Socio-ethics of genetic engineering

SIGNIFICANCE: New technologies for manipulating the genetic makeup of living organisms raise serious questions about the social desirability of controlling genes and the moral right of humans to redesign living beings.

Genetic Engineering as a Social and Ethical Problem

English author Mary Shelley’s 1818 horror novel Frankenstein, about a scientist who succeeds in bringing a creature to life, expressed anxiety about the possibility of human control over the basic mysteries of existence. The novel’s continuing popularity and the many films and other works based on it attest to deep-seated feelings that unrestrained science may violate essential principles of nature and religion and that human powers may grow to exceed human wisdom. With the rise of genetic engineering in the 1970s, many serious philosophers and social critics feared that the Frankenstein story was moving from the realm of science fiction into reality.

The basic blueprint of all living beings was found in 1953, when Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the structure of DNA. A little less than two decades later, in 1970, it became possible to conceive of redesigning this blueprint when Hamilton Smith and Daniel Nathans of The Johns Hopkins University discovered a class of restriction enzymes that could be used as scissors to cut DNA strands at specific locations. In 1973, two researchers in California, Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer, spliced recombinant DNA strands into bacteria that produced copies of the foreign DNA. This meant that it would be possible to combine genetic characteristics of different organisms. In 1976, Genentech in San Francisco, California, became the first corporation formed to develop genetic engineering techniques for commercial purposes.

By the 1990s, genetic engineering was being used on plants, animals, and humans. The Flavr Savr tomato, the first genetically modified (GM) food to be approved by the US government, was developed when biotechnologists inserted a gene that delayed rotting in tomatoes. Transgenic animals (containing genes from humans and other animals) became commonplace in laboratories by the middle of the 1990s. The year 1990 saw the first successful use of genetic engineering on humans, when doctors used gene therapy to treat two girls suffering from an immunodeficiency disease. The long-felt discomfort over scientific manipulation of life, the suddenness of the development of the new technology, and the application of the technology to humans all combined to make many people worry about the social and ethical implications of genetic engineering. The most serious concerns were over genetic manipulation of humans, but some critics also pointed out possible problems with the genetic engineering of plants and animals.

Engineering of Plants and Animals

According to a Harris Poll survey conducted for the US Office of Technology in the fall of 1968, a majority of Americans were not opposed to using recombinant DNA techniques to produce hybrid agricultural plants. Some social critics, such as Jeremy Rifkin, have argued that such ready acceptance of the genetic engineering of plants is shortsighted. These critics question the wisdom of intervening in the ecological balance of nature. More specifically, they maintain that manipulating the genetic structure of plants tends to lead to a reduction in the diversity of plant life, making plants less resistant to disease. It could also lead to the spread of diseases from one plant species to another, as genes of one species are implanted in another. Furthermore, new varieties of food plants could have unforeseen health risks for human beings.

Since genetic engineering is a highly technical procedure, those who control the relevant technology have great power over the food supply. Thus, both corporate power over consumers and the power of more technologically advanced nations over less technologically advanced nations could be increased as GM foods fill the marketplace. In the United States, consumers argued that even if GM foods are safe to consume, they have the right to know the exact nature of the ingredients in their food; until 2016, no federal regulations were in place requiring manufacturers to identify GM ingredients in the foods they sold. That year, a law that was controversially seen as backed by large companies such as Monsanto to supersede stricter state laws was passed by President Barack Obama. The bill requires companies to label GM products but gives them the option of putting a QR code or phone number on the package that consumers would use to get the information. Standards for the law, known as the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law, were published in 2018. Two years later, voluntary compliance to the standards began for large companies. On January 1, 2022, compliance was made mandatory for all food manufacturers.

Many of the concerns about the genetic engineering of animals are similar to those about the engineering of plants. Loss of biodiversity, vulnerability to disease, and business control over livestock are all frequently mentioned objections to the genetic manipulation of animals. Moral issues tend to become more important, though, when opponents of genetic engineering discuss its use with animals. Many religious beliefs hold that the order of the world, including its division into different types of creatures, is divinely ordained. From the perspective of such beliefs, the relatively common experimental practice of injecting human genes into mice or other model organisms can be seen as sacrilege. Opponents of the genetic alteration of animals argue, further, that animals may suffer as a result. They point out that selective breeding, a slow process, has led to the accumulation of about two hundred genetic diseases in purebred dogs, so the faster and more drastic changes introduced by genetic engineering could cause even greater suffering.

