Christians often justify plant modification as well as negative germline therapies because of their therapeutic potential. But they also tend to denounce positive gene procedures, viewing them as potential instruments in the creation of ungodly beings. As for human cloning (more specifically, reproductive cloning), theologians condemn the procedure for its ability to allow birth to occur outside the mother and traditional family structures, in contravention of God’s design. Some go as far as advocating bans of human reproductive cloning tests altogether, as each failed trial would entail the extinguishment of potentially unique human life. To so precariously manipulate and toy with human life is to denounce its very value, robbing us of our dignity as human beings. Islamic and Jewish thinkers share highly similar views on the subject, whereas Buddhists tend to view genetic engineering far more liberally.

Theological arguments further take into account more secular, utilitarian concerns, for it is possible that genetic engineering may open a Pandora’s Box of dangerous genetic side effects. During an interview with Creation Ministries International, Dr. Dudley Eirich, a now-retired molecular biologist, described the process of genetic bacterial modification. He noted that “[w]hen my bacteria gain the ability to do something, in the process they lose something else,” creating the risk of unintended consequences. By extension, if the modification of bacterial organisms continues to present unpredictable consequences, one may shudder to think what repercussions editing at the human scale could entail. Or perhaps, more perplexingly, this is nature’s way of telling us that genetic editing can never be perfected, that gains in one area will always be compensated by losses elsewhere. What value would genetic engineering have if mother nature insists on remaining the great equalizer?

For some, these high risks offer more than ample reason to ban this technology and all its corresponding research, similar to the “precautionary principle” rationale ethicists have often employed to justify bans of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). On the other hand, bioethicists like the late Marc Lappé insisted that complete bans are unreasonable. An ardent opponent of genetically modified foods himself, Lappé — in his discussion of germline therapies — argued that rejecting these procedures because not all individuals “will be assured of normal protective options or [that] they may be genetically unsuited to future environments is tantamount to saying no one should have children.” [emphasis added].

Of course, natural selection, genetic drift, gene flows and mutations — each a mechanism of evolutionary change — introduce randomness and genetic side effects naturally without human intervention. Nature has blessed (and cursed us) with vestigial organs that serve no function like the appendix, smaller canine and mandible sizes (compared to our more robust Homo and Australopithecine ancestors), and diseases like sickle-cell anemia, which only affect specific pockets of human society.

These evolutionary changes occurred gradually and over hundreds of thousands of years, which is why human-accelerated evolution — capable of jumpstarting mutations and even species-creation — would create its own share of unprecedented risks and hazards. Critics worry that we are ill-prepared to address any ensuing crises this technology may bring, but also that this technology risks inadvertently reducing the survivability of countless individuals, regardless of whether germline or somatic gene therapies were used.

Which raises another important question: what is survivability? Survivability, in fact, is not simply dependent on physical strength, speed, health or intelligence. As British ethicist Jonathan Glover qualified, even the physically frailest, doltish person could survive were they to be blessed with prodigy-level musical talent. In our society, such talents can serve their own special survival function by providing him or her companionship, wealth, food and shelter.

Correspondingly, if a genetic procedure grants someone musical talent at the expense of physical frailty or other side effects, their survivability would not necessarily be impaired. But does this also follow when the resultant musical skills were only mediocre or slightly above par? Surely this is a debatable question — one that incorporates societal factors and leaves survivability at the mercy of subjective judgments.

All of these practical concerns will continue to creep up time and time again as genetic engineering embraces constant refinement. But eventually, the technological costs and risks will begin to falter under the weight of its marketed benefits, leaving us with nothing but the question: is genetically modifying humans moral? While the theological answers appear clear, others may still be skeptical.

2. We do not have an ethical obligation to improve the present generation to ensure better genotypes (complete genetic material) in the future.

This argument alleges that we have no moral right to modify humans because we already reached our biological zenith, the pinnacle of our perfection. In short, it was mankind’s mortality and susceptibility to disease that motivated our species to explore and innovate, to embrace entrepreneurship and creativity amidst desperation and the looming threat of death. Where some see biological limitations and flaws, these proponents see catalysts for civilization, for opportunities of finding meaning in life. In their eyes, immortality and genetic equality would reduce our species to a lazy, uninspired and meaningless shell of its former self.

On the opposing aisle, the transhumanist credo sees human nature as a “work-in-progress, a halfbaked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution.” With its rooted cultural tradition of reverence for human intelligence, health and perfection, Western society allegedly provides us (at a minimum) with the moral justification for improving mankind whenever and however possible, especially through changes in our biology.

