GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: A pro-life case for altering the genome

BioEdge: A pro-life case for altering the genome

A pro-life case for altering the genome

by Michael Cook | 30 Apr 2016 |

Although many obstacles remain, genetic engineering is much closer to becoming a reality with the rapid development of CRISPR. On the horizon are both human enhancement and cures for genetic diseases. But one significant political obstacle is fear of altering the human genome. It is not just pro-life activists who object; a number of scientists also fret about the commercialisation of human life.

However, things could change. In the latest issue of The New Atlantis, Brendan Foht presents a “A Pro-Life Case for Therapeutic Gene Editing”. He acknowledges the risks of altering a person’s natural endowment, but points out that while most of the time somatic gene editing will be preferable to altering the genes of embryos, there will always be exceptions:

most forms of Tay-Sachs disease, for instance, begin to manifest early in pregnancy and are generally fatal for the child before it reaches the age of five. In such cases, correcting mutations after a baby is born may not be an effective way to reverse developmental problems caused by the mutations. Editing the genes of embryos would presumably be more effective, though also more dangerous, than postnatal gene-editing, since it would affect a much greater proportion of the body’s cells and will do so from an earlier stage of development.

Some scientists contend that using pre-natal genetic diagnosis with IVF would be preferable to using gene therapy on an embryo. However, Foht points out that there are substantial ethical issues with this “conservative” approach:

preferring PGD over genetic therapy represents a troubling attitude toward people with disease and disability. In selecting embryos to destroy (or fetuses to abort), doctors and parents are making a judgment that the life of someone affected by a disease or disability is not worth living — implying that those individuals affected by the disease would have been better off if they had never been born.

To put it another way, the judgment implicit in using gene editing to modify a disease-causing gene is that it is better to live without that disease than to live with it; the judgment implicit in using prenatal abortion is that it is better to die than to live with the disease. When both are options, preferring selective destruction over gene editing amounts to a preference for killing over curing.

This is an approach which is sure to provoke intense controversy in the pro-life camp. Stay tuned.

- See more at: http://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/a-pro-life-case-for-altering-the-genome/11853#sthash.bSNg2uNl.dpuf

Although it has been called the world’s most dangerous idea, transhumanism probably provokes more ridicule than fear. Uploading one’s brain onto the internet or talk of thousand-year life spans seems to defy common sense.

Nonetheless, my theory is that transhumanism is the logical outcome of a lot of contemporary bioethical theory. So developments in transhumanism are worth paying attention to.

The biggest story at the moment is the quixotic campaign of the head of the Transhumanist Party, Zoltan Istvan, for president of the United States. He is a philosophy and religious studies graduate of Columbia University and has worked as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel.

Mr Istvan has been running a blog on the Huffington Post for a while about his campaign which aims to make the platform of his party more plausible. In the latest post he defines transhumanism as “the radical field of science that aims to turn humans into, for lack of a better word, gods”. So while transhumanism is resolutely atheistic, it has religious aspirations.

And unlike Richard Dawkins and other militant atheists, Istvan argues that our responsibility is to transcend evolution. He writes: “the human body is a mediocre vessel for our actual possibilities in this material universe. Our biology severely limits us. As a species we are far from finished and therefore unacceptable… Biology is for beasts, not future transhumanists.”

It’s a curious development. While many prominent scientific thinkers want to abolish God and treat man as one beast amongst many, transhumanists want to abolish evolution and recreate God (or gods).