We need broad community conversation on issues beyond safety for another reason, too. What people choose to do on their own can change the collective, even when those changes were not intended for the population as a whole.
Many of the choices coming our way will be ones that should rightly reside with prospective parents. Human germ-line genome editing is the quintessential example of a technology that will have both personal and collective impacts, affecting our shared environment. There are two different categories of gene therapies: germline therapy and somatic therapy. We could also inadvertently set up what some commentators have called a “genetic arms race,” in which parental attempts to give children an advantage just leave everyone competing at ever higher levels of whatever trait is being sought. More recently Denis Rebrikov, a Russian scientist, announced his intention to edit a human embryo and implant it in a woman, allowing it to develop. Vigorous community discussion of the values at stake is necessary for truly informed personal decision-making. The changes made in these somatic (or body) cells would be permanent but would only affect the person treated.
Scientists are developing gene therapies - treatments involving genome editing - to prevent and treat diseases in humans. There are two distinct ways gene editing might be used in humans. Discover world-changing science. When that day comes, we may want to make permanent heritable changes to the human species to eradicate otherwise intractable diseases. For a very long time, the scientific and bioethical consensus was that we must not do human germ-line modifications—that we should not change gametes and embryos in ways that would be permanent, affecting all future generations. So why not edit out the genes that increase the odds of it occurring? Brown and Majid Ahmadi, 3 hours ago — Benjamin Storrow and E&E News, 3 hours ago — Elizabeth Gibney and Nature magazine, 5 hours ago — Youyou Zhou and Gary Stix. Surely such control is a long way off, but we are now charting a path toward human enhancement that might ultimately reduce variation in the species or, over a long period of time, lead to subspeciation. Chinese scientist He Jiankui surprised the scientific community and the world when he announced in November 2018 that he had genetically modified two embryos and then allowed them to develop into babies. We should, however, enter this discussion with eyes wide open, considering each application on its own merits and anticipating a wide range of issues that go well beyond safety. Because there are still many unresolved issues, including so-called off-target results, partial edits and other problems, basic bench gene-editing research can go on, so long as embryos are not allowed to develop.
Genome editing tools have the potential to help treat diseases with a genomic basis, like cystic fibrosis and diabetes.
Indeed, transhumanists advocate exactly that result—a melding of new biological and synthetic powers that will essentially change the very nature of our species. With so many different views that are seemingly impossible to reconcile, it will be easier to focus only on safety, which is the bare minimum that just about everyone can agree on.
These renegade scientists have prompted what STAT News called a “do-over” by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the U.K.’s Royal Society. Many of these issues are explored in Human Flourishing in an Age of Gene Editing, which will be published by Oxford University Press on August 28, 2019. But even when decisions are personal and private, they should be well informed, which is why we need far more ways to engage the public in conversations about germ-line genome editing. Not only that, he believed he had acted in accordance with guidelines offered by a 2017 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The temptation to use these technologies to “enhance” ourselves or our children, or to edit out undesirable traits, will be enormous. Both the international commission and the WHO’s committee promise to review a wide range of social and ethical issues, well beyond safety. But we avoid the larger, harder conversation at our grandchildren’s peril. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners.
In addition, the World Health Organization has formed an Expert Advisory Committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing. In contrast, somatic modifications, which affect only the person in whom the edits are made, have been mainly uncontroversial. One way this is already being done is by editing a person’s immune cells to help them better fight cancer. Last week these organizations convened the first of a series of important meetings of their jointly sponsored International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing. There is a growing sense of inevitability that we will eventually do human germ-line modification and that our only obligation is to wait until it is safe. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at, It's Time to Get Serious about Tick-Borne Diseases, Abortion Bans Based on So-Called "Science" Are Fraudulent, International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing, Expert Advisory Committee on Developing Global Standards for Governance and Oversight of Human Genome Editing, By Nicole M. Baran, Gretchen Goldman and Jane Zelikova on August 21, 2019. We need forums and strategies for discussing beyond-safety implications: books for scholars, policy makers and interested members of the public that will anticipate the wide array of social, economic and ethical implications of enhancement: educational experiences for students and their teachers; literature and films that do not sensationalize but help us consider the social and ethical complexity of our newfound powers; deliberative polling and other forms of democratic deliberation; and multiple channels of communication between experts and nonexperts. CRISPR works well enough in the lab, in a dish of human cells, but as with any technology, there are glitches.
Moreover we could craft our progeny on the basis of popular but suspect norms such as homophobia or certain physical features. Gene therapy , or somatic gene editing, changes the DNA in cells of an adult or child to treat disease, or even to try to enhance that person in some way. © 2020 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc. Support our award-winning coverage of advances in science & technology.
These groups are aiming to be much clearer this time around and to establish a governance framework so that scientists such as He and Rebrikov will understand and respect the guidelines that their peers have established: human germ-line modification is not yet safe.
Will children who have been edited to have greater musical talent or athletic prowess feel obliged to fulfill their parents’ dreams even more than children usually do?
How, for example, might the ability to select the features we want in our children affect the relationship between parents and children and the virtues we want to see in our communities?
Subscribers get more award-winning coverage of advances in science & technology. Although we do not yet know the genetic predictors of many conditions, as we learn more, the temptation to use gene-editing technologies to “enhance” ourselves will be extraordinary—and particularly problematic if we gain the ability to reduce the likelihood of highly stigmatized traits, such as homosexuality, or to edit in highly desirable ones, such as tallness or athleticism. Commentators such as Michael Sandel of Harvard University have warned that control over the genomes of our children could lead to a sense of “hyperagency,” whereby we would lose the sense of children as gifts to be nurtured as they come to us and rather see them as objects we have designed. Their meeting last week got off to a great start, with calls for more scientific transparency and renewed commitments to generating a global framework to establish parameters for this research. In a pluralistic society, it can be frightening to open the Pandora’s box of discussion about deeply held values. But that border between germ-line and somatic genome modification is blurring; the zeitgeist feels different.
But it will take sustained courage to address all of the implications of this technology. I hope they stick to that intention. Even as these bodies regroup to produce clearer guidance, however, I sense a shift in the debate. Many parents will, perhaps legitimately, assert that they are not prejudiced against homosexuality, or some other way of being, but just think that it makes life harder.
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