Have you ever wondered if it were possible to have a baby with very specific character traits such as specific height, eye colour, length and colour of hair, the shape of the nose, level of intelligence and to top it up immune to most if not all diseases? Then wonder no more because thanks to a new genome editing technology called CRISPR, a cellular scalpel that can be used to ‘cut’ off and engineer replacement of precise pieces of the human genome thus editing an embryo’s genetic make-up, designing babies is officially a practical reality.
A designer baby, loosely defined, is a baby whose genetic material has been engineered in vitro and/or specially selected in order to either eradicate a particular defect or to ensure that certain pre-determined traits are present. CRISPR/Cas9 allows scientists to target, delete and replace specific genes thereby changing the DNA of a human embryo before implantation, which changes are then passed on to future generations. For instance, one can edit out the gene for say cystic fibrosis or sickle cell, which ensures that the resulting child would not only be disease free but also wouldn’t be able to pass the disease-causing gene to any future offspring. As much as this is a laudable invention, it would no doubt raise some serious ethical and legal concerns, seeing as the non-existence of a universal regulation framework makes the technology susceptible to abuse. Thankfully, gene editing is already specifically banned by law in at least 29 countries and currently, only China and the UK are actively pursuing research on human embryos using the CRISPR technology.
Before the invention of the above technology, the most common way of selecting specific traits in an embryo, which varies from disease control to gender selection, was through the use of Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which involves the testing for specific genetic conditions prior to the implantation of an embryo in the uterine wall. This form of genetic screening was made possible by in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a technique that is used to treat or alleviate infertility which involves manually combining a harvested egg and sperm in a medical laboratory and thereafter transferring the resultant embryo to a woman’s uterus.
Initially, PGD was used as a form of gender selection for medical reasons only. Using this technique, physicians would screen viable embryos of carrier parents for various genetic traits and select embryos of a particular sex which are not predisposed to the specific genetic condition. Since some genetic diseases are sex-linked, parents would choose an embryo of a particular gender to avoid having a child with a particular genetic disease. For example, since males are more often affected by X-linked genetic disorders like red–green colour blindness (it’s not a myth that men can be colour-blind), haemophilia and muscular dystrophy among others, couples using PGD often choose to have only girls. Thus PGD came to be used for three main groups of inherited diseases; single gene mutations such as cystic fibrosis, sex-linked disorders such as haemophilia and chromosomal abnormalities such as down syndrome.
However, in due cause, PGD has repeatedly been used for non-medical and/or social purposes. Couples have been known to select embryos of a particular gender to ‘balance out’ families, or embryos that have traits that are generally not related to the health of the child purely for vanity purposes. This in essence has led to the creation of the so-called ‘designer babies’. As much as one may argue that parents have a right to prenatal autonomy granting them the right to decide the fate and even ‘type’ of their children, this right should come with corresponding responsibilities, both to the resulting child and the society at large. Designing babies may create socio-economic divisions in society seeing as only the wealthy would be able to afford the selection of desirable traits. Also, where do we draw the line on what is acceptable or discriminatory? What happens to the embryos that are deemed unfit and unwanted? Who decides on what embryos should live and which shouldn’t, bearing in mind that our constitution recognizes that life begins at conception?
Clearly, the ability to manipulate embryos before implantation increases the chances of improving the health of the unborn child but these possibilities also present repercussions that if not checked may have negative consequences in the future. Designing babies maybe the future that we all have been craving but the many legal and ethical questions need to be addressed for the ‘future’ to be palatable.