Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations (ActionBioscience)

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Designer Babies: Ethical Considerations

Nicholas Agar
An ActionBioscience.org original article
en espaol
articlehighlights
Advances in genetics may make it possible to select our childrens genes and characteristics. We need to
consider
what are the moral and ethical limits of this choice?
should we distinguish between selecting for therapy and enhancement?
are human genetic modification technologies safe?
what effect will human genetic modification have on society?
April 2006

Designer babies
would be
genetically
modified.

What issues
should we
consider before
modifying
humans?

In 2004 the term designer baby made

the transition from sci-fi movies and
weblogs into the Oxford English
Dictionary, where it is defined as a baby
whose genetic makeup has been
artificially selected by genetic engineering
combined with in vitro fertilization to
ensure the presence or absence of
particular genes or characteristics.1 This
coinage was prompted by recent
advances in genetics that may make such
babies possible. We need to pause and
ask what moral or ethical limits, if any,
should apply to the selection of our
childrens genes or characteristics. Before
we can answer this we must address
other questions:

Artists depiction of fetus at 40 weeks after fertilization,

about 20 inches (51 cm) head to toe. Source: Melchior
Meijer, 3Dpregnancy.com.

How would designer babies be made?

Is there a moral or ethical difference between using genetic technologies to
prevent disease and to enhance human capacities?
Should we be striving to protect our humanity from genetic enhancement?
What effect will human genetic modification have on society?
Designer babies: Not today, but perhaps tomorrow
There are two types of moral or ethical questions one can ask about designer
babies. The first addresses the specific technologies that might be used to modify

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or select a babys genetic makeup. The second question looks away from
technological details to focus on the very idea of a designer baby.2

Is GM technology
safe and ethical?

Are the technologies of genetic modification and selection safe enough to

be used on humans?
Even if the technologies are safe, can they be morally defended?
The Oxford English Dictionary definition describes the way of making designer
babies that at the same time is the most conceptually straightforward and raises
the biggest concerns about safety. One way to make a designer baby begins with
an embryo created by in vitro fertilization (IVF). Genetic engineers modify the
embryos DNA and then introduce it into a womb.

Geneticists have
enhanced
learning in mice.

Farmers in many parts of the world now plant crops with genomes altered to make
them resistant to pests or herbicides.3 Recent discoveries about the influence of
genes on human traits such as susceptibility to disease, shyness, and athletic
ability open the possibility of transferring these techniques to human beings. An
experiment on mice performed at Princeton University suggests one way this might
be done.
Geneticists introduced into mouse genomes an additional copy of a gene, NR2B,
that codes for one type of glutamate receptor and is known to play a role in the
development of the brain.4 The resulting doogie mice, named for the teen genius
central character of the early 1990s TV show Doogie Howser, MD, seem to learn
faster than other mice and retain information longer. The NR2B gene exists in
humans, prompting speculation about performing the same trick on one of us.
Before this is done, we need to examine pressing safety concerns.

There are several

safety concerns
about the
technology.

Current techniques of genetic modification introduce genes at random

places in the genome. We should be concerned about the possibility that an
inserted copy of NR2B may arrive in the target genome in a way that
disrupts the function of another gene crucial for survival.
Many genes have more than one effect. The effect we intend may be
accompanied by others of which we become aware only later. There is
evidence for such effects on doogie mice, which seem not only to have
improved powers of learning and memory, but also to have a greater
sensitivity to pain, an enhancement of more dubious desirability.5
Many of the traits that we may want to select are influenced by multiple
genes. A gene affects intelligence only in combination with other genes. We
are unlikely to find single genes whose modification would reliably produce
a 20-point boost in IQ, for example.6
We should expand on the dictionary definition to consider other ways of selecting
our childrens characteristics. These ways of making designer babies will avoid
some of the risks inherent in the genetic modification of human embryos while
introducing others. One technology is preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD),
currently used by some people at risk of passing serious genetic disorders on to
their children.

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Preimplantation
genetic diagnosis
is already used
to screen for
genetic defects.

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People who use preimplantation genetic diagnosis to avoid passing on a

disease to their child have a collection of embryos created for them by IVF.
These embryos are grown to the eight-cell stage, at which point one or two
cells are removed and checked for genetic variants associated with the
disease.
Only embryos lacking these variants are introduced into the womb.
PGD is an expensive procedure currently offered only to couples at risk of having a
child suffering from a serious genetic disease. But there is nothing inherent in the
technology that limits it to such uses. For example, Dean Hamer presents evidence
that the gene for a vesicular monoamine transporter, VMAT2, influences a trait
labelled self-transcendence, that is, the capacity to reach out beyond themselves,
to see everything as part of one great totality.7 He proposes that different versions
of VMAT2 lead to different degrees of self-transcendence and, therefore, to
different propensities for religious or spiritual belief.

