The Future of the Human Race: A Report on Genetic Engineering

Christopher Burwell

"We've entered a new age with the ability to control both genes and our environment, said Silver. "And the fittest species will be the one that presides over its own selection." Lee Silver, a princeton professor of microbiology told Mark Baard of Wired Magazine in a 2003 article titled “will genetic engineering kill us?

The Revelation

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick walked into a pub in Cambridge, England and announced they had found “the Secret of Life”—the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Five years later, Crick published a paper defining the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology, which establishes the sequence of molecular translations and biochemical interactions that characterize all living matter. For the first time, science explained how DNA defines an organism and is passed on to its offspring. Put simply, Crick explained the miracle of life, and in doing so, opened the door to one of science’s most controversial topics: genetic engineering.

In the fifty years that have followed Crick’s discovery, geneticists have developed an increasingly complete understanding of life and the chemical factors that define it. What was previously unknown is now taught in middle school textbooks, and what was once dismissed as being a topic left to God or Nature is quickly becoming the business of medical clinics. Whether they knew it or not, Watson and Crick opened a Pandora’s Box of scientific exploration, and initiated unprecedented development into the understanding of life.

The Science Develops

In 1968, a British team of microbiologists used a new technique called Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) to control the gender of rabbit embryos before implantation. The team artificially inseminated a group of rabbit eggs and grew them in a Petri dish for three days until they reached the Eight Cell Stage. At this point they removed one cell from each embryo, used existing genetic technology to determine the sex of each embryo and selectively implanted the embryos of the desired sex into the maternal rabbit.

In 1989, a separate group of scientists successfully screened a British couple’s in-vitro fertilized eggs to select those without an X-linked chromosome linked disorder, such as hemophilia, with which the couple was affected. Their child was born healthy and without the disorder, marking the first successful genetic engineering project in a human.

More recently, a national collaboration of scientists has completed mapping the human genome—all of the genetic information coded by an individual organism’s DNA. The Human Genome Project began in 1990, and in 2003 completed the identification of all 25,000 genes in the human genome (all of the genes present in an organism), consisting of 3 billion chemical base pairs. With this information, researchers have identified genes that may be responsible for inherited illnesses and disorders like cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, certain types of cancer, and dwarfism. In addition, by using the data from the project and advanced population genetics studies, scientists have begun to find preliminary links between the presence of certain genes and higher IQ, better memory, lower body-fat index, and better childhood behavior. Though these links are all preliminary, they raise an important ethical dilemma. As our understanding of human genetics develops, so too does our understanding of the most basic factors that create individuality.

With the information gathered from the Human Genome Project, an increasing number of scientists today are exploring the links between specific genes and significant human characteristics. The project has created a whole new category of research, referred to as bioinformatics, which has rapidly developed into an incredibly lucrative industry. This industry aims to capitalize on the potential profit to be made from the identification of the genes responsible for illness and disease, as well as externally expressed traits such as height, muscle mass, or skin tone. As scientists explore and define the role of genes in specific human traits, they inadvertently raise important questions of causation. How much of who we are as individuals is determined by our genetics? Was there something genetically different about Albert Einstein, which the rest of us do not share? Or Adolf Hitler? If his actions were determined by a genetic mutation, could he be held responsible? In a world where choosing the personality traits of a child is comparable to shopping for a new car, culpability for an individual’s wrong-doing could fall to the persons responsible for choosing those traits, likely the parents.

Clinical Genetics

Over the past few decades, an increased domestic demand for personal genetic counseling and testing has opened a market for private clinics specialized in such services. The Virginia-based Genetics & In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) Institute has grown into what its website calls “the world’s largest fully-integrated, specialized provider of infertility and genetics services.” GIVF offers in-vitro fertilization for parents unable to conceive a child by traditional means. Although once considered impractical, Dr. Zev Rosenwaks of the Cornell University Center for Reproductive Medicine told Newsweek that the “Popularity [of IVF ] is soaring.” He credits its recent success to increased implantation success rates and decreased costs.

In addition to in-vitro fertilization, GIVF and other clinics like it offer a technology called Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) to screen for a select group of dangerous inherited genetic disorders like Cystic Fibrosis, Huntington’s Disease, or Sickle-Cell disease. Although these can be screened for prenatally, PGD allows the disorders to be identified before the embryo is implanted, in order to avoid the moral quandary of with terminating a developing fetus.

GIVF also offers Family Balancing, a service in which parents can choose embryos by their gender to facilitate a desired male-female ratio in a family. Ethicists and others have raised concerns that this is the first step in developing practices of human genetic engineering, and that it approaches the oft-mentioned slope towards eugenics. Yet Family Balancing is offered today by many clinics both in the US and abroad, with little public protest.

