Q: What is inheritable genetic modification?
A: Inheritable genetic modification means changing the genes in egg or sperm cells, or in the cells of very early embryos, in order to modify the traits possessed by subsequent children.
Q: Shouldn't we allow IGM in order to prevent children from inheriting a serious gene-related disease?
A: Those who wish to avoid passing on a gene-related disease such as Tay-Sachs have many options besides those that require genetic manipulation. These include adoption, sperm or egg donation, and prenatal and preimplantation screening. Even the high-tech procedures among these are simpler and safer than manipulating the genes of embryos, and are far less likely to encourage a techno-eugenic future.
Q: Isn't human IGM inevitable?
A: Not at all. In a democratic society, people have the power to agree on the rules under which they wish to live. Many nations have already banned human germline engineering and reproductive cloning. There is no reason that the United States and the rest of the world cannot do the same.
Q: Could banning the genetic modification of human embryos open the door to banning abortion?
A: No. There is an enormous difference between ending an unwanted pregnancy and manipulating the genetic makeup of a child. In fact, advocates of abortion rights and women's health have a number of special reasons for concern about species-altering technologies.
Q: Don't people have the right to genetically engineer their children if they wish to?
A: Rights don't exist in a vacuum. They are socially negotiated. People don't have the right to sell their children, or to abuse them. Manipulating the genes of an embryo would carry enormous risks for the individual child, for the mother, and for social justice. It would represent an unprecedented act of effective control over a child's life trajectory. Changing a future child's genetic makeup falls outside any existing notion of parental rights.
Q: If we ban IGM, won't that just encourage a black market in "designer babies"?
A: Perhaps, but that's hardly a reason to allow it to become acceptable and widespread. People break laws against other objectionable behaviors—murder, assault, incest—but the world would be a very different place without such laws. Black market abuses can be minimized, or even eliminated, by the spread of a social ethic that affirms the unacceptability of trying to manipulate a child's genetic makeup, and by strong legal penalties.
Q: Does opposition to IGM put us at odds with medical and scientific advances?
A: Just the opposite. Proscribing the most dangerous applications of the new human genetic and reproductive technologies, and setting up effective and accountable regulation of the rest, will build greater support for developing the techniques and applications judged to be beneficial and appropriate.
Q: Isn't IGM banned?
A: IGM is banned in dozens of countries, but not, for example, in the United States. That is why it must be proscibed at the international level, as well as by all individual countries.
More Information
Analysis:
Examine the social, cultural, and economic landscape
Perspectives:
Explore various communities' concerns regarding human genetic
technologies
Policies:
Read about existing and potential regulations
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