Gene Editing and the Need for Science Fiction

Thinking outside the Punnett square

It’s the year 2035, and Crayola is releasing a new set of crayons for children who have been genetically modified to be tetrachromatic, able to see four primary colors instead of the usual three. Though the World Anti Doping Committee initially banned all “gene doping” of athletes, gene editing for the improvement of basic health has become so widespread that the Anti Doping Code is rewritten to allow athletes to engineer any “naturally occurring genetic variation”. China, which has been petitioning for this change for over ten years, is predicted to medal in most events in next year’s summer Olympics. Designed for military use, a “smart dog” is the subject of a series of lawsuits that has finally worked its way this year to the Supreme Court. By accepting a writ of habeus corpus on behalf of the plaintiff, smart dogs were essentially granted the status of personhood. And in another court case, a now standard suite of gene edits that boost cognitive potential is deemed as essential care, and will thus be provided free of cost via the US National Health Service. On the lighter side, the passenger pigeon population in the United States reached over one million birds this year. Extinct since the early 1900’s, the bird was reclaimed via a massive series of gene edits to the related band-tailed pigeon. Similarly, the small herd of genetically reclaimed mammoths in Glacier National Park is doing well (despite the absence of glaciers in the park for the last five years).

Almost assuredly, none of those events will happen that year (hopefully we’ll have the passenger pigeons much sooner, for one). It’s hard to predict what is happening right now, let alone twenty years in the future. For that matter I’m often not even sure what happened yesterday. Nonetheless, there has recently been a lot of talk in the genetics community about the need for guidelines of gene editing. As discussed earlier, new technology is making it easier to instill specific genetic changes to an embryo and create modified, even “designed” people. Wisely, we’ve already started talking about where this technology will lead us, and some general guidelines on how to proceed are being discussed. The consensus is that before it can be applied to people, this technology needs to be safer, clearly benefit the recipient, and be subject to appropriate regulation.

The current dialogues on gene editing are mostly concerned with the safety of the recipient, is the technology good enough that there won’t be unanticipated problems for people modified via this technology? There is agreement that we’re not ready yet to generally apply the technology to people, especially not at the germline level, that is, where we modify an embryo so that every cell in the resulting adult will carry the genetic change. Despite these concerns, the hope seems to be that the use of this technology is not too far off, at least for the application of repairing genetic variants linked to life-threatening diseases. However it is an easy series of steps to go from using the technology to fix a variant in the haemoglobin gene so as to prevent a child from being born with sickle cell disease, to using it to fix genetic variants associated with increased risk of heart attack in old age, to “fixing” gene variations not associated with above average intelligence. Once an ethics committee allows the use of gene editing for the first instance, we may arrive at the third case much more quickly than we anticipated. It’s likely that use of the technology will rapidly extend into new territories soon after it begins to be employed for any reason.

It’s hard to create ethical guidelines for a new technology when we don’t know yet what choices we will face

This makes having an ethics discussion about gene editing difficult. The potential negative repercussions to society of ensuring that a child is not born with a particular debilitating disease are small, while the benefit to the child is great. There is little disagreement that this type of application would be a great achievement for the technology. But what about some of the other uses of gene editing? A technology that could make one’s children smarter, better looking, and healthier than the average child is a different kettle of fish than preventing a debilitating disease. This is especially true if, as will surely be the case, gene editing is an expensive procedure only available to the few.

How to anticipate the ethics of choices that don’t exist yet? Or should we even try? Too much regulation can stifle innovation, yet too little can allow technology to ride roughshod over society. The Locomotive Act of 1865, enacted by Parliament in the UK, stipulated that “road locomotives” (“cars”, in our modern parlance) must adhere to these stipulations:

(1) At least three persons shall be employed to drive or conduct such locomotive….

(2) One of such persons, while any locomotive is in motion, shall precede such locomotive on foot by not less than sixty yards, and shall carry a red flag constantly displayed, and shall warn the riders and drivers of horses of the approach of such locomotives, and shall signal the driver thereof when it shall be necessary to stop, and shall assist horses, and carriages drawn by horses, passing the same.

Furthermore, speed limits were set:

…it shall not be lawful to drive any such locomotive along any turnpike road or public highway at a greater speed than four miles an hour, or through any city, town, or village at a greater speed than two miles an hour;

It must have been great to get out of the city and be able to open that throttle and speed up to a blistering four miles an hour. It wasn’t until this act was amended in 1896, in part from pressure from automobile enthusiasts, that our modern relationship of the car and the road was able to exist (for better or worse).