In 2008, an ethics advisory panel for the Swiss government attempted to draw a strong boundary between permissible and impermissible uses of plant biotechnology, based on a 2004 general biotechnology law. The resulting decision was that both plants and animals must be protected from biological manipulations that would offend their “dignity.” This and subsequent rulings from the committee threatened to prohibit even some traditional plant hybridization practices, drawing strong criticism from scientists worldwide.

Engineering of Humans

Some of the greatest ethical and social problems with genetic engineering involve its use on humans. Gene therapy seeks to cure inherited diseases by altering the defective genes that cause them. Those who favor gene therapy maintain that it can be a powerful tool to overcome human misery. Those who oppose this type of medical procedure usually focus on three major ethical issues. First, critics maintain that this technology raises the problem of ownership of human life. In the early 1990s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) began filing for patents on human genes, meaning that elements of the blueprints for human life could actually be owned. Because all human DNA comes from human tissue, the question arises of whether participants in genetic experiments own the extracted DNA or if it belongs to the researchers who have extracted it.

The second problem involves eugenic implications. Eugenics is the practice of trying to improve the traits of the human “stock” through direct or indirect manipulation of reproduction in human populations. If scientists will one day routinely alter genes to yield individual humans with certain desirable health characteristics, then it is also likely that scientists will have the ability to alter genes to produce humans with “enhancements,” desirable nontherapeutic alterations to change traits such as eye color or sex. In this way, genetic engineering poses the risk of becoming an extreme and highly technological form of discrimination. Critics argue that this has already begun with the popular fertility clinic practice of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), the screening of in vitro fertilized embryos for the presence of disease-related genes or the embryo’s sex. It has been argued that it is all but guaranteed that this list will soon include traits such as eye color and skin color as well as potentially personality or intellect, to create what the media has called "designer babies," as soon as genetic knowledge permits.

The third problem is related to both of the first two: the reduction of humans to mere organic objects. When human life becomes something that can be partially owned and redesigned at will, some ethicists claim, human life will cease to be treated with proper dignity and will become simply another piece of biological machinery. As result, critics argue, the philosophical foundations for human rights will be critically undermined.

Impact and Applications

Concerns about the social and ethical implications of genetic engineering have led to a number of attempts to limit or control the technology. The environmental group Greenpeace , among others, has campaigned against GM agricultural products and called for the clear labeling of all foods produced by genetic manipulation. In September 1997, Greenpeace filed a legal petition against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), objecting to the EPA’s approval of GM plants.

Activist Jeremy Rifkin became one of the most outspoken opponents of all forms of genetic engineering. Rifkin and his associates called on the NIH to stop government-funded transgenic animal research. A number of organizations, such as the Boston-based Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG), lobbied to increase the legal regulation of genetic engineering. In 1990, in response to pressure from critics of genetic engineering, the Federal Republic of Germany enacted a genetics law to govern the use of biotechnology. In the United States, the federal government and many state governments considered laws regarding genetic manipulation. A 1995 Oregon law, for example, granted ownership of human tissue and genetic information taken from human tissue to the person from whom the tissue was taken. Since 2004, critics of gene patenting in the European Union and the United States have been mounting legislative and judicial challenges to Myriad Genetics’ patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer risk-related genes, which have led to high testing costs. In a landmark 2013 ruling, the US Supreme Court asserted in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics that naturally occurring DNA segments are not patent eligible, and so the company's BRCA gene patents were not valid; the issue remains open in some other countries, however.

Key Terms

• biodiversitythe presence of a wide variety of forms of life in an environment
• biotechnologythe technological manipulation of living organisms; genetic engineering is the most common form of biotechnology
• recombinant DNAa new combination of genes spliced together on a single piece of DNA; recombinant DNA is the basis of genetic engineering technology
• transgenic organisma organism into which the DNA of another species has been inserted

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