Genetic Cleansing and the Corruption of Science Through Political Redefinition
Slate's Will Saletan--a favorite of mine even though we often disagree because he is a very good writer and unfailingly honest in his reportage--is onto the story of the baby girl born in the UK who was selected in--as her siblings were destroyed--because she did not have a gene that can cause adult onset breast cancer. From his column "Eugenics Euphemisms:"
It's happy news. But let's take a closer look at the announcement, starting with the test "before conception." This baby was tested as an embryo in a dish. She was one of 11 such embryos made by injecting drugs in the mother to stimulate production of excess eggs, which were then fertilized with the father's sperm. Six of the embryos had the gene for breast cancer. Three more had "other abnormalities." All nine were "discarded." The other two were implanted, and one became this baby. In sum, at least six human embryos were made and then thrown away because they failed a test.Saletan then illustrates how science is being corrupted (my word) via redefining terms to make us feel okay with the way we now instrumentalize nascent human life because, well, we want what we want:
We now call such tests "preconception." This is the next step in our gradual devaluation of embryos. First, we said IVF embryos weren't pregnancies. That's technically correct: Pregnancy begins when the embryo implants in the womb. Then we called early embryos "pre-embryos" so we could dismantle them to get stem cells. That was technically incorrect, but we did it because it made us feel better. Now we're adjusting the word conception. Henceforth, testing of IVF embryos to decide which will live or die is preconception. Don't fret about the six eggs we fertilized, rejected, and flushed in selecting this baby. They were never really conceived. In fact, they weren't embryos. According to Serhal, each was just "an affected cluster of cells."And the slavering media--Saletan being a rare exception--go right along because all of this is part of the coup de culture. (This particular episode mixes utilitarianism and hedonism, by which I mean believing we have the right to fulfill every desire, including both having children and the children we want.)
Saletan also catches the enormity of it all:
"The lasting legacy is the eradication of the transmission of this form of cancer that has blighted these families for generations." Lasting. Legacy. Eradication. Families. Generations. We're no longer talking about protecting an individual. We're talking about cleansing families forever. "We are eliminating the gene from our line," says the happy mother. Serhal agrees: "We are eradicating it from the whole family tree." From the standpoint of efficiency, this is wonderful. But efficiency and collective cleansing are the core principles of eugenics.And what if science discovers other genes that lead eventually to disease--opt them out too? And what of the unintended consequences? Genes we seek to eradicate might play other beneficial roles. Besides, if anyone thinks this human manipulation will be restricted to preventing disease, I have a beautiful orange bridge that spans the Golden Gate that I'd be happy to sell you. Think of all the tolls you will be able to collect.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:16 AM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
My wife underwent genetic testing and counseling for this very mutation. We were fortunate because she did not have the mutation. One thing that was stressed is that not having this mutation simply means that your risk is the same as the general population. My wife's doctor stressed that even without the mutation, the family history still indicates heightened vigilance is a good idea. Only a small number of breast and ovarian cancers can be attributed to this mutation.
All in all - this seems like gross negligence to report that the baby will grow up cancer free.
Jeremy: Good point. Moreover, if you have the gene, it doesn't mean you get cancer.
And this illustrates a good point. Learning about the gene is good. It would permit you to have children tested so that if they are positive aggressive screening is carried out. Or one can choose not to have children.
But to use the test to decide which children are worth having and which not and to try and eugenically alter the species, the consequences of which cannot be known, which undermine the heart of human exceptionalism, is wrong and will lead us to very dark places. As they say about the road to hell--which I mean metaphorially here--being paved with good intentions...
Gattaca should be required viewing (and Brave New World required reading) for anyone involved in this line or work and those writing about it... If nothing else, writing about these "advances" as if they were unqualified goods shows an enormous lack of imagination.
I think the political scientists already sold the one in Brooklyn to a whole bunch of people.
Isn't it the liberals who are always saying why are we doing such and such when there are people starving to death in the world and we don't even have universal health care? Of course this is part of the same scenario as government-run health care...
