Many bioethicists are calling for a moratorium on the kind of technology used by Chinese researchers to modify human reproductive cells.
Since recent reports that Chinese researchers have modified genes in human embryos in a way that could permit laboratory-induced genetic changes to be passed down to future generations, bioethicists are beginning to speak out about the potential moral implications of this history-making experiment.
The manipulation of human reproductive genes raises such serious ethical concerns that two highly respected scientific journals, Nature and Science, refused to publish the Chinese study, according to a report by The Christian Science Monitor.
“We’re hitting the point where people are asking: Do we really want to have the power not just to select among the choices given to us by nature, but to create entirely new choices of our own specification?” noted Alta Charo, a professor of bioethics and law with the University of Wisconsin at Madison, in the report.
Humanity’s new power to modify inheritable traits raises concerns in many minds that a resurgence in ‘eugenics’—the notion of improving certain human qualities through selective breeding that gained acceptance in the United States during the first part of the 20th century.
The American eugenics movement, of which Charles Davenport was a prominent leader, advocated forced sterilizations of people deemed socially inferior, such as “the feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf; deformed; and dependent,” according to a model law proposed by eugenics enthusiast, Harry Laughlin in 1914. By 1924, some 3,000 people had been involuntarily sterilized, reports the Dolan DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
The eugenics movement was largely discredited in the 1940s after its association with the brutal ethnic cleansing policies of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Some believe human embryo engineering should go forward because of the devastating genetic diseases that could be eradicated. But many scientists say a moratorium on the technology should be enforced until the knotty ethical and safety issues are resolved.
“That type of use of the technology needs to be on hold pending a broader societal discussion of the scientific and ethical issues surrounding such use,” said Jennifer Doudna, a molecular biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, in an email to the Monitor.