3. Genetic engineering is wrong because it changes the “human form.”

Does biological mortality define humanity? If we are to replace our skin, pupils, organs, veins and arteries with 3D-printed stem cell replicas, are we no longer human, let alone the same person — akin to the reconstructed ship of Theseus? Would adding new appendages cross the human threshold? What about new skin colors?

What defines the “human form”?

Does it require the preservation of our genetic ailments, including our vulnerability to diseases? If so, then can we therefore say that vaccinations, which nearly completely eradicated smallpox and polio, have made us less human? This hardly seems plausible.

Or perhaps it is a question of aesthetics? Since the dawn of homo sapiens nearly 315,000 years ago, we have developed smaller teeth, jaws, and brains. For European males alone, their present-day average height of 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 meters) hardly compares to the average 6 feet tall (1.83 meters), burly cro-magnon who walked the continent 40,000 years ago. And yet, anthropologists increasingly identify the cro-magnon as early modern humans rather than a separate and distinct hominid species. Likewise, European males have grown 4 inches taller (10 centimeters) on average since the past 600 years because of nutritional advances, yet no debates arose over whether the human form was compromised. In fact, we seem unperturbed by subtle changes to our anatomy. This may all change with genetic engineering.

Unless mankind can evolve to possess newfound cognitive abilities, dilemmas over the human form will be directed exclusively at positive gene therapies and people with unordinary exterior appearances — like a horrifying callback to 19th century traveling circuses. If these physical alterations become severe enough, then besides the inevitable surge of prejudice and discrimination that would follow, we might also be forced to answer the degrading question of whether we created new species altogether. The ethics at play here will truly depend on whether we view humanity as biologically perfect — a painted canvas deserving of adoration and preservation — or as a work-in-progress for a much grander design.

4. Advances in genetic engineering can quash genetic diversity in general, culling unique communities.

Easily the most popular objection, genetic engineering could create perverse incentives for exploitation, eugenics and genetic culling.

If gene therapies become the exclusive luxury of the opulent because of high costs, then only wealthy families would benefit from increasingly gifted offspring. These children would more easily outcompete children from more impoverished backgrounds, further entrenching the wealth and power these affluent families enjoy. This would heighten inequalities and exacerbate social tensions.

Moreover, if somatic and germline therapies can work on full-grown adults humans, and assuming that these procedures require biomatter from donors, such as organs, then this may create perverse economic incentives — not unlike the fraud and coercion that pervades kidney donations in the black market. Poorer individuals may be coerced into donating valuable organs and biomatter at the cost of their own health, and often in exchange for little to no payment. If these donors are reduced to nothing but funnels for biomatter to the wealthy, then egalitarian concerns may force us to stop this practice in its tracks.

Critics of genetic engineering are especially suspicious that this technology could bring about an era of eugenics. As a concept, eugenics has been employed far and wide to describe slavery, forced sterilizations (e.g., 20th century America), the one child policy in China, and even the abortion of fetuses with down syndrome. The looming fear is that families will choose enhancing (not therapeutic) modifications that society deems fashionable or advantageous. This may lead to an explosion of blue-eyed children, for instance; or more alarmingly, it could pressure non-white couples to “design” lighter-skinned children in the hopes that these kids could live a seemingly more successful life without fear and prejudice. Beyond the obvious racial and ethnic dangers, genetic engineering ultimately risks quashing all semblance of human diversity.

Take the more innocuous negative gene therapies. Suppose families opted to eliminate all genetic traces of down syndrome and dwarfism from their embryos. Further suppose that these procedures were widely advertised, successful and accessible to the general public thanks to private donations.What would happen to existing dwarf and down syndrome communities? Would they not fall under risk of extinction? Would this not raise concerns of ableism, that we are treating these individuals’ lives as qualititatively inferior?

Some may endeavor, as certain ethicists have done, to evoke the doctrine of double effect, that if one performs a morally good act that has a morally bad side-effect, insofar as they did not intend the bad result, the performance of that morally good act was ethically appropriate. Essentially, the intended goal of curing diseases and elevating human potential beyond its biological limitations outweigh the unexpected or foreseeable loss of these communities. But is this a line we as a society are truly willing to cross?

And should we choose to march into this great unknown, then how will we avoid modifying ourselves into an early grave? If countless families begin to outcompete each other by “designing” the most physically gifted athlete, then at what point would this ceaseless back-and-forth produce humans with irreversible health complications? Once our hubris has birthed whole cities of 10 feet tall (3.04 meters) superhumans, how would we prevent any heightened risk of cancer, heart failure or bone disease that may arise, reducing their life expectancy by decades? What genetic ailments would we create for future offspring, including those conceived through interbreeding between these exceptionally tall humans and the general populace? Would the human species even survive if our tinkering creates new diseases or renders the Earth’s climate toxic for our bodies?