GIVF and many enterprises are currently developing more advanced screening techniques, and in the future they will undoubtedly have the technology to screen for more and more genetically inherited traits. As researchers continue to identify the role of specific genes in human traits, couples will have the opportunity to “shape” their children by choosing embryos based on a wide spectrum of genetically-determined characteristics. This new method of conception may replace what was previously the domain of random genetic interactions. No longer would life be a miracle to be respected, but rather a process to be managed. With the appropriate knowledge of genetic determinacy, it would be possible to screen embryos for IQ, eye color, hand-eye coordination, or any other genetically-determined trait. “Designer” babies may not be long off.

Colorado College Biology Professor Dr. Ralph Bertrand laments that the industry of genetic engineering is moving more quickly than most people understand. “We’re constantly looking back and asking, ‘What were the mistakes of the past?’ and wishing we had thought about it more,” he said in an interview with the Cipher last week. “Unfortunately, genetics is moving faster than the ethical discussion.” New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof expressed a similar sentiment in a July 23 Op-Ed entitled “Birth Without the Bother?” where he wrote, “I worry that our scientific capabilities may surpass our wisdom.”

The Future

On October 8, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to three scientists responsible for developing “knockout” technology in mammals, a technique that allows scientists to edit, delete, or replace a specific gene in the germ line of a mammal. The technology, credited with changing the manner in which genetics research is done, has allowed scientists to modify the genetic codes of mice and observe the outcome of altered genes. This procedure, and others like it, has allowed labs to create fluorescent fish, fruit flies with photographic memories, and mice with high cholesterol, by literally cutting and pasting genetic material from one potentially unrelated organism to another. Although the technology has not yet been implemented in humans, it is not far off. In the coming decades, scientists will surely develop the technology to insert a gene for faster reflexes and delete genes responsible for heart disease.

Since humans emerged as a species from the animal kingdom, we have steadily developed technology to assert our will against nature, and have bent it appropriately. Dr. Bertrand says that “Humans have never lived within the confines of nature, but this [genetic engineering] is just the next level of manipulation.” Human genetic engineering imposes our will not only upon nature, but also upon humanity itself—a boundary that we may have never before crossed.

The possibility of parents choosing the genetic make-up of their offspring seems to violate the most basic element of humanity. For all of history, humans have been defined, first and foremost, by the genetic traits inherited from their parents. Beyond selecting a mate, parents had no choice in the genetic disposition of their child. The human species has, until now, been at the mercy of random genetic variability, and been able to take solace in the solidarity that such a desultory distribution of traits offers. The social implications of the loss of this solidarity as a result of human genetic engineering, are huge, and will not be fully understood until such a moment arrives. Genetic engineering will force people to look at others as products of concerted decisions made by their parents. Furthermore, the direct role of decisions made by humans in determining the basic construction of other humans brings forth a huge burden of accountability. Today, the responsibility seems too large to carry, but considering the response to similarly radical and revolutionary discoveries throughout history, future generations will likely take it in stride.

If, and when, human genetic engineering does become available, it will likely be economically accessible to only a limited population. Dr. Bertrand points out that human genetic engineering “may create a dichotomy in society—a survival of the wealthiest.” Perhaps a physical stratification of humanity will develop, where the wealthy engineer their children to be smarter, more athletic, and more attractive, leaving the rest of society to be born at the mercy of the same randomness that has produced humanity to this point. At the Future of Human Nature Symposium in 2003, UMass Amherst Professor Lynn Margulis was more bleak, saying, “Such a split would necessarily mark the end of our species.”

Harvard Professor of Political Philosophy Michael Sandel, wrote in his recent book The Case Against Perfection, "There is something appealing, even intoxicating, about a vision of human freedom unfettered by the given…. But that vision of freedom is flawed. It threatens to banish our appreciation of life as a gift, and to leave us with nothing to affirm or behold outside our own will.” Yet regardless of the ethical implications of human genetic engineering, humans will continue their progress towards a better understanding of the laws of nature, even if amending them in route. Human genetic engineering will become a more common reality, and it is unlikely that anything can stop its momentum. Consider President Bush’s recent veto of a Congressional Bill restricting the National Institutes of Health’s distribution of its $25 billion of federal funds to embryonic stem cell research programs—important research institutions like Stanford University are moving forward with private funding for expanded research facilities and embryonic research programs regardless. Science will continue to explore the possibilities of human genetics, and to fill the demand for genetic engineering as means to improve humans—if not in the U.S., somewhere else.

The possibility of humans to have the ability to shape themselves, to play God, is frighteningly appealing to many individuals—and is a power that humans have pursued since our beginning. There is very little, if any, chance that such a power can be stopped. The question is, how will such potential power shape our future? What will our new, genetically engineered world look like? And most importantly, can humanity survive at the mercy of its own hands?

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