They aren't bright enough to think about things as complex, as well as common-sense, as that the gene may also have beneficial qualities, they weren't trained to be able to think that way, and they have no incentive to. The more everyone jumps up and down about how wonderful and already or potentially "beneficial" the things they are doing are, the worse it gets.
First we bred other species to specification, and now it's happening to us; yet another example of how, as with animal experimentation, what happens to them ends up happening to us which is why we aren't going to get respect unless we show it to them.
But when breeding show dogs and race horses, they didn't need to do this. They'll do it now, of course.
When the human transcriptome project is completed, and we begin to assemble gene sequences that are associated with desired traits, we will notice that there will be degrees of these traits (one sequence for a particular gene will be slightly better than the next in terms of characteristics and aptitudes of the test subjects whose transcriptomes are studied).
Now geneticists will have a list of diverse alleles for a single gene that controls some characteristic that customers want for their future child.
Well, you could get the good sequence, the better sequence, or this AAA-rated sequence all for the same price! (the technology costs the same for all scenarios). Which one will you choose? The best one of course!
Over time, you are going to create a master race where everyone has the same AAA rated genome. They will look the same, think the same and all have the same personality. They will all be the Best!
Here's an ironic story for you: I personally know a woman whose family had a distressing amount of ovarian cancers. When the genetic tests became available, she rushed to get it done and was greatly relieved that she had dodged the bullet and her daughters were now safe. Unfortunately, her sister-in-law then died of early ovarian cancer and tested positive for the genetic mutation. In fact, one of the woman's daughter's also tested positive for the genetic mutation which she inherited from her father. So I wouldn't bet on a cancer free family tree just yet for that poor girl.
I have to say that if I or my husband were a carrier of sickle cell, or Tay-Sachs, or Huntingdon's, or hemophilia, and there was a way to test the ova or sperm, I'd have done IVF to make only non-carrying embryos and been very relieved about deleting this error from my family tree. There's not, of course, so I probably would have adopted, and deleted it that way.
I agree with you, Wesley, about the slippery slope this would be, taking us somewhere we don't want to go. But if you COULD eliminate some of these things from your offspring, without actually de-selecting any after conception, wouldn't you do it?
Laura: You know, at one time I would have said that was an easy call. Now, with all I am seeing, I am not so sure. There may be a problem with the very concept that we should presume to select our children in that way. I am not talking about law here. I am talking about private ethics. It is beyond the time in my life where that would come up even were there an issue, but today, I think I would tend to not go in that direction.
That is not to say that if there were a gene therapy, for example, that could correct the Huntington's gene, that the correcton should not be done. That would be medical treatment.
But the idea of preselecting has gotten me very queasy, because that's how the whole thing starts.
I agree, Wesley. People of all walks of life are starting to recognize this-for instance, I remember reading an article in either Seventeen or Glamour magazine written by a woman who did IVF because of fertility issues but decided not to have tests done for the brest cancer gene because she had had it herself. Her thought was, and I quote, "if that test had been around when I was an embryo, I would have been thrown in the trash."
This is just another form of putting "quality of life" ahead of life itself, without which quality can't even exist. God forbid anyone should be sick. Everybody wants everything to be perfect for themselves. In a world where people starve to death, people act as if the worst problem in the world is to need to lose weight, and no one pointed out the obscenity of that; God forbid they do the work to lose it; they want surgery and things from the drugstore to take care of it. Well this is liposuction genetics.
I have a family line with no major health concerns (besides some nonfatal liver thing). People on both sides of my family have tended to live, not to a hugely old age, but not to die of anything serious. Now I've married into a line with asthma, a few other conditions and worst of all, Crohns. But I would be happy to have a child with Crohns, because someone DID have that child and they grew up to be my husband. I feel the same holds true for Downs or other genetic disabilities. People who claim disabled people pollute the gene pool and would never have lived in ancient times are a little whacky, because many of these disorders weren't fatal or didn't appear until after childbearing age. In fact there is very ancient evidence of care of the disabled and it is really what makes us human. Why should your children be perfect anyway? Won't it be enough if they're just happy?
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