



Ethical minefield of parents in control


Neil McMahon

Designer babies - their gender, personality traits and skin colour chosen by genetic testing - are a looming reality. But are we ready to confront this minefield of ethics?



You are going to be a parent. Modern science is your guide, IVF your chosen method, the aim being multiple foetuses for maximum choice. Clutching the Book of Life - as the map of the human genome is known - you ponder your ideal child. There's Foetus A, which even as a mere mass of cells already has a bad report card: a genetic disposition to criminal behaviour. Select or dispatch? What of Foetus B? It has an excellent chance of being born with perfect pitch, but the gene map also points to depression. Move along. Foetus C? Gene markers for exceptional athleticism, and high marks for brain power to boot.

This is an exaggerated scenario of course, but it is not science fiction, and nor is it too far removed from the kinds of debates we face as we confront the choices scientific advances are delivering: gender selection of human beings, with selection for birth based on screening for not just major diseases or a preference for a particular gender, but also for personality traits and other skills or weaknesses, from a long-distance running ability to a dangerously short fuse.

For Oxford-based expatriate philosopher and ethicist Julian Savulescu, this is a debate whose time has come, and one in which he is a fierce advocate for letting science speak for itself and leaving individuals to decide for themselves how they use the information.

"[We're] starting to identify things associated with personality and with cognitive capacities," he says. "Everyone has different limitations and capacities and it's pretty obvious that a lot of that, at least some of it, we are born with. And if we're born with it, we can influence it. And that's the point of the argument: that we should make decisions over that, rather than leaving it to nature to decide."

The professor will this week deliver a speech on genetic selection at LaTrobe University, where he carries the title of Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor. Savulescu says he will call for Australians to begin a debate on laws governing the issue, which are determined at state level. (The federal government's human genetics advisory committee offers national guidelines. It is legal to test only for certain diseases. Tests for personality traits are banned.)

Savulescu says local laws are too conservative, more so than in the US but in keeping with European attitudes. He warns that one reason for Australians to focus on how to deal with genetic selection is China's ambitions. "China is investing hundreds of millions of dollars looking for the genes that are associated with intelligence and they're going to be doing this sort of testing in the future,'' he says. ''There won't be any of the sort of constraints that we have in Australia and Europe."

Savulescu describes what sounds like a relatively benign discovery: that singers with perfect pitch may have a musical marker on their personal genetic map. He also details what he calls compelling cases that already exist for genetic influence over behaviours such as "poor impulse control".

Of this gene and its effects, he says the science is "robust" enough to warrant offering the genetic test now. ''These are the sorts of things people should be told [about] and make decisions over."

In a discussion built on more confronting scenarios - assuming the discovery of a gay gene, for example, or of genetic signposts responsible for different racial traits - Savulescu is adamant the rights of the individual to choose must be paramount.

"If people who are fundamentalist Christians want to have a child who isn't disposed to being gay, then they should be free to do that. They're not harming the child. They're selecting between different children that they could otherwise naturally have had.''

On the race question, he says a mixed-race couple, for example, should be free to favour or reject racial characteristics such as a dominant skin colour. "Once you get more and more information about the genetic basis of different racial characteristics, you'll of course be able to select to have more or less of that trait. So if you've got a mixed-race couple … you will be able to select embryos out more or less [for] one of those that you want.

''In a sexist society they'll select boys. The problem there is that it's the racism or sexism in society that should be corrected. Couples shouldn't have their reproductive liberty basically controlled in order to engineer a certain society."

Savulescu knows exactly the standard reaction to these bold and blunt views, having already stirred up debate in Britain.

"People immediately say, 'that's what the Nazis did and that's eugenics'. It is indeed eugenics but so is testing for Down syndrome or cystic fibrosis or any disease. That's also eugenics."

He says religious beliefs - or, for some, a "pseudo-religious morality" - are behind much of the criticism and are most to blame for conservative laws. He says he respects people's right to practise whatever faith they wish, but not to impose it on others.

