If you could change your DNA fingerprint, would you?
The 7:32 bell rings as my AP biology teacher starts her lesson on genetics. However, instead of her usual early morning lectures, she asked us questions about the ethics behind genetic modification. One question in particular stood out to me, should parents have the choice to genetically modify their future offspring. At first, I thought, absolutely! Why wouldn’t I want my child to be cancer-free? But after giving the question more thought, I realized the answer might not be as black-or-white.
Trying to define the ethics behind any controversial topic can be emotionally arduous, whether it’s gun control, abortion rights or immigration laws, however, this debate becomes more difficult to define when it is about something that has never been applied to humans in history: genetic modification.
Genetic modification spans from genetically modifying tomatoes to stay fresh for longer to picking and choosing the genes you want expressed in your future offspring. What is the line between ethical and unethical? Should people have the right to turn off genes in their child that would normally result in Alzheimer’s? Should people have the right to control their child’s genes to give them blond hair and blue eyes? How do we even answer these questions when the human race has never been subject to such an evolutionary choice?
Genetic modification “uses a variety of tools and techniques from biotechnology and bioengineering to modify an organism’s genetic makeup.” Even though this may seem futuristic, humans have been utilizing the idea of it for centuries — anything from breeding animals to get more desirable phenotypes, physical features, to genetically modifying a tomato using the DNA of a fish to increase the tomatoes tolerance to frost. Researchers have modified organisms for medicinal purposes as well as for aesthetics. An example of a medicinal application of genetic modification, is modified plants that have been used to create vaccines that are ingested rather than injected. In a recent article written by Linda MacDonald Glenn, she states that researchers have been able to create these vaccines for cholera, rotavirus and hepatitis B “By incorporating a human protein into bananas, potatoes, and tomatoes”. Another project incorporated a fly’s gene into a household planting, resulting in an illumination in the plant at night.
But what does this mean for humans? Even though it isn’t a choice yet, the possibility of genetically modifying humans is closer than it has ever been. Starting with genetically modifying food to desirable outcomes, to genetically modified animals such as translucent frogs and glow in the dark fish, researchers are taking more interest in applying this to humans. As our knowledge of the human genome and genetically modifying it increases, the technology used to manipulate the genome becomes more advanced and cheaper to obtain. To be specific, the revolutionary technology, CRISPR, has the ability to change humanity forever, through ending disease, designing babies and eternal youth.
CRISPR is a DNA archive that contains short repetitions of base sequences that prokaryotic organisms use as a defense mechanism against viruses. When the virus inserts its genetic code into a bacteria, it will transform the genetic code of the bacteria to produce more viruses, unless the bacteria is able to survive the virus. If the bacteria survives, it will save a part of the viruses’ DNA in CRISPR. When/if the virus attacks the bacteria again, the bacterium will have the genetic code ready to produce the protein that will break down the viruses’ genetic code.
A company called CRISPR Therapeutics has been created in hopes of developing “transformative gene-based medicines for patients with serious diseases. [Their] approach is to cure diseases at the molecular level using the breakthrough gene editing technology called CRISPR/Cas9.” This technology has the potential to eradicate hundreds of deadly viruses and diseases that take so many lives today, such as HIV, cancer and even genetic diseases, ranging from color blindness to the fatal Huntington’s disease. In fact, testing has slowly started, with the company using CRISPR technology “to fix a genetic defect in patients with beta thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder.”
The first gene therapy has already helped patients. The therapy genetically alters the patient’s own T-cells to have a new gene that codes for a protein. The protein redirects the T-cells to “target and kill leukemia cells”. In the trial of 63 patients with leukemia, “83 percent of patients that received the CAR-T therapy had their cancers go into remission within three months. At six months, 89 percent of patients who received the therapy were still living, and at 12 months, 79 percent had survived.” With leukemia being the most common childhood cancer, a therapy like this can save countless lives.
Although eradicating the world’s deadliest diseases is very promising, genetic modification also has the potential to make designer babies, which raises a host of ethical questions. These babies are produced by the parents selecting and choosing desirable genes in their children, which could be used to prevent the offspring from inheriting a disease, but it could also be used to give the offspring physical features that are socially attractive. This aspect of genetic modification engenders many ethical questions.
One issue is that genetic modification could potentially give false hope to the parents. Everyone has a genome and an epigenome. The genome is obtained hereditarily however, the epigenome is dependent on the lifestyle of each person. Even though a gene may be turned off prenatally, the lifestyle of the person could change the epigenome that lies on top of their genome potentially turning that gene back on. The parents will expect a healthy baby with whatever physicals features they choose however, their child may still express a gene they didn’t choose.
As this is such a new topic that has never been a choice in human history, scientists know little about it in order to make a valid decision. The process itself can be dangerous, posing the possibility of premature death. We know that parents can choose the genes expressed in their offspring, but what happens when a person with altered genes has offspring? What happens when a person with altered genes has offspring with someone who does not have altered genes? There is also the possibility that by altering one part of the offspring’s genome, it could lead to less desirable repercussions on another part of the genome. For example, even with our knowledge of genetically modifying organisms, when scientists modified tomatoes to be more uniformly red, they turned off the gene that produces the tomatoes’ flavor.
There’s also the issue of privacy and affordability. How public would these alterations be? Hypothetically speaking, imagine where majority of kids genomes have been prenatally altered, the minority of kids with their natural genome being those whose parents simply cannot afford the procedure. Is it fair for business owners and insurance companies to know that certain candidates will never have a disease or cancer due to their altered genome and other candidates may die of a heart disease that they will get later in life? Is it fair that the poorer candidates might have a slimmer chance of getting a good job or insurance?
One should analyze all considerations that come with a decision as drastic as changing the composition of one’s DNA. I know the pain that comes from a loved one dying from a disease, so if I was given such an opportunity to prevent my future offspring from obtaining or inheriting a disease or virus, I would take it without thinking twice. I think it would be unethical to prevent someone from changing their own, or a loved one’s DNA, to save them from a disease. Nevertheless, personally, I would stray away from altering the genes that control physical features of my children. Such an alteration gives too much control for a decision based on the parents definition of beauty and society’s opinion of what is or isn’t beautiful.
It is very difficult to determine the line between ethical and unethical. It is understandable that any parent would want to rid their child of the world’s deadliest diseases. However, when it comes to changing a child’s physical features simply for aesthetics, many ethical questions arise that must be answered before anyone in the human race embarks on this evolutionary path.
