What Exactly is Risky About Germ-Line Genetic Engineering?

• In Event: Evolutionary Approaches to Politics

Abstract

There is a widespread view in bioethics that there is a morally important distinction between applications of genetic technologies to somatic (body) and germ-line cells (e.g. sperm and ova). Together with the treatment/enhancement distinction, this distinction has been central to bioethics since the development of recombinant DNA techniques in the 1970s, and it is central to official responses to recent developments in genome editing techniques such as CRISPR/Cas9. This paper has two goals. First, I claim that the best arguments for a morally important distinction between somatic and germ-line interventions--risks to future generations, asymmetry of control between generations, invidious distinctions between persons--do not succeed. The core objection to these arguments, drawing on recent work in the philosophy of biology and genetics, holds that genetic information is not a special kind of developmental cause. This supports a "deflationary" view of the risks of germ-line interventions compared to other modes of influencing the developmental environment of our descendants. Second, and consistent with this deflationary view, I argue for two alternative conditions for the appropriate development and use of germ-line genetic engineering: 1) sufficiency of developmental resources and 2) fair risk-sharing between families and society in child-rearing.

Author

• Nicholas Geiser, Brown University