One scientist
argues you can
also screen for
personality
traits.
Preimplantation
genetic diagnosis
is not risk free.

Hamers proposal is controversial, but suppose he is right. You might use PGD to
select your childs version of VMAT2. Presbyterians who select children with the
high self-transcendence version of VMAT2 should, however, be warned that they
may end up with a child who expresses this selected psychological characteristic by
way of a devotion to astrology.
PGD does not involve the genetic modification of human embryos and hence avoids
some of the risks described above. But it is not entirely risk-free. Some
commentators fear that the removal of one or two cells from eight-cell embryos
might have implications for the well-being of people created by PGD. Defenders of
PGD respond that the cells of eight-cell embryos are totipotent, meaning that they
are undifferentiated and equally capable of forming all the cells of the human body.
As the technology has been in use for under a decade, it is too early to say with
certainty who is right in this dispute.8
Another biotechnologycloningmay enable the selection of childrens
characteristics.

Cloning is an
alternative
method.

Cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer uses a somatic, or body, cell from
the person to be cloned.
The nucleus of this cell is introduced into an egg cell whose own nucleus
has been removed.
The resulting reconstructed embryo is introduced into a womb.
Although some people may view cloning as a last-ditch response to infertility,
others may see it as a way of selecting the characteristics of their child. This choice
would be exercised through the choice of the person to be cloned. For example,
you might pursue physical attractiveness on your childs behalf by using a somatic
cell from Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt, who may, in the future, have to be more
circumspect about where they leave their saliva and hair follicles.

Cloning could
lead to parental
preference for an

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Those who hope to clone designer babies should be wary of genetic determinist
misrepresentations of the technology.9 Genetic determinism is the view that an
organisms significant characteristics result mainly from the action of its genes,
with environmental influences playing a negligible role. This view, now widely

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enhanced child.

http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agar.html?print

recognized as false, has been supplanted by the view that organisms emerge from
a complex interaction of genes and environment. Roger Federers clone would be
subjected to a different collection of environmental influences from the original,
meaning that the clone might easily lack any interest in or aptitude for tennis.
Prospective parents who accept that cloning comes with no guarantee might
reassure themselves that a clone of Federer would be more likely to be a tennis
champion than a child they produced naturally.
This way of making a designer baby will not be attractive to prospective parents
who place value on a genetic connection with their child. The woman who gave
birth to a clone of Roger Federer would be no more genetically related to the clone
than she is to the original. She might establish a rather limited genetic connection
by contributing the egg into which the nucleus of the Federer somatic cell is
inserted. An enucleated egg retains the DNA of its mitochondria, cellular machinery
residing outside of the nucleus. But the significance of this connection is vastly
outweighed by that with the donor of the nucleus.

Animal cloning
has proven to be
risky.

Even if we understand how somatic cell nuclear transfer might enable us to make
designer babies, we are not yet ready to create children by cloning. There are
major concerns about the health of clones. Animal clones suffer from a variety of
problems that some scientists connect with incomplete reprogramming of somatic
cell DNA or damage inflicted by the process of nuclear transfer. Human clones may
also suffer from these problems.10
Preventing disease or enhancing attributes?
Suppose we move away from discussion of risks to focus on the reasons for having
a designer baby. We can identify two different kinds of motivation:

Is there an
ethical divide
between therapy
and
enhancement?

Replacing the version of the gene linked with heart disease, for example,
aims to ensure that the resulting persons cardiac functioning does not fall
below a level considered normal for humans. We call it therapy because
we recognize that it aims to prevent a disease state.
Adding an extra copy of the NR2B gene to a human embryo, on the other
hand, has the quite distinct aim of producing someone who, in some area,
functions beyond a level considered normal for human beings and as such
qualifies as an enhancement.11
This prompts a question: Is there a moral distinction between treating or
preventing disease and enhancing traits? Some think that we should pass different
moral judgments on enhancement from those we pass on therapy. They say that
while therapy is justifiable, enhancement is not.

How do you
distinguish
between therapy
and
enhancement?

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The problem is that it is difficult to make the therapyenhancement distinction

principled. It is hard to find definitions of disease suitable to serve as a moral
guideline for genetic technologies. Social constructivists consider diseases to be
states to which society takes a negative attitude. Cancer seems to satisfy the
requirements of this definition, but so might homosexuality and practicing a
religion different from the norm in your society. Objectivist accounts avoid these
difficulties by making the definition of disease independent of our attitudes.
According to the most widely advocated version of this view, I suffer from disease

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when some part of me fails to perform its biological function. For example,
cholesterol deposits on the arteries constitute or conduce to disease because they
impede the heart in the performance of its function, which is to pump blood. The
problem with this way of defining disease is that it may sometimes set goals
irrelevant to human flourishing. Suppose we were to discover that homosexuality
was a consequence of malfunction in the part of the brain responsible for sexual
attraction. Should this rather obscure fact about biological functioning count more
than the fact that many homosexual people seem to be living excellent lives?12

Some technical
options destroy
the embryo to
avoid genetic
defects.

A further moral complication emerges from the different approaches to treating

disease and those who suffer from them. Genetically modifying an embryo so as to
remove a gene linked with a higher than average risk of asthma may prevent
asthma, but it need not prevent the existence of the person who might have
suffered from it. Compare this with the use of PGD to avoid having a child at a high
risk of asthma. This seems to prevent the disease only by preventing the patients
existence.13
Should parents be permitted to enhance their children?

The Nazis tried

to design babies
by practicing
eugenics.

Is the way
parents rear a
child also a way
of designing a
child?

Finding a difference between treatment and enhancement does not in itself show
that enhancement is impermissible. Some think we should reject genetic
enhancement because of its connection with the eugenics programs promoted by
the Nazis. The scientific minions of Adolph Hitler sought to shape the German
population by murdering those judged inferior and encouraging those they saw as
their betters to reproduce. Advocates of what has come to be called liberal
eugenics would take responsibility for human enhancement from the state and
pass it to individuals who would be guided by their own distinctive values in their
selection of genetic advantages.14
Parents in liberal democracies already make choices about which schools to send
their children to, how to feed them, who counts as a suitable after-school
companion, whether children are to be given religious instruction, and if so of what
type. In effect, they manipulate their childrens environments to improve or
enhance them.1416 The moral parallel between upbringing and genetic
enhancement draws support from modern understanding of the contributions that
genes and environment make to human development. As we saw above, the
genetic determinist view of development has been displaced by the view that
organisms emerge from a complex interaction of genes and environment. The
comparison of genetic enhancement with upbringing suggests that we were all
designer children. Prospective parents who avail themselves of genetic engineering,
PGD, or cloning are simply making use of another means of design.
Are designer babies posthumans?

Some think we
will lose our
humanity if we
modify human
genes.

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Opponents of the liberal argument for enhancement argue that there are morally
significant differences between upbringing and genetic enhancement. Francis
Fukuyama thinks that genetic enhancements may change our descendents to such
an extent that they lose their humanity.17 According to Fukuyama, environmental
influences operate only within limits set by genes, meaning that even ambitious
education programs leave their subjects humanity intact. A genetically enhanced
child is more fittingly described as a posthuman. The price for her super

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intelligence will be the experiences that give human lives meaning.

Are geniuses
accidental
posthumans
because theyre
above the norm?

Transhumanists
see designer
babies as a goal
rather than an
issue.

We might ask whether there are already posthumans among us. Albert Einstein
and Ray Charles achieved well beyond the norm in their areas of endeavour. Some
of the explanations for this achievement may be traced to their genomes. Would a
parent who modified her childs genome so that it contained some of the genetic
advantages of Einstein or Charles be taking the first step toward posthumanity? If
we answer this question in the affirmative, should Einstein and Charles be
considered accidental posthumans?
The most forthright response to the concern that genetic enhancement might
deprive our descendents of their humanity comes from a group of thinkers who call
themselves transhumanists.18
Transhumanists propose posthumanity as a goal rather than something to
avoid.
They allow that we may have difficulty relating to the inhabitants of the
biotechnological future but claim that if they are free of disease, superintelligent, and routinely compose symphonies whose brilliance surpasses
that of Beethovens Ninth, this failure of identification is our problem, not
the posthumans.
The end of liberal democracy?

Will genetic
enhancement
lead to a
discriminatory
society?

Some of the most challenging moral and ethical questions about a licence to design
babies concern the societies it might lead to. The movie Gattaca depicts a future in
which genetically enhanced people take the lead, viewing unenhanced people as fit
only to clean up after them. Liberal democracy is a cooperative venture in which all
are seen as having something to offer.17 Will genetic enhancement bring this social
arrangement to an end, creating societies in which unenhanced people are viewed
by their genetic superiors in much the same way that we currently view
chimpanzees, suitable for drug testing and zoo exhibits but little else?
2006, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Educators have
permission to reprint articles for classroom use; other users, please
contact editor for reprint permission. See reprint policy.
Nicholas Agar, Ph.D., is senior lecturer in the School of History, Philosophy,
Political Science, and International Relations, Victoria University of Wellington, New
Zealand. His main research interests are in the ethics of the new genetics. He has
published on personal identity, environmental ethics, and the philosophy of mind,
in the books Lifes Intrinsic Value (2001), Perfect Copy (2002), and Liberal
Eugenics (2004).
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/phil/staff/agar.aspx
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