by Hannah Giunta

Created on: May 20, 2008

Fast forward to the year 2112. Jimmy, a high school senior, is class president, a state swimming champion, and a budding scientist. He can swim faster and longer than anyone thought possible 100 years ago, and his intellect surpasses even the smartest people on the planet today. In the laboratory where Jimmy was conceived, scientists made sure his cells contained only the best genes. Jimmy's parents picked the traits they felt were most important for their son. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? Yet, the announcement that scientists at the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center have modified an actual human embryo has raised concerns that children like Jimmy may not be atypical in coming years. The researchers say there is nothing to fear because they used an already genetically-defective embryo that was nonviable. They also did not recover any stem cells from the embryo. However, they did insert genes into human cells. Although this is a long way off from genetically-engineered humans, it is a step forward on this contentious path.

Scientists are currently no where close to creating "designer" babies, but progress in recent years has made certain crude selection procedures available to expectant parents. Doctors at the Fertility Institute in Los Angeles advertise a 100% success rate for pre-implantation gender selection procedures. Doctors are also able to screen potential embryos for a variety of genetic disorders. Most of these procedures seem harmless and even beneficial in cases of severe genetic disorders. But, there is something eerily reminiscent of eugenics in these discussions. Thus, the genetic manipulation of human embryos may lead to practical ways of screening for and treating genetic disorders but must be tightly regulated to prevent abuses.

The debate over human genetic manipulation inevitably leads to discussions about whether or not it is ethical to manipulate human beings. While some conservatives firmly believe that any manipulation is unnatural, medical scientists already attempt to manipulate the body everyday. Antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs, and asthma inhalers all change how the body responds to the environment. The only difference is that the changes they induce are not permanent. Manipulations that protect humans from genetic disorders may prevent years of painful suffering, but there is a fine line between therapeutic treatment and enhancement. In one sense, enhancement devalues human life because it indirectly claims that normal, healthy humans are not "good enough." The abuse of genetic manipulation comes when people begin to enhance themselves and their offspring.

This enhancement has many societal consequences as well. Access to genetic technologies will inevitably become dependent on socioeconomic status. Only the rich will be able to afford these enhancement procedures, so the divide between enhanced and natural individuals may become quite pronounced. Scientists also cannot predict the true evolutionary or environmental consequences of this unnatural selection. Research on screening for and treating genetic disorders should be encouraged, but enhancement research should not be supported.

Genetic engineering is on the brink of a brave new frontier. Advances could provide wonderful therapies or create terrible social consequences. Scientific research can be used to cure people or design people. The choice is ours, but if we make the wrong one, life may be worse than before these technologies were developed.

Learn more about this author, Hannah Giunta.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.