David Quinn
Advanced gene-editing would lead to life being seen as just one more product rather than a gift, writes David Quinn
Some 20 years ago, Cardinal Desmond Connell, the late archbishop of Dublin, landed himself in very hot water when he gave an address to mark the 30th anniversary of the publication of the papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae.
What landed him in trouble was his suggestion that parents who plan their children may come to regard them not so much as gifts, but as products and therefore could come to love them less. He seemed to be insulting every parent in the country who has used family planning. The uproar lasted a full week.
But I wonder what Cardinal Connell would be thinking if he had lived long enough to read about a new scientific paper which says that so-called ‘designer babies’ might be only two years away as gene-modifying technology continues to improve? Designer babies would be the ultimate in ‘family planning’.
The initial aim of such technology would be to try and ensure that babies are not born with genetic abnormalities, or simply with a susceptibility to illnesses such as cancer and dementia, or cardiovascular disease, said one of the scientists behind the paper.
Other scientists are urging caution because they believe gene modification is still in its infancy.
Defects
Be that as it may, what are we to make of it all from an ethical standpoint? Even now something is being used called ‘preimplantation genetic diagnosis’. This involves producing a number of embryos in the lab and then screening them to ensure only those with no apparent genetic defects are implanted in the woman. The rest are discarded, which is tantamount to abortion. That is a big problem, right there.
The new technology being touted now would mean that instead of discarding a ‘defective’ embryo, it might be possible to fix it, so to speak, before implantation, so it does not have to be discarded. This sounds like an improvement over present practice, but scientists will still be keen to have several embryos to work with and what will happen to the ‘surplus’ ones?
This kind of genetic modification would be therapeutic in nature, that is, its intention would be to heal, although the word ‘therapeutic’ must be used advisedly because so many ‘spare’ embryos would still end up being destroyed.
The second kind of genetic modification would be non-therapeutic in nature. It would be intended to enhance, or at least change an embryo. That is, it would take a perfectly healthy embryo and begin to alter it according to the wishes of its parents. They might want a blue-eyed baby not a brown-eyed one, a boy rather than a girl, or vice versa.
But if gene-editing becomes advanced enough (some scientists doubt it ever will), then parents might be able to ensure that their children are edited in such a way as to make them more intelligent and more athletic. These really will be designer babies.
If this technology ever becomes available, many parents will make use of it because everyone wants their children to rise to their potential, and if they can actually increase that potential before their children are even born by literally modifying them, then some will, and those that do not, may feel guilty for failing their children by not taking part in the ‘genetic arms race’.
Imagine the reaction of that child to the knowledge that their parents genetically-modified them?”
Designer babies are yet another expression of the culture of choice. Advanced gene-editing would give us the power to choose the kind of children we have. They would literally become our products in a way never seen before.
This is far beyond two talented people marrying each other and hoping that their children will be equally talented. Being able to alter a child’s DNA before they are born is a literal refusal to accept a child as gift and a literal moving over to a view that a child is basically our product, a consumer item to be altered according to our will, our choices.
The theologian William May speaks of ‘accepting love’ and ‘transforming love’. Accepting love is willing to accept that a child is who they are. They might not be the way we would ideally want, but we accept them all the same.
Transforming love seeks to bring out the best in your child, to realise their potential.
Both forms of love have excesses. Accepting love can easily turn into a kind of passivity and indulgence in parenting. Transforming love can become a form of bullying and hectoring.
May says parents need to show both kinds of love and find the right kind of balance between them.
He warns: “Accepting love, without transforming love, slides into indulgence and finally neglect. Transforming love, without accepting love, badgers and finally rejects.”
Seeking to genetically enhance our children would be the ultimate kind of transforming love, except that it might not be love at all. The expectations on our genetically-modified children would be even more enormous than they can be even now.
Pressures
Middle-class parents in particular already heap all kinds of pressures on their children, but imagine the pressure on a child who knows that he or she has been ‘enhanced’ even from before birth? And imagine the sense of disappointment in a parent who sees that their child still hasn’t lived up to expectation even after being handed every possible advantage science and upbringing and money can buy?
And imagine also the reaction of that child to the knowledge that their parents genetically-modified them? No previous generation of children would ever have been burdened with that knowledge, or that reality. None would ever before have been deliberately altered by their parents before birth, literally treated as products. Many children would rebel against such a thing, and rightly so.
Designer babies would, therefore, beckon not so much a brave new world, so much as a less human one in which life is not regarded as a gift, but as something to be ordered up. Maybe Cardinal Connell was on to something after all.