5. Procedures for “designer babies” would commodify infants, thus constituting exploitation.

What happens when children are “wanted for their specifications, [and] not loved for what they are?” Once the seemingly beautiful randomness of human birthing is replaced by gene buffets, would we have stripped the process of its humanity? Can we make a similar argument for surrogacy or three-Parent in vitro fertilisation (I.V.F.) which have already deviated from the traditional norm of two parents, where the mother carries her child from conception to birth? Have we already crossed this “human” line, or are our fears reserved only for the nightmarish hatcheries of the Brave New World, where all of mankind is bred and molded in pods, outside of any “obscene” family structure?

And if children are wanted not for their own sake but for the biological gifts that gene editing provides, then have we not reduced the preciousness of human life into a mere commodity? Although U.S. law and markets for life insurance show that life is not truly priceless in society’s eye, perhaps it can be argued that children are the exception? Perhaps treating children as commodities in effect exploits them, depriving them of their individual right to consent to these unnatural changes to their bodies. Could this be said about all germline procedures as well?

Or maybe these concerns are outweighed by the ensuing economic growth these genetic businesses would generate, on top of parents’ newfound freedom to bring more healthy children into the world? Even philosophers like Princeton University’s Peter Singer question the commodification argument. He intuits that for people to support its rationale, they must either object to the use of prenatal diagnosis, which contributes to abortions — an act that allegedly also treats children as commodities — or they must finally decide when to stop expanding this technology, instead of lamenting against a currently non-existent worst case scenario.

Photo by jsc2010e089924 / CC BY

6. If the fusion of human and animal DNA creates beings possessing human-like intelligence or sentience, what special protections and rights should they have?

With animal cloning making frequent news headlines, it hardly seems a stretch of the imagination to foresee human-animal hybrids and sentient animals in the distant future. In fact, this future may be closer than we suspect; since as early as 2003, scientists have already dabbled in human-animal hybridization by cloning human-cow and human-rabbit embryos. Whether such research suggests a future of human-speaking dogs in the vein of Pixar’s Dug, or anthropomorphic, rationally-thinking rabbits remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that our ethical understandings of sentience and humanity will be irresistibly tested the further down this rabbit hole we go.

Likewise, once these sentient beings take in the first breath of life, how would we integrate them into our society? Would they be quarantined to ghettos like the extraterrestrial “prawns” of the film District 9? Would they be denied their humanity and freedom solely on account of their artificial — synthetic — design, or because of the threat and competition they may pose to our species? Or perhaps, we would find harmony with these beings, creating a cosmopolitan paradise for all sentient creatures? Is it even possible to prepare for such an otherworldly scenario?

7. Patentability: can you claim an exclusive legal right to your DNA?

In legal terms, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court already settled this question. In its June 13, 2013 decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc, the Court unanimously held that “[a] naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated.” Yet there was one caveat.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas clarified that complementary DNA (cDNA), that being DNA that is “synthesized, or manufactured from an mRNA or messenger RNA template,” was patent eligible because it is “not naturally occurring.” The Court abstained from commenting on the “scientific alteration of the genetic code,” opening up the possibility that cDNA, which is often used in gene editing, can lead to the creation of cDNA-related patents for “designer baby” and reproductive cloning procedures. At least, that would have been the risk had the legislature not already provided an answer two years prior.

In 2011, Congress passed the America Invents Act, considered by many as the most significant change to the U.S. patent system since 1952. Of relevance to us, section 33(a) of the Act expressly stated that “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law, no patent may issue on a claim directed to or encompassing a human organism.” This technically bans the patenting of any designer baby and reproductive human cloning procedure. Granted, its ambiguous wording and failure to distinguish between natural and synthetic materials in the design of said organisms has raised some worries in the academic community, but scholars like Amanda Russo are confident that federal courts are well-equipped to enforce the statute’s plain meaning in order to avoid the patenting of entire human organisms.

But suppose federal courts were not prepared. If the law provided no answers, then what would our morals dictate? If each and every life is unique, then patenting an individual’s entire genome might seem permissible, especially if “the holder of a DNA patent does not own the gene sequence,” but “simply has the right, for a limited period of time, to prevent others from using it,” as John Barton, a professor of law at Stanford University, argues (as paraphrased by Miriam Schulman). Or perhaps, as with designer babies, patents would spark concerns over commodification. Miriam Schulman, the director of communications for the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, elaborates more on this topic, as well as concerns that patent restrictions could stymie research on therapeutic procedures, reducing the accessibility — both in price and variety — of potentially life-saving genetic therapies in the future. Policy concerns like these form the next chapter of the genetic engineering debate.

