by Divya Mohan

Created on: October 11, 2010

Overcoming sterility and "creating" a child free of disease are two very different entities and cannot be addressed together when considering something so ethically divisive as genetic engineering. Genetic engineering has been generating friction ever since its birth - on the one hand its proponents want a perfect human race free of suffering, whilst its opponents fear it would create an underclass of humans unable to afford the technology.

The science that both these debates forget is that genotype alone does not determine what a human being becomes. Environment and upbringing are just as, if not more, important. A child with the most perfect genes can still have stunted growth if it doesn't get proper nutrition and can still be a victim to mental illness if it is not loved within a family. In short, genes alone do not guarantee a child free of diseases. Genes are also no guarantee of happiness to a child or their parent.

Next, genetic disease. Whilst genetic screening can reduce the burden of genetic disease, it still might not eliminate it. Our DNA is not static - it changes with age and imperfections creep in. Genetic screening will not prevent all cancers for example - it may reduce the burden of some, but natural errors in DNA that build up over time cannot be prevented. Also, we can only screen for what we know - new diseases evolve, and there are diseases that are a result of unknown genes or a product of more than one gene.

Creating the expectation that a child will be guaranteed free of genetic diseases is dangerous. Parents will be preconditioned to expect a perfect child. As most of us know, life is full of the unexpected. What happens when the environment takes over? Or a disease filters through that we could not screen for? Or worse...the child succumbs to an illness that's not genetic? An unfair life will suddenly seem much more unfair. It will also leave parents worse equipped to handle disappointment.

Overcoming sterility is a different matter. It can be overcome in many ways, and has a variety of reasons behind it - it could be a result of chemotherapy, congenital, trauma to name a few. Here, using genetic engineering may have unforseeable consequences. I have every sympathy for those that are sterile. However, sterility is sometime's Mother Nature's way of protecting human evolution by preventing passage of faulty genes. For example, aging men and women are more prone to pass on faulty genes as a result of the aging process, and are increasingly likely to be sterile. There are multifactorial diseases where genetic screening may not help prevent diseases from being passed on. Hence overcoming sterility in certain circumstances may be altering our human evolution in an unpredictable and possibly dangerous way, where we might actually increase the burden of disease in the human population.

Genetic screening can equally be a wonderful thing, where it could relieve suffering and prevent heartache. It will remain a very divisive technology, and therefore very individual decisions will have to be made regarding its use. Using it to guarantee a human race free of disease however is overly simplistic and impossible, and hence creating the expectation that we will lead disease-free, happy lives is a dangerous folly. We can never fully know what's around the corner, no matter how hard we try to play God.

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