It’s easy, at first read, to dismiss the Locomotive Act as reactionary technophobia, or machinations by the railroad industry to stifle new innovation. After all, this was only fifty years after the Luddites were burning mills in England. On the other hand, the vehicles the act had in mind were not exactly like today’s cars. Here is an example of a relatively small road locomotive:

[image credit: David Collidge http://www.steamscenes.co.uk/]

Loosening these anti-automobile regulations ultimately improved the efficiency of the economy, but also ceded control of roads from use by pedestrians to becoming the domain of the car. Cities are now designed more to facilitate the automobile than people. Without reasonable regulation we often find ourselves forced to adapt to technology, rather than being permitted to use it (or not use it) on our own terms (acolytes of the philosophers of technology Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich or Lewis Mumford should nod vigorously at this point).

Except for a small number of Ayn Rand acolytes, who tend to be easy to identify and avoid, few doubt that new technologies need some regulation. However, as occurred in the thirty year’s between the Locomotive Act and its amendment, it’s common for technology to advance much faster than the legislation we create to oversee it. How do we set reasonable rules, or ethical guidelines, when we don’t know where the technology will lead?

It’s easy, fun, yet probably pointless to imagine an unending list of dystopian gene editing scenarios

The examples in the first paragraph of how gene editing may be used are largely harmless, possibly even fun. However it’s easy to imagine other used of the technology that are more complex, or are just patently bad ideas. If instead of correcting life threatening diseases, or selecting for clearly favorable traits, like increased intelligence, what do we do if some parents want traits for their children that serve no obvious benefit except to their own personal aesthetic? Having large eyes, like a character in a Japanese manga, or looking like a Klingon, or to be covered in fur and have a tail may seem fantastical, but some people would like this if possible. What if an industry is created that steals genetic containing material (like some strands of hair) from movie stars and then offers a “Be Brad Pitt” service to parents? Terrorists could create novel smallpox variants and then use gene drive techniques to make all mosquitoes to be a vector. A ‘Back to the Pleistocene’ group brings back the Neanderthals and petitions they be given the right to vote. Some jobs are now open only to those who have visual sensors and emitters in their fingertips, a technology first developed for gamers as it allows a level of human-machine interface not available to “un-edits”. On the agricultural front, it’s recognized that traditional methods for breeding new plant varieties is essentially random genetic engineering, and is outlawed; new crops can only be created from a small list of white-listed cultivars as the recipients of the gene edits, new crops must be tested via randomized clinical trials for safely, and all genetic modifications have to be clearly listed.

It’s easy (and fun) to add to this list. I could do this all day. Nonetheless this list probably doesn’t encompass the scenarios that we will actually have to confront.

Is there a better way? Hackers are sometimes used to check the security of computer networks and servers. One could imagine a similar “black hat” approach to this problem. The idea is simple: train some psychopaths in the technology of genetic engineering and then monitored to see how far off the reservation can they take gene editing. #ProbablyBadIdea.

A safer, and more fun, idea is to include science fiction authors in the discussion. A problem with lists of “what ifs”, like above, is that they have no context. We can create endless lists of disturbing or scary uses of gene editing. What is more interesting, and more useful, is understanding why someone would actually want that particular edit, and what happens afterwards. In other words, we want the story of the gene edit.

An oft-mentioned trope of the perils of genetic engineering is the design of the super-soldier. A nefarious government secretly creates elite enhanced soldiers that can operate outside the bounds of normal humans. In the movies, heartbreak, suffering, and lots of manly handshakes/back slaps are the usual outcomes. So, let’s just add a “no creating super-soldiers” amendment to our guidelines for gene editing? But would a government really make super-soldiers via genetic engineering? If you think about it, it’s probably a pretty bad plan. You have to wait twenty years to see if the project works, and no one is going to offer their children to be modified so they can fight in situations too dangerous for a normal soldier. It’s easier, cheaper, quicker to invest in more body armor and those fancy new phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range. Even cheaper is to not use soldiers at all, but that idea’s time doesn’t seem to have yet come. So maybe we can just ignore this “super-soldier” possibility for now?

Adding science fiction writers to our genetic advisory panels may increase the liquor bill, but will also allow us to understand this new technology as stories.

