Quadrant | Despite warnings by moral conservatives, advances in genetics and
reproductive technology have created the conditions for a
consumer-driven mass eugenics industry. Like it or not, science has is
about to pose a slather of moral, ethical and societal dilemmas
A legal, social and biological revolution is taking place
worldwide without much serious thinking of the consequences. Consider
this: in Britain the House of Commons recently approved the use of
“three-parent IVF” to remove defective mitochondrial DNA from babies.[1]
Each year in Britain about 100 children are born with mutated
mitochondrial DNA, resulting in about ten cases of fatal disease to the
liver, nerves or heart. A new in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
technique developed at the University of Newcastle allows doctors to
replace a mother’s defective mitochondrial DNA with that of a healthy
donor, presumably using pre-implantation sequencing and microscopic
operation on the zygote. Mitochondrial DNA does not affect appearance,
personality or intelligence, and it reduces kinship—genetic
similarity—by only about 1 per cent. Still, the resulting child, though
its nuclear DNA would come from its main parents, would have three
parents.
Critics warned that this would set society off down a slippery slope
to eugenics and “designer babies”. A government official, the “British
Fertility Regulator”, replied to this warning with the observation that
most people support the therapy. This was intended to assuage the
concerns expressed. In fact it would seem to confirm them, since
widespread support for a product or service indicates a readiness to
adopt it. Sure enough, though there had been little public discussion in
advance of the Commons debate, the new techniques were nonetheless
approved by a large parliamentary majority. Australian scientists have
since called for the British policy to be emulated.[2]
Despite half a century of warnings by moral conservatives, advances
in genetics and reproductive technology have created the conditions for a
consumer-driven mass eugenics industry. Here is the Oxford dictionary
definition of “Eugenics”: “the science of improving a population by
controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable
characteristics”. It has a bad historical reputation because
authoritarian governments have denied civil liberties in the name of
eugenics. But as we shall see, both the definition and the reputation of
eugenics have been overtaken by advances in science, medicine and
marketing. Eugenics has since reappeared in many countries in the form
of voluntary genetics counselling—a medical service provided to help
parents avoid genetic disorders in their children[3]; and IVF has become a sizeable industry that offers parents the genetic screening of embryos and other eugenic choices.
Genetic improvement is becoming a market phenomenon—a situation
discernible as long ago as the 1980s when Daniel Kevles, the leading
historian of eugenics in the USA, quoted a biotechnology expert thus:
“‘Human improvement’ is a fact of life, not because of the state … but
because of consumer demand.”[4]
