Natural humility urged over designer babies

By SIMON COLLINS


Human beings need a sense of "natural humility" about modern genetic technology, says the director of Britain's renowned Nuffield Council on Bioethics, Dr Sandy Thomas.

"We should be willing to accept children as we find them," she said in Auckland this week.

Dr Thomas, who trained as a plant geneticist under Auckland University Associate Professor Brian Murray, then at London University, is in New Zealand at the invitation of the new Bioethics Council.

Her council, founded in 1991, has taken a broadly permissive line on genetic technology, accepting that genetically modified crops may help to feed more people and that creating new embryos to harvest stem cells may be justified for medical research.

It has also accepted that parents should be able to choose "test-tube babies" who do not have serious genetic illnesses or disabilities.

But the council says it would be morally wrong to select embryos for "normal" traits such as intelligence, aggressiveness or sexual orientation.

"The idea of natural humility is that we should take our children as we find them," Dr Thomas said.

"We shouldn't seek to manipulate them in any way or select them such that we favour some types over another.

"The other factor we bring into this is that there is quite a lot of uncertainty over what sort of pressure the child might feel if it has been selected with the intention of having enhanced behavioural characteristics when those might not, in fact, be realised," she said.

"These things, such as intelligence and anti-social behaviour, are influenced by the environment as well as by genes."

Dr Thomas said the Nuffield expert group which examined the issue accepted that parents already manipulated their children by putting them into private schools, getting them extra music lessons and so on.

"Many people, given the choice of a child who might be more intelligent or with more musical ability, would be very tempted to make those selections," she said.

But such selective breeding could lead to a deeply divided society, with some "more sophisticated people" being able to afford designer babies while others could not.

"Clearly we need to look at this because it may be possible one day to make those kinds of choices," said Dr Thomas.

The Nuffield Council has set up a new group to examine the use of animals in research, focusing on genetically modified animals.

The number of GM animals, especially rats and mice, used in British research has multiplied 10-fold in the past decade.

Dr Thomas said such research could help people to learn about the functions of genes and their role in diseases, but the benefits for humans had to be balanced against the costs to the animals.

"Is it reasonable for scientists to produce any kind of knockout animals [with specific genes "knocked out"] using GM, where we don't know what the effect might be?" she asked.

"Could there be nutrients that might be produced that might involve particular degrees of suffering? Could we be sure?

"In the report, to be completed next year, we will consider these questions."

She said the council supported developing countries that chose to plant GM crops to provide more secure food supplies in bad years.

"Having examined the possible potential of GM crops in terms of food security, we feel that it should be encouraged, provided that public policies are in place to ensure their safe use.

"There is a moral imperative to make GM crop technologies available to those developing countries who want them."

However, Dr Thomas also urged GM companies in rich countries to follow the example of Britain's John Innes Centre and make their crops and medicines available to poor countries cheaply or free.

"If you have a desirable technology, you may decide to license that technology at an advantageous [high] price to licensees in developed countries," she said.

"But you could say to yourself: there is no market for this in poor countries. I cannot license this technology to poor countries because they don't have the means to pay those fees, and on humanitarian grounds I will make that technology available to them to help them build their technology."

Nuffield Bioethics