A science fiction writer might agree that the genetically engineered soldier is a bad story idea. However, it’s also possible that they might find a reasonable context for this idea. Here is one story pitch about super-soldiers: It’s 2025, and the US is worried that China might be developing a super-soldier project. Or at least, the idea has been in so many movies that nobody on the Joint Chiefs of Staff is clear any more whether they read about this in an actual intelligence briefing, or if it was the plot of one of the latest summer blockbusters. We still outclass China on a technological level in our armed forces (barely), but the Pentagon is worried about the psychological effect of the (supposed) Chinese program. Will our soldiers feel outclassed if put up against soldiers who are demonstrably superior people? And in a somewhat related matter, there is growing social tension in the US as wealthy families are increasingly opting to get expensive gene edits for their offspring, a choice out of the price range for most families. There is concern that a permanent genetic underclass could develop. Even though the current center-left president gained office by denouncing the recent disastrous conflict in the Pacific and has pledged to end militarism in the Pacific region, they are won over to the super-soldier project. In exchange for five years military service when they come of age, as well as committing to lifetime enrollment in the reserves, children produced by embryonic modification with the super-soldier mods (which includes improved reaction time, strength, stamina and nighttime visual acuity, a set of novel enzymes that can metabolize custom drugs that alleviate the need for sleep and decrease pain perception, plus, it’s assumed, a host of secret edits) will also receive an extensive package of edits that remove all known disease-related variants, as well as gene variants linked to improved intelligence. It’s billed as a win-win solution for the military and society at large.

The outcome twenty years later (choose your story ending), is that A) these super-soldiers take over the US in a military coup because the idea of the citizen-soldier has now been erased, B) the project is a fundamental disaster; as all the soldiers receive the same set of intelligence gene variants, their responses are predictable and easily countered, C) society is not able to repatriate these elite soldiers back to society after their service, and an island reservation is created to house them (I’m pretty sure I saw this movie on an airplane once), or D) everything works out fine and it was a good idea.

Given this write-up, we can see two things. One, creating super-soldiers is probably a bad idea. Second, a key driver of this particular application may be not the need for better soldiers, but a means to offer gene editing to a wide spectrum of society, and thus avoid the creation of a new genetic caste system in society.

Stories allow us to understand a subject in relationship to our inner selves. Stories about gene editing can thus show us where the real drivers of its ethical quagmires may lie.

The stratification of society as a result of (or purposely created by) genetic engineering has already been explored in science fiction, of course. From Huxley’s “Brave New World”, David Brin’s “Uplift” series, to the movie GATTACA, it usually doesn’t appear to be a good thing. It’s easy to imagine other questionable applications of gene editing rooted in the stratification of society that might be caused by the technology. For example, those extravagant aesthetic modifications, like big cartoonish eyes or fur, could also be prompted by this driver. A story line: a suite of modifications for increased intelligence is created by the Tyrell Corporation. Because of the GoogleGene vs State of Puerto Rico decision in 2025, gene edits are not patentable, so Tyrell’s gene edit package is a trade secret, and is very expensive. Subtly showing off the broad foreheads characteristic of infants with these mods becomes a form of one-upmanship among new parents. At least, it is among the few that can afford these edits. Much cheaper aesthetic modifications become a way for less well-heeled parents to show that they are part of the gene editing game as well. They’re saying, “My decision to not buy either the “Voltaire” or “Copernicus” package from Tyrell isn’t necessarily because I can’t afford it, but because I’m making a life style decision. Judge me at your peril.”

The point of outlining these two stories is not to say we need to allow the public availability of free gene editing to ensure we don’t have super-soldier programs and to prevent parents from trying to make their children look like Brad Pitt or have a fine pelt of tawny fur. The broader issue is that we need to start thinking outside the relatively rigid framework that most science discourse operates within to understand where this technology may lead us, and why some of us might want to go there. Despite the inherent difficult in the task, we probably need more of these discussion groups exploring the guidelines for the use of gene editing. Geneticists are needed on these advisory panels, of course. They understand the tools, and their weaknesses and strengths. Bioethicists can help frame the question of how the technology can be developed in ways that are socially responsible. But science fiction writers are needed too. Not just to help think of the crazy uses for the technology, though they’re great for that, but more importantly, to place the technology into stories for us.

Stories are how we understand our lives, and in turn, our stories also explain us. But our stories aren’t just a search for meaning, our stories help create us as well. Stories allow us to connect our physical, outer world with our inner world. A science fiction writer on the advisory genetic engineering panel (or better yet, two, so as to help ensure that at last one is likely to be sober at any moment), can place this new technology into the context of our life. As the German Romantic poet Novalis said, “The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet.” By placing the technology into relation to our soul, an understanding of where we will want to take these new tools naturally follows. Instead of a simple list of bad scenarios to avoid, most of which won’t happen, the writer can give us an understanding of who we are, and what the technology can mean to us.

Plus, you might get something out of the discussion that you can sell to Hollywood. Brad Pitt can play the part of his clones.

[top image credit: “Grandma” by Chase Stone]

[First published at The Charter of the Genome]