast once we begin to genetically modify and alter our children’s genes according to their own ideas of what is better for them, they become just another designed object which we pick according to the specifications that we want. This fundamentally degrades their status as human subjects, and makes them just another consumer object (hence the popular designation ‘designer babies’). No concrete advantages derived from improving their genes can compensate for this degradation. 

 

  1. We can hope for certain characteristics in our children, but once we begin to design them, they become things which we have made investments in and which we will expect to perform. This destroys the unconditional relationship of love between parent and child, and is likely to lead to controlling behaviour by the parent and rebellion and rejection by the child. Again, no doubt such situations already exist, and much of literature deals with the problems that they create, particularly in aristocratic families in which children are produced to be ‘the heir’. We should not radically deepen the objectification of children through genetic modification.

 

  1. As a result of objectification and design, in a capitalist society, human beings will become literally commodities, bought and sold and valued by the quality of their genes. Such commodification already applies to sperm and eggs.  Children are literally bought and sold in the international surrogacy trade, so it will be a small step to price them according to their ‘genetic quality’.

 

  1. The moment when human beings become just another designed object is the moment when humanism and human rights, the ideas that human beings have a special moral status different from that of other natural objects, begin to be extinguished. Those ideas are vital moderators of the inherent tendencies of industrial capitalism towards objectification, commodification and the subjection of all reality to criteria of efficiency and performance.  It is often said that while a market economy is a good thing, a market society, (i.e. a society in which nearly all human interactions are governed by the principles of commercial exchange) is not. With the genetic modification of humans, we would be going a step further than a market society – we would be creating a market humanity, in which the principles of the market are written into our genes.  We can see the erosion of humanist ideas in in the current popularity of ‘post-humanism’ and ‘trans-humanism’. 

 

Summary

 

  1. It is for these fundamental moral/social reasons that eugenics has been proscribed in law, and these prohibitions and restrictions must be protected against both the capitalist demands of greed, profit, and ‘freedom’ and the misguided technocratic enthusiasm of scientists to control nature. The particular form of the eugenics of the first half of the 20th century was dictated by social forces and structures of that historical period, and resulted in particular horrors of mass sterilisation and murder. But it is the underlying moral and social essence of eugenics, the belief in the genetic superiority of some people over others, and the determination to control nature, whether at an individual or population level, in in order to ensure that the ‘superior’ type is born, that is the core of the problem, and this can be expressed equally well in a free market situation, with equally disastrous social consequences.