GM babies with 3 or 4 parents
Calum MacKellar
Should scientists be allowed to create genetically modified children who have three – or even four – parents? The Government wants to let scientists go ahead.
The Guardian has warned that lifting a ban on creating gene-edited humans could have dangerous and unethical ramifications.
Responding to polling suggesting a growing public appetite for the controversial technology, and recent discoveries in the laboratory, the newspaper countered that human germline editing should not be seen as a “fait accompli“.
A recent survey by lobby group Progress Educational Trust (PET) found that 52 per cent of respondents in the UK “supported a use of genome editing that is not currently permitted”, while activist researchers are pushing for a change in the law to allow its use in the eradication of heredity conditions.
Designer babies
In its editorial, the Guardian noted: “Safety concerns, rather than any larger ethical ones, form the basis of most laws against gene editing – making them less ironclad than they initially appear.”
Citing bioethicist R Alta Charo, it warned that “each new technological advance chips away at objections over safety, forcing us toward more fundamental questions on whether this technology should be used at all, and if so in what situations”.
The newspaper questioned the public’s “newfound willingness to tinker with the very stuff of life” and feared that, if legalised, the technology would not only be used to treat rare medical cases but to match calls from prospective parents for “on-demand genetic designs”.
It concluded: “Human germline editing should remain banned for the time being – that is clear on the grounds of safety alone. But that argument may not always hold, and we can’t rely on it for ever. It’s time to have the conversation about what happens next.”