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I am occasionally asked how I manage to scrape up ideas
for a column every week. In truth I could pound out 52 pieces a
year on my dog if I could find a newspaper to print them.
My daughter would be quick to point out that it's not my
dog, though we'll see about that when she leaves for college. In
any event the real challenge is winnowing the week's inspirations
down to one, a single theme that will ring first with me, then
readers. Sometimes this is a challenge, on other occasions I launch
straight to the keyboard.
This time I launched. Researchers at the Reproductive
Genetics Institute of Chicago revealed late last month that they had
created what some are calling a "designer baby," or at least
something dangerously close. The child, who was not identified, was
18 months old at the time of the announcement.
The procedure that led to the birth, preimplantation
genetic diagnosis, or PGD, is not new. According to the
Journal of the American Medical Association, the doctors in this case created
15 embryos then screened them for desired genetic traits. Four were
selected and implanted; the fate of the others was not mentioned.
It never is.
PGD is generally used to eliminate embryos with serious
inherited conditions such as sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis,
though it has also been used to create babies as tissue donors for
family members; I wrote of just such a situation involving the
Reproductive Genetics Institute in 2000. The group's director
predicts 1,000 babies selected by PGD will be born this year.
The parents chose the procedure because of the
prevalence of early-onset Alzheimer's disease in the mother's
family, a dominant genetic trait she had been found to carry. The
woman was 30 at the birth of her daughter and still shows no
symptoms,
though her sister is in assisted living at age 38 and
cannot care for her children. The mother's brother first showed
symptoms at 35, while their father died at 42 after displaying
psychological problems and memory loss.
So this is no designer baby. These folks aren't looking
for blond hair, Harvard-bait SAT scores, or a three-minute mile.
They just want a healthy child.
What's the big deal? There have been a few ethical
questions, primarily around the designer baby issue and the fact
that for all practical purposes the child's mother will be gone
before she turns 10. As my own father died when I was 8, I think it
would be a lousy thing to do by choice. Still, if it were that
simple I would argue it is their decision to make. The kid will
survive.
However most ethicists seem to have missed the central
questions. The traits usually targeted by PGD effect the newborn
almost immediately. In this case, early-onset Alzheimer's would
likely have struck somewhere between the ages of 30 and 40. Why
stop there?
I guarantee it won't. We'll soon hear of embryos
destroyed for conditions that hit at age 50, then 60, then 70, then
ever. Who wants their child prone to heart disease, or stroke, or
cancer? What about diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and garden
variety late-onset Alzheimer's? Everyone dies of something; the
list is endless.
But the greatest moral lapse occurred when it became
acceptable to create human embryos by the dozen and cull them
according to someone's idea of quality control. However well
intended, this is nothing less than eugenics, a notion most would
have found horrifying not so long ago.
I share the desire to improve the human condition. Yet
even if the casual creation and destruction of human life could
accomplish that, it will be at the cost of our humanity.
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