Daron Acemoglu Column | Designer Babies Ethical Concerns & Genetic Future

Daron Acemoglu Nobel laureate in economics and professor at MIT

The idea of ​​’designer babies’ is now becoming a reality with the help of technology. These are genetically engineered children, whom you can get prepared according to your choice of physical structure and intellectual characteristics. This possibility raises many serious social and ethical questions.

Major gene-editing breakthroughs are not recent developments. The landscape of this field fundamentally changed with the development of CRISPR-Cas9 technology in the 2000s and especially the early 2010s. This makes genetic-engineering possible with extreme precision. In this, a guide-RNA identifies a specific sequence in the genome of an organism, where the Cas9 enzyme works to modify the gene.

The possibilities for use of this technology are wide. It can be used to inactivate disease-causing genes, modify seeds and agricultural products, or develop drugs and vaccines as needed. It also has the potential to tackle diseases like sickle-cell anemia as well as mutations associated with diseases like cancer.

This technology also creates the possibility of adding or deleting genes – whether in-vivo or in-vitro – at the embryonic stage and this is where the question of ‘designer babies’ comes into play. The question is whether the use of genetic engineering in humans is limited to an individual or with its help such changes will also be made which are passed on to the next generations as inheritance.

AI can analyze vast amounts of available data and identify gene combinations that can influence not just disease susceptibility but various dimensions of physical appearance, stamina and cognitive ability. But this possibility also raises obvious ethical questions.

Like Aldous Huxley’s novel ‘Brave New World’, these ‘designer babies’ could take us closer to a scenario where society is divided on the basis of genetics and only the affluent have the means to improve their own and their future generations’ intellectual capacity, physical performance and lifespan. In such a situation, those who have money today can become more prosperous and genetically more capable with each generation.

Embryo-selection services based on polygenic screening are already being made commercially available to patients undergoing IVF (in-vitro fertilization). Advances in AI have made them more attractive to those who can afford them.

If this trend continues, then a class of billionaires may emerge in the future, who are ready to convert their economic privileges into biological advantages. This could happen when a large number of other people are facing the threat of losing jobs due to AI.

To prevent such possibilities, most people’s first reaction is to ban germline-editing and ‘designer babies’. But this may not be the right solution. After all, we already ‘design’ our bodies and our children in a way through vaccines and operations.

In developed countries, now couples who are going to become parents get their fetus tested for diseases like Down syndrome and if necessary, choose to terminate the pregnancy. The line between these interventions and genome-editing is not as clear as it seems. If gene-editing was done to develop natural immunity against smallpox in children, would that be any different from vaccinating them?

It is not just a matter of interfering in nature. There are two more important aspects related to this. First, the long-term effects of germline-editing are not yet fully understood. Living organisms are constantly under attack from various pathogens, and some genetic variations can cause unexpected problems that cannot be predicted. Secondly, vaccination is a public health intervention, whereas genome-editing will be within the reach of only the rich. They can use it to reap benefits that we can’t even imagine right now.

These ‘designer babies’ could take us closer to a scenario where society is divided on the basis of genetics and only the affluent have the means to improve the intellectual capacity, physical performance and lifespan of themselves and future generations.

(@ProjectSyndicate)

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