9 July 2015
GM Humans
by Lynda Goetz
There have been a lot of items in the news this week, although most of them seem to have been overshadowed by Greece, the prospect of the Budget and the Royal christening – probably in that order. However one of the things which I picked up on in the financial press took me back over twenty years to a conversation with a Singaporean couple on a plane, after a week-long visit to their country. We were discussing genetic manipulation and the effect it might have on the human race. Singapore is a multi-racial community, made up mainly of Chinese, Indians and Malays, the majority of whom, according to a 2006 survey, refer to themselves as ‘Singaporean’. Before Sir Stamford Raffles founded the island as a British trading post and free port in 1819, there were about 1,000 indigenous Malays living there. The current population is approaching four million and most are descendants of immigrants who were attracted by the lack of trade restrictions at a time when the Dutch had many restrictions in place. Over 74% are of Chinese descent, but English is still the official language and the lingua franca. The Singaporeans, for those who have not had much contact with them, tend, on the whole, to be an aspirational and ambitious people.
That little bit of background is relevant, for it does, I think, help to explain the conclusion of the conversation which I still recall to this day. Somewhat intrigued by the way the discussion was going, I was impelled finally to ask whether, if the possibility were there, the couple would prefer to bring up a child who was not entirely their own ‘genetic material’ if that child were guaranteed to be more intelligent and more beautiful than a natural child of their own. Both said they would. As a proud mother of three reasonably attractive (but not stunning) and intelligent (but by no means genius) children, I found this response rather appalling and totally terrifying. I still do.
CRISPR, which stands for ‘clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats’ is a new technique for ‘messing about’ with DNA. It enables scientists to write, edit and generally manipulate the code for life that is DNA. Last November Dr Jennifer Doudna and Dr Emannuelle Charpentier were awarded the 2015 Breakthrough Prize for Life Sciences for ‘harnessing an ancient mechanism of bacterial immunity into a powerful and general technology for editing genomes’. They received $3 million of a total of $36 million which was handed out at a gala dinner attended not only by the founders, including Jack Ma and Mark Zuckerberg, but also by ‘beautiful people’ from the celebrity world of film and entertainment such as Eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch.
The discovery of CRISPR goes back to 1987 when Japanese scientists noticed that some single-cell organisms such as bacteria had an odd DNA sequence and an attached enzyme, the purpose of which they could not explain. That was CRISPR. Further research revealed that CRISPR defended bacteria against viruses. The enzyme ‘opens’ the virus and attaches the virus DNA to the CRISPR, which then stores the virus DNA so that the bacteria can recognise and attack those viruses in the future. What fascinated Dr Doudna and Dr Charpentier was the way the enzyme ‘opened’ the virus DNA and ‘wrote’ it onto the CRISPR DNA. Their award was for learning how to harness the power of CRISPR for human use. That was in 2012, since when entrepreneurs and scientists have been using the technique for all sorts of things from creating high-yield crops to attempts to recreate a woolly mammoth by editing elephant DNA and splicing in mammoth genes. All fascinating, but leaving aside the question of the mammoth, there is, as Sean Keyes says in Penny Sleuth, an elephant in the room. How difficult is it to go from these sorts of experiments to ones involving humans? Well, hardly very difficult at all. So what is there to stop the aspirational Singaporeans or anyone else who so desires and has the financial wherewithal from ‘ordering’ that smarter more attractive baby?
As Sean Keyes points out, the House of Commons has already, by passing the ‘three parent baby’ bill in February this year taken us a step closer. We are at present the only country which allows this technique of implanting the DNA of parents with genetically inherited defects into the cells of a healthy person (i.e the third parent) to enable them to have healthy children via IVF. At present, this is intended only to be used in cases where the parents’ genetic problem would cause a child to have serious health issues, but how soon will this become a request for more radical action? We have already had doctors investigated for allowing ‘terminations’ simply on the grounds of gender – usually amongst families where it is culturally preferable to have boys rather than girls – and it cannot be long before those who want to get on in life and want their children to do the same will start finding ways to ensure that this happens. Once the few have started the trend, how can it be stopped? It will become almost a necessity for everyone else to follow. How could you expect your offspring to compete if they lack the intelligence and the beauty which has become the norm rather than the exception?
Of course, from the point of view of the human race, rather than just the individual or the couple, this must make sense. Why would we not want the human race to be the best it can be? It may be then that this is the next big step rather than the takeover by machines beloved by fiction writers or a move to the world of the TV drama ‘Humans’ where the ‘Synths’ are humanoid androids. May be or may be not. Still,surely it is something we should all be talking about now?
