Inheritable genetic modification as a science policy issue

For the last 20 years, the field of human gene transfer research has been bounded by two simple lines: the line between using gene-transfer techniques to cure disease or improve the human design, on one hand, and the line between applying gene-transfer techniques to somatic cells or germ-line cells, on the other. The dominant view, received as wisdom in both formal science policies and in the rhetoric of scientists, has been that enhancement applications of gene transfer would be too morally problematic, and germ-line gene transfer (GLGT) would be too risky to prospective offspring, at least until the practice of safe and effective somatic cell gene transfer (SCGT) could be perfected.

Today, both of these lines are being challenged, in unexpected ways. “Enhancement” turns out to be a matter of definition, and the relevant definitions all move the discussion away from objective description and into competing accounts of the values at stake. Inheritable genetic modification (IGM), moreover, can be accomplished without using recombinant DNA gene-transfer techniques, and is thereby escaping scrutiny as “GLGT.”Moreover, even the anticipated modes of both enhancement and IGM have public advocates within the scientific and bioethical communities that would have been very surprising in 1985: mainstream theologians, prominent molecular biologists, distinguished philosophers, and senior bioethicists. In short, the dykes against human genetic engineering are bulging against the tide of the “post-human,” and much of the intellectual establishment on these matters seems to be leaning in the direction of letting them go.