The Regulatory Debate

When picturing a world of genetic engineering, which image comes to mind: genetic supermarkets, corporate conglomerates or government panels? Now which option, however ominous-sounding, would best promote the mutual interests of health, sociopolitical stability, “human survival” and research — so that this technology could be refined at minimal cost to scientists and consumers alike?

Free market advocates praise the genetic supermarket, a sparsely regulated system where humans can shop for therapies freely and without the spectre of government. The premise is simple: “No individual, group of individuals or institutions can legitimately claim the right or authority to make decisions on behalf of the rest of the species alive today or for future generations.” This, of course, has its caveats, as even its most vocal adherents admit that a laissez-faire path is far too dangerous.

Without adequate preventative measures, uninformed and unbridled consumers could abuse certain genetic procedures and cause irreparable harm to the human species. Speaking on designer babies alone, scholars Elizabeth Landes and Richard Posner suggest that “so long as the market for eugenically bred babies does not extend beyond infertile couples and those with serious genetic disorders, the impact of a free baby market on the genetic composition and distribution of the human race at large would be small.” Though would such limitations be in themselves sufficient, or should these restrictions more broadly encompass specific kinds of research and controversial procedures like positive and germline therapies as well?

On the economic front, a market system would provide several unique benefits. First, competition and philanthropy would thrive, reducing the price of these genetic therapies while providing a more diverse range of genetic procedures. This would make them far more affordable for middle and lower class citizens, quelling concerns that only the wealthy would capitalize on the benefits of genetically gifted children. A free market would also disincentivize Americans from traveling abroad to purchase cheaper, less regulated genetic alternatives, reducing risks to their own health while making it far less profitable for foreign countries and companies to exploit their own citizens to provide those services.

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Alternatively, critics of free markets may opt for a more regulatory route — one of empaneled boards of scientific and medical experts. Like the three U.S. federal executive agencies that currently regulate genetically-modified crops, these institutions would design quotas and other limitations to ensure the safe use of this technology. These regulatory powers could allow for bans of positive and germline therapies, limitations on research, and licensing requirements for genetic clinics — powers critics insist would be abused to promote government-sanctioned eugenics. To that point, such decisions need not necessarily fall within the exclusive domain of anonymous experts since the legislature could always implement oversight controls. Governments may even canvass their own citizens through focus groups to integrate the democratic will, similar to Canada’s successful 2001 Romanow Commission which helped reform Canadian healthcare policy.

Of course, regulations further impose questions of affordability and inequality since licensing and other statutory requirements could stifle competition, elevating research and manufacturing costs and therefore make genetic therapies exorbitantly expensive for the non-wealthy. Recognizing the sociopolitical dangers this could present, professors Maxwell Mehlman and Jeffrey Botkin, authors of the 1998 book, Access to the Genome: The Challenge to Equality, proposed a creative solution. By collecting special excise taxes from wealthy users of genetic services, the government could implement a lottery system, granting each and every citizen an equal chance to win upper-class quality genetic enhancements for free. Naturally, whether this and other proposals are superior to a free market approach remain subjects of ongoing debate.

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But domestic policy aside, it is international law where the most contentious legal and economic challenges to genetic engineering will take place. For context, consider GMO crops, which are legal in the U.S. and banned in several European and most African nations, including Germany and France. These crops can easily be stored, transported and discarded to prevent international fallout after a dispute; but human life is not so malleable. So if one country banned genetic modification and another did not, what legal and moral implications would arise if the former country — seeking to avoid dangerous genetic side effects via breeding — banned all entry of genetically modified persons to their country? How would we distinguish this from, say, Iceland’s importation ban on horses, which exists to prevent the spread of foreign equine diseases to its domestic horse population?

What problems would arise once genetically-modified individuals begin to openly defy these bans by migrating and breeding with the general population of these restrictive countries? Would this be a considered an actionable offense against the individual’s native country according to international norms and standards? Similarly, should there be international standards in place to prevent unusually dangerous genetic procedures from being researched and distributed? All these ambiguities may be resolved through multi-party treaties or political commitments, but if the recent Paris Agreement on climate change was any indication, reaching consensus on these issues may be especially difficult to achieve.

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And like most difficult debates, it is one that will eventually demand a practical solution, for the dawn of a new era is upon us — one that may free us from the shackles of mortality and frail exteriors. Or perhaps, the illusion of ascension may bring about our own self-destruction should we use this great power irresponsibly. One way or another, our choices will not only shape our future as individuals, but as a species, for is such evolution worth sacrificing our familiar, intuitive notions of humanity; or should we hold dear to what we already have, to always cherish and remember that it was our frail human forms that created awe-inspiring marvels and civilizations?