"I think the debate that needs to happen, particularly in Australia now they have Tony Abbott, is to put religion in its place. The place for religion … is completely in the home.''

Victoria Palmer, an ethicist and research fellow at Melbourne University, says advocates such as Savulescu come to the debate with an absolutist view that "choice and autonomy" trump all, that "people have the information to decide, and therefore it's ethical to make things available".

"It really overlooks questions of justice and benefit," she says. "And then there are questions of the benefits to society, in terms of designer babies or even of predictive testing for depression and other mental illnesses. It can lead to the idea that some lives are more worth living than others, or that some conditions have stigma and shame associated with them. It creates divisions."

Kate Dunlop of the NSW government's Centre for Genetics Education concurs. "I think most people have concerns about allowing people to choose non-health related traits for their baby and I think our focus is that it's important that benefits outweigh harm in implementing any of these new technologies," she says.

11 comments so far

  • I remember discussing this issue when I did genetics in university in the 1990's. It has been portrayed on television and in movies but usually in a bad way. Unfortunately the argument is a mute point as it is likely to happen no matter what people think. The only way to stop this is an outright ban on the activity. That is not going happen, and even if it does people will travel to where it is allowed.
    It is a brave new world. Bring on the man who can run the 8 second 100m.

    Date and time
    September 14, 2013, 4:05PM
    • I'd rather watch a woman run a three minute mile.

      Date and time
      September 14, 2013, 4:25PM
    • I believe you mean, 'moot point'

      Cats fan in Melbourne
      Date and time
      September 14, 2013, 9:04PM
    • Yep I am all for it. Google Glass, designer babies, robot bees, drones I love it! It's the 21 century.

      Date and time
      September 14, 2013, 9:49PM
  • The fact is, the medical profession has to take full responsibility.

    I sometimes wonder about people who have late term abortions because of gender, and I think it will haunt them, later on.

    I think they'll regret it, at some level. I don't know, emotionally, maybe even spiritually.

    Or poeple who chose an embryo that turns out to have severe life long disabilities.

    The courts should look at it.The doctors are the ones doing it, they should be held fully responsible for any trauma or grief experienced afterwards, regardless of "what the patient thought they wanted at the time".

    Doctors are the ones implementing these technologies, they should have a say in whether it's ethical.

    We're human beings, not products, or accessories.

    Date and time
    September 14, 2013, 4:26PM
    • Who says doctors don't have a say? Going to the doctor is not like going to the supermarket - you don't just pick your choice off the shelf, and if your doctor does just roll over to your requests, then I suggest getting another one.

      David Croaker
      Date and time
      September 14, 2013, 9:31PM
  • David (comment 1) is quite right, this will happen whether we (as individuals) want it to or not. They already abort in some parts of the world based on sex. Bring on more blonde and red haired babies. A dying breed!

    Robert J
    Date and time
    September 14, 2013, 6:26PM
    • if, i may, say, a sound and balanced, common-sense approach, from victoria, and kate; i think it is better, to focus, on the centre of the matter, there, the common-ground, can, be found.

      hiding, in fear?; expressed, in anger?.
      Date and time
      September 14, 2013, 6:31PM
      • This just reminds me so much of the movie gattica, to the point where no one will just decide to have a baby they will go to a doctor and eliminate each trait they don't like to get the perfect baby rather than rely on what the body will produce.

        It's sad to think that it will more than likely become like this where everyone conforms to society and just goes along with it

        Date and time
        September 14, 2013, 7:15PM
        • We only have to look to China to see the consequences of human intervention in genetic engineering. There are now literally millions of Chinese men who will never marry because of the infanticide of girls to fulfil the rampant desire to have boy children. This has ongoing consequences never dreamed of when the one child policy was first implemented. So if people are able to make such wide ranging decisions about what traits they want their children to have I urge the human race to BEWARE!

          Cats fan in Melbourne
          Date and time
          September 14, 2013, 9:09PM

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