The news that a team of researchers in New York (led by Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center) had genetically altered a human embryo stirred up quite an ethical controversy. Commentators have warned that this experiment is the first step toward designer babies and eventually the widespread use of genetic engineering of children to achieve eugenic goals. For example, Marcy Darnovsky, associate executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society (Oakland, California), said that the Cornell scientists were developing techniques that others might use to make genetically modified people, “and they’re doing it without any kind of public debate.”
It certainly is true that this experiment should not have been done without the approval of a governmental regulatory agency that operates in a transparent, public manner. Whoops, I forgot. Unlike England, Canada, or Australia, the United States has no public agency, group, or authority to keep a wary eye on reproductive and genetic technologies. The Bush administration has preferred to keep the government out of this area, leaving the field, its funding, and its oversight mainly in private hands.
This will not do. The public should not be frightened by talk of monsters and genetically engineered embryos when researchers insert a marker gene in what is known to be a nonviable human embryo for the sole purpose of tracking early embryogenesis. That’s all the Cornell group did. This experiment had as much to do with making designer babies as putting a tag on a suitcase has to do with flying to an exotic locale for vacation. Some modifications of embryos are just markers to make their features easier to find, and nothing more than that.
Are we really heading toward a eugenic tomorrow because of what Rosenwaks and his colleagues at Cornell did? Hardly. The experiment is not even especially interesting. It employed a technique widely used in animal work, and it certainly does not even put a toe on the path leading to genetically engineering embryos to improve or enhance them.
If critics want to get nervous about the prospect of eugenics, they would be wise to wonder what is going on with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. We continue to see clinics use this technology to pick and implant embryos solely for reasons of sex selection. Other clinics here and abroad are pushing genetic diagnosis of embryos as a prudent course for any couple interested in avoiding a child with diseases and defects such as a risk of breast cancer, cystic fibrosis, deafness, and various forms of dwarfism. While some of those states are certainly diseases, some are nothing more than differences that may or may not be disadvantageous, depending on context.
We are long overdue for more oversight of reproductive-technology research and all forms of embryonic-stem-cell research. I hope that the next president and Congress will move to fix this giant lacuna in American research ethics. Leaving reproductive technology in private hands has produced an America where people are forbidden from buying and selling babies but are free to buy and sell sperm, eggs, and surrogate wombs.
Eugenics using genetic engineering is a long, long way off. Making babies with an eye toward buying the best sperm or egg is much closer. Designing our kids by sorting our embryos is already here. Whether any of these is a good or bad thing is not so obvious; that we need a public forum charged with helping to decide these questions is.
Arthur Caplan is the Emmauel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics and the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
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