One of the great challenges of the twenty-first century will be our response to the combined power of new reproductive technologies and manipulation of the human gene. Two recent news stories illustrate the heart of the problem: scientists recognize they now face serious ethical problems but continue to do more or less nothing about them.
A New York Times story (December 23, 1999) reports a successful experiment in which jellyfish genes were mixed with the sperm cells of the rhesus monkey. The sperm, subsequently injected into monkey eggs, bypassed the natural fertilization process, allowing the jellyfish gene to enter the monkey egg. This process produced monkey embryos carrying the jellyfish gene. How do scientists know their experiment worked? One-third of the embryos glowed when a fluorescent light was shone on them; in another experiment, eleven of fifty-seven mice born through the same technique had green-glowing tails. This is scientific progress?
Some scientists think so. These seemingly modest developments in reproductive technology may eventually pave the way for sophisticated programs of genetic engineering, ultimately with human genes. Technical difficulties remain to actually inserting a human gene, for example, into a mouse egg, or the even more humanly compatible pig egg. We are promised, however, that these techniques will help in the development of spare human organs. And someday inserting a modified gene into a human egg could reduce susceptibility to diseases such as aids or Alzheimer’s. Who can doubt that when it can be done, it will be done? Progress and profits beckon.
Of course, all of this lies in the future. But not wholly, for these reproductive techniques work their way into human medicine in the form of infertility treatments. The direct insertion of a single sperm into an egg is already possible and some ten to twenty thousand efforts a year are made on human eggs. But as the jellyfish experiments showed, direct insertion of sperm into an egg provides none of the protective functions of natural fertilization that separate the sperm’s outer protein coat (and extraneous matter such as viruses) from its genetic material. Who knows what children born of such techniques may have floating around as extraneous genetic or viral material? Not jellyfish genes, we hope.
Consider the second story. Remember Dolly the clone, that singular sheep and media sensation of 1997? She has been surpassed. A prize Japanese bull has been cloned from skin cells scraped from its own ear (New York Times, January 5, 2000). Four calves were produced with far greater efficiency and less expense than the cumbersome technique that produced Dolly. But they haven’t gotten the attention she did-where are the baby pictures? For experiments creating cloned calves and jellyfish-enhanced monkeys have become everyday science and ho-hum media events. Yet in these stories and others like them, one thing has not changed, the invocation of ethical dilemmas.
Funny thing though, they are the same ethical dilemmas we’ve heard about for twenty-five years, and their invocation does not bring reflection or resolution. Ethical handwringing might better describe what scientists say in stories announcing their successful experiments. More fascinating than jellyfish genes in monkey tails, then, is ethical agnosticism in the face of scientific advance.
The most obvious ethical dilemmas are presented in moving from animal to human genetic experimentation. What risks will it pose? Who can know before the actual experiments take place? In the face of uncertainty, who can give informed consent? Gene replacement therapy promises to cure our ills. But children given modified genes at conception may be born and raised, perhaps reaching adulthood, before the full effects of any alteration or treatment can be known. Even now, one physician who does direct insertion of a human sperm into an egg acknowledges that extraneous material may enter the egg-although no infants born as a result of this technique have yet shown a tendency to unusual diseases or conditions. Does that mean nothing is amiss?
Another physician, who describes himself as "an ethical religious man," says he will include the new information in counseling patients, but "they can decide whether they want to go forward or not." Presumably this meets his ethical obligation. The same physician also claims that he would not recommend to his patients every advance in technology, "just because there is a market for it." But are there "treatments" before physicians and their scientific colleagues work to develop them through animal experiments? And are there markets before physicians themselves offer treatments?
Down the road, cloning human organs in monkeys or pigs will present the same round of ethical handwringing. Yes, it presents risks. Once the technical barriers are breached, how can the risks to humans be fully known without actually transplanting cloned organs? Fully consenting to the risks, sick and dying people will acquiesce in the hope of renewed health and life. Who will stop them? Perhaps, at first, health insurance companies will say "no"; predictably, they will be beaten back by "compassionate" legislation. Institutional review boards in hospitals and research institutes seem ready to approve potentially effective treatments (especially for fatal conditions), leaving the risk questions to the future. And then, of course, millions even billions of dollars are being invested in these projects. Who will really say no to the market?
Is this any way to approach ethical decision making in matters of novel and risky experiments that will affect not just individuals, but the whole human community and the animal and plant world that sustains us?
What is all of this doing to creation? For if natural selection is part of the marvelously adaptive nature of all life on earth (see, John Haught’s "Evolution and the Humility of God" on page 12), who are scientists to decide that some genes should be enhanced or modified, while others are disabled? If the process of selection and adaptation takes eons, how can we foresee the consequences of even the simplest alteration in our genetic make-up, or that of the jellyfish and rhesus monkey?
We are all original sinners, as Sidney Callahan reminds us on page 7, but do we know nothing about hubris or heedlessness? If we learn nothing from the story of Adam and Eve, can we learn something from the development of the atomic bomb or the overuse of antibiotic medicines? Do we know nothing about the power of nature to strike back? Have we not learned that ethical questions are real questions? They require real reflection and real answers. Yes, there is medical progress to be made in genetic research, but real progress also requires us to say: